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Comment by rco8786 | Hacker News Reader

He said responsibility, not consequences. I am still not sure what people expect CEOs to do in these situations to "punish" themselves. Google is not going bankrupt, they are still wildly profitable, they overhired and are adjusting headcount by a few percent.

It sucks for the people affected, I don't want to downplay that. But I'm genuinely curious what is supposed to happen to the leader in these situations.

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What does it really mean to take responsibility, then?

> What does it really mean to take responsibility, then?

To own the decision. Not pass the buck.

He could resign. That would be "taking responsibility." Just saying you take responsibility isn't actually taking responsibility. Not in a way that matters to anyone anyway.

If he wasn't planning on resigning, he should have just left that bit out of the statement. It comes off as empty and tone def.

Forcing a leader to resign over a bad bet that is not permanently damaging to the company will only make things worse. That leader still has value to the company, and is probably one of the best persons to learn from and fix their mistakes. If you fire a CEO, you throw the stock market into chaos and all of your other leaders become focused on trying to get the CEO job instead of doing their own jobs. You went from one problem to multiple problems.

No it wouldn't. That would be resigning.

When you break a window you don't give awway the house.

They could quit or... not get any income until everybody that leaves gets a new job.

Donate 90% (or everything above $2M, whichever amount is higher) of their wealth to the people dismissed, and never take on a leadership position again.

No, I'm not joking.

If we applied this rule to each CEO that laid off people, there wouldn't be any CEOs going forward.

Or maybe layoffs.

Nice!

If there were ever a shortage of CEOs because they felt they were being treated unfairly, let me be the first to volunteer. I'd be happy to suffer as they do.

Why not 99% or everything above $300k? Are you saying you couldn't live on less than $2M?

I'm being generous.

If you ever have to lay people off, you can no longer hold a leadership position? If you hire someone, it's permanent with the exception of their wrongdoing?

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