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Comment by vsareto | Hacker News Reader

This is probably the best you can hope for in terms of fairness right now. You'll never see executives put themselves financially in the same situation as the lowest level people they are letting go.

This is actually a pretty big step, but the move will need some benefit to the company for it to become more common-place.

They might roll these bonuses into subsequent bonuses, but that may actually end up being a motivator if these bonuses are truly forfeit until things are improved by the executives.

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Seriously? What 'fairness' exactly is it people want when companies do layoffs?

"Hey, we are laying off 3,000 people. Because of that, I am firing myself and the company will no longer have a CEO and will have to find someone else, starting immediately. In addition, I plan to donate all of my life's savings and file for unemployment like everyone else and, if needed, live in my van down by the river. I hope this makes everyone feel vindicated and that the scales of justice remain balanced. God Bless."

zoom is profitable despite layoffs. workers want some of that profit rather than a layoff, contracts be damned.

Who is saying that?

Implied in the second sentence of the comment being replied to.

"Because of that, I am firing myself"

A team does terrible for awhile -- should the coach be removed? A company does terrible -- should the CEO be removed? This is what accountability means. Just this year I was hired by a Board Of Directors, of a startup with 150 people, to do an evaluation of the technology and code, and I found epic levels of tech debt and irresponsible decision making. When I gave my report to the Board Of Directors, the Board responded by firing both the CTO and the CEO. This seems normal to me.

That seems like the call of the board, no? Certainly, CEOs at any substantial level are accountable to a group of people. Everyone answers to someone.

It's not that Zoom has done terrible for a while, in fact the opposite is true. Yuan is the founder, and the company went from nothing to being pretty huge under his leadership. On the other hand, he signed off on hiring a lot of people because the company grew really fast during the pandemic — too many, as it turns out. What do you make of that? Should the CEO be considered a failure because too many people were hired, or a success because the company's revenue grew by like 1000% in the last three years? Both are really responses to the pandemic, and it may be that neither are really his fault, even if they are on his plate to deal with.

I don't know who needs to hear this, but laying people off _does not mean the company is doing terrible_ and this narrative is the reason why you get vastly different opinions about handling this scenario.

All laying people off means is that there are items that the company will not be executing against in the future. It may or may not mean that they're in a bad spot, but very often - and the case with many of the current tech giants laying off that we're seeing - it simply means they grew more than they needed for the road ahead.

Whether or not that's good or bad is a fair question. It was asked on a previous thread whether we as a society should be comfortable with companies gabling with the jobs of their employees, and I think that's a worthwhile question. But it most certainly does not mean that a company is "doing terrible."

It doesn't mean that they're doing terrible as a going concern, but it does mean that they're a terrible company to work for.

If you're hiring in bulk to tie up talent your competitors might want during a boom, and then promptly firing thousands in the bust, you're bad people and should feel bad.

But then, to paraphrase Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get an executive to understand the impacts of their decision when their compensation package depends upon them not understanding it.

You answered your own question. Yes. Who removes a CEO? The Board. If the Board does their job (correctly), then they will make the right decision to release or retain the right CEO.

If the Board fails to do its job? What, then? Yep, shareholders have to intervene.

Which leads to what happens if the shareholders themselves don't figure out what to do or the right-decision to be made? Well, they lose a bunch of value as the company's value [eventually] plummets.

The board likely signed off on the hiring plan. Layoffs are hard but as other commenters have pointed out are not inherently a sign the company is doing poorly. In many cases a board may choose to reward a ceo for identifying cuts and charting and executing a path forward.

I'm sure you can't speak about it, but now I'm very curious what levels of technical debt it takes for the board to fire a CTO.

I have to assume it goes beyond just not following best practices, and perhaps into deep levels of pointless "not invented here syndrome" or some other massive waste of resources.

Can you comment on how you got that job?

> I was hired by a Board Of Directors, of a startup with 150 people, to do an evaluation of the technology and code, and I found epic levels of tech debt and irresponsible decision making

A BOD doesn’t hire someone to do this without there being some suspicion within the board that there is an issue. That board was likely divided on keeping one or both of those individuals and your results were used to sway votes.

This is some sort of blame game? Why stop there? Why don’t we fire the whole chain of management, including the top guy, AND let all these people that were laid of KEEP their jobs instead. It wasn’t their fault after all and we are making decision on the basis of blames, right? Let’s see how that turns out.

This feels ok, but they should also sell all their gold fillings.

If you have to lay off 3000 people because of your bad leadership, you should absolutely be fired too.

For the bad PR you’ve created, if for nothing else.

This warrants maximum punishment and humiliation:

1. Yuan should immediately terminate himself as CEO, and his salary/bonus should be divvied up among those who were [IMPACTED]. In fact, all 1,300 people should be named co-CEOs and together they shall lead the company to prosperity and avoid such a boneheaded misstep in the future.

2. He should have to give his life savings to those 1,300 people. His family should live in squalor going forward, effective immediately.

3. He should be imprisoned for fraud, for no fewer than 25 years —- or ideally sent to a North Korean prison camp, if such arrangements with DPRK can be secured.

That’s what true accountability looks like.

Clearly being laid off is painful. I'm sensing some of that pain in your reply. I have a lot of sympathy for those who have been laid off.

However your solution, as seen from outside that pain, is "worse than the disease".

Firstly it's worth pointing out that most (but not all) layoffs right now are a result of over-hiring during the pandemic. Now, granted, those jobs didn't last forever, but they did last a while and kept a lot of people working during a time when a lot of people couldn't work. It would likely have been very profitable to not make those hires in the first place.

Secondly, you are proposing penalties out of proportion to the mistake. Or put another way you are strongly disincentiving hiring in the first place.

The more penalties there are for failure, the lower the chance that people will try at all. Your suggestion that over-hiring leads to criminal fraud, or personal destitution, has out outcome - no one will ever hire anyone.

In a private company the decision makers are typically the owners. They're taking risks everyday, spending "their money" and working hard to keep everyone employed. It's a weighty responsibility. But life happens and things don't always work out as planned. Management-via-hindsight is easy.

Parent’s post has an invisible /s.

ahh - a visible /s would have been helpful :)

It wasn’t obvious from the North Korean prison camp mention?

The comment literal dripped sarcasm

This is the internet, it's hard to tell where some opinions end and where sarcasm starts these days. :)

>> In fact, all 1,300 people should be named co-CEOs and together they shall lead the company to prosperity and avoid such a boneheaded misstep in the future. 2. He should have to give his life savings to those 1,300 people. His family should live in squalor going forward, effective immediately.

I mean honestly…you thought the above (emphasis is mine) was serious?

Lol. Now that’s taking it to the next level.

I wonder if any country has ever thought of attempting to dump unwanted prisoners in North Korea. I wonder how NK would respond to that.

If you reduced the comp of the C-suite by 50%, you could probably lay off only 2500 people to achieve the same cost savings.

"Clearly this failure demonstrates that a centralized system can not work and I have initiated a transition to turn this corporation into a worker-owned cooperative."

I'm kidding, of course. Layoffs rarely represent failure, they're usually just a cost cutting measure to increase profitability and make shareholders happy. They're just framed as failure every time because people take more kindly to "we had to lay 15% of employees off because of the economy" than "we had to lay 15% of employees off to meet our quarterly growth goals".

The big thing would be for Mr. Yuan to forgo his equity grant for FY23 and also take his equity grant from FY22 and distribute that as severance for the employees who lives are impacted negatively due to the decisions of executives in the organization.

That truly means "taking ownership" of what happened.

The individuals leaving were not the ones who hired or authorized the hires without the evaluation of long-term viability for the organization. They were just doing their jobs.

That isn’t taking ownership, that’s falling on your sword.

There is a difference.

Falling on your sword is literally exactly what accountability used to be.

…and the stakes are even higher today if you count the number of people impacted by poor decisions.

Cite?

Accountability means (from every definition I’ve found!) taking responsibility for one’s actions and their consequences.

Falling on one’s sword has, from what I’ve always read, has been portrayed as someone accepting too much responsibility, to the point they actually avoid dealing with the consequences of their actions and make the situation worse overall by killing themselves.

After all, no need to actually work hard making amends or doing better if you’re dead, eh?

And it can even make the person doing it somewhat of a martyr, even if they created the whole situation to begin with, as it can make it look like those calling for it or pushing for retribution were actually just looking for a scapegoat and the dead one is actually a victim.

I have never heard your definition.

My connotation has always been ritual suicide.

E.g. Seppuku in Japan, captains going down with the ship, ect.

The origin of the phrase in the west stems from the roman practice of military ritual suicide following defeat. It was more a matter of honor than seeking victimhood.

A captured general represented an embarrassment to the empire, provides the enemy with a hostage, and would likely be tortured to give up information. Suicide in defeat was honorable as it served the empire and denied the enemy leverage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ancient_Roman_militar...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorinus_(died_53_BC)

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43830420

Are you talking about "accountability" or "falling on your sword?"

I'm talking about the meaning and entomology of falling on your sword.

That said, I think it is a huge stretch to translate this history to the context of CEO accountability.

Thanks for clarifying. I was having a really tough time understanding your response. I thought you were saying you hadn't heard the dictionary definition that lazide was quoting, and were saying lazide made that definition up and you had a different definition you made up that doesn't match.

What does this have to do with the study of insects?

Are you referring to 'falling on your sword', or 'accountability' in your response? Some of your examples are not equivalent to falling on their sword. Notably, going down with the ship is the opposite (in some ways), as it is 'fighting to the end to save the ship and it's people'.

If someone (going down the ship wise) doesn't get on a lifeboat when everyone else has already gotten off, then yeah it's probably more about avoiding actual accountability (aka having to stand and take responsibility/long term consequences).

Regarding Victimhood/Martyrdom, there are many apocryphal accounts and personal anecdotes one can throw out. You'll get stories anyone in senior leadership when a CEO gets pushed out, to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%ABshingura] (specifically Lord Asano), to Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnaeus_Domitius_Corbulo], and many others.

Sometimes folks want blood, and they won't be satisfied until they get it. And often someone either stupidly volunteers (actually), or gets 'volunteered' by their boss.

Also, how is killing yourself quickly and (relatively) painlessly after a military failure NOT the relatively easy way out - instead of say, dying while fighting the enemy to the death (probably horribly disfigured and maimed in the process), or dying in torture while not giving anything up, or dying while trying to save the ship and the other crew, or returning in shame and being a social outcast, or dying after being shamed in trial followed by an execution, etc.

Literally all those other options can seem a whole lot harder than a gladius through the solar plexus at the moment. Also, notably, sometimes folks had 'help' on that last bit, though rarely was it featured prominently in the PR.

Seppuku - similar. Rather than 'living with dishonor' (aka being outcast from a insular and all encompassing society), or having to stand trial and defend yourself and getting shamed then executed anyway, etc. it's killing yourself 'with honor', so your family doesn't get their benefits taken and similarly outcast (as badly). Seppuku generally involves the second beheaded the person before they've had a chance to suffer much too, though there have been famous 'mistakes' made at times.

It also could be ordered by the Daimyo, Shogun, etc. and it was pretty common (from accounts at the time) for folks to be thrown under the bus and ordered to commit it if they didn't succeed at what the lord had ordered them to do or were just being inconvenient to the narrative. Including significant 'help' from seconds. Which is, well, pretty much the example of a scapegoat.

I am addressing what you said here:

>Falling on one’s sword has, from what I’ve always read, has been portrayed as someone accepting too much responsibility, to the point they actually avoid dealing with the consequences of their actions and make the situation worse overall by killing themselves.

Yes there are differences in my examples. Captains are on boats, and Samurai are in Japan. I'm not trying to say they are identical in every way.

The common factor is that these actions are all seen as honorable positive within the context of the society where they took place.

I get that you might have your own personal take and values on these types of actions. People could have suffered more or made a more utilitarian Choice if their objective was the greater social good.

Yes, I'm sure many people have been made to fall on their sword as patsies. However, I don't think that changes the common understanding of the idiom, or how the practice was viewed in the historical context.

You may see it as the coward's way out to avoid living with shame or fixing your problems, which is fine. I just don't think it is an accurate depiction of how contemporaneous people viewed it. People did not look at a captain going down with the ship or a general falling on their Gladius as a coward dodging their responsibilities. I don't think most people today feel that way either, but obviously there are exceptions with you being one

You got a very different take than what I wrote - especially in the captain going down the ship example.

Unless the Captain saw everyone off in lifeboats and then stayed on the ship (very unlikely), it’s far from what you are describing and I was clear on that.

I also pointed out that the actual reality on the ground is almost never what the mental image or PR is meant to instill, and is often (in reality) a way to take someone out somewhere and pin all the blame on them.

I very much doubt, for instance, in ANY of those examples I gave, they actually did what they were said to have done in the way and for the reasons they were said to have done it.

But there are situations where it definitely is the easier way out to do it that way literally.

Someone who gets into an obstinate fight with a boss over a minor issue, or who does something common and then when it turns out it’s a problem stands up and tries to defend it, and then gets fired, would be a common use of the idiom in my experience.

A Phyrric victory, ‘he picked that hill to die on’, he died tilting at windmills’, etc. could also be used.

> Falling on your sword is literally exactly what accountability used to be.

I wonder if you hold this level of rigour towards your own failings and shortcomings, or if this desire is directed exclusively at everyone besides yourself.

“For my friends, everything. For my enemies? The law.” - Oscar R. Benavides, President of Peru from 1933 to 1939

The people being laid off have to go find another highly overpaid job. Somewhat distressing, to be sure, but in the scheme of what you're talking about, not really high stakes at all. Failure in the cases you're comparing it to usually involved death for a large number of people. The stakes are nowhere near the same.

I think the reason we don't see other CEOs acting like Mr. Yuan is because of this sentiment. Whatever you do, it will never be enough.

Perhaps "we" need to do a better job defining what "enough" is, then? So that we don't allow the goalposts to be moved.

People lost their livelihoods, and in the US, their access to affordable healthcare until they figure out a new solution or get a new job.

We tell ourselves perfect is the enemy of good and then try anyways. But it seems like they get to say, perfect is the enemy of good, so I'll give up before I start. It's this difference in character that creates greater division rather than lessening it.

> Whatever you do, it will never be enough.

To be fair, it's only a pair of random internet forum posters who are complaining that this is not enough. There are plenty of people in this discussion arguing otherwise.

They haven't released 2022 financials, but for 2021 base + bonus for Mr. Yuan was about $313,000 and he received ~8400 RSUs (about $670k at today's price), which fully vest on April 8. Additionally, it looks like he received an RSU grant of 612,000 shares on July 8, that vest quarterly over 4 years.

So, for those keeping track, Mr. Yuan is giving up about $300k in cash, but still receiving about $13M in stock. That's a 2.3% level of "accountability".

Wow ok.. Your comment should be on the first node all the way up. That’s really different from what I was imagining!

I feel like this is a weird comment. There has basically never been a CEO taking meaningful accountability for a company failing. Taking a reasonable chunk of one's wealth and giving it to fired employees is actually remarkable, even if it's not as large as it could be

Laying off employees is not 'the company failing'; he reports to investors, not employees. The employees have very little on the line with respect to the company.

Damn, whoever made a comment has probably has never had a job that's genuinely engaged them (and certainly has never been unexpectedly laid off). What a sad reality most people's jobs are :(

Working for someone else's company means you are a tool to generate profit. That does not mean you cannot enjoy it, and your team, and even make some friends. Still it is vital to understand the business itself is not a family. Companies that pretend to be families seek to build stockholm syndrome which will make you unwilling to look for a better deal for your talent.

It also makes it hurt more when you are laid off and the illusion is broken.

You only ever work for yourself. A single employer means you have a single client. It also means you only have one source of income. That is always risky, because work done for others is always temporary. Honestly full time employment is way way -more- risky than being an independent contractor with a few small predictable retainer contracts.

Also key to remember is that no matter how rewarding and interesting the work is you will eventually lose access to that too unless you fought hard enough for it to be open source.

I've been unexpectedly laid off, and I've had at least one job that genuinely engaged me, and I think that laying off employees, or firing employees, or otherwise terminating employees, is not evidence that a company has failed, or that the CEO has failed, or any of those things.

If you want a job where losing that job is tantamount to company failure, start your own business. When it fails (and statistically it probably will), your failure will also lead to your job loss. Congratulations.

If you "have a job", you're accepting being a cog in a machine that's primarily not about you. I make that trade-off, as do most people, but don't mislead yourself about what's going on.

They killed Ken Lay after destroying his company.

It is all in the noise financially. Mr. Yuan owns 22% of the company. He owns 22% of the salary savings on the balance sheet.

In other words, he's lost $30B in the last ~2 years. Seems like a fair amount of accountability to me.

Yes, I agree that his ownership position gives him direct financial accountability for the performance of the company. He does well when it does well.

That said, the swings tech stock over the last couple years have very little to do with his leadership. Yuan is not responsible for the tech bubble and its deflation. No human on the planet could have made zoom hold its peak stock price.

Keep in mind that his income is probably not what he lives on. He probably gets loans with the stock. That 500 mill bump probably got him a large loan.

He probably doesn't need more stock borrow against if he has billions of dollars of equity already and a seven digit annual compensation. His stock transfers and sales are public information so you can look that up if you want. A cursory search shows that he sold at least 50 million dollars worth, which should cover some daily expenses

Given the stock went up 9% on this announcement, he just made $500M.

Against the backdrop of losing like $5 billion over the past 12 months.

So? What's the functional difference between $6 billion and $1 billion (which is roughly what Google says his current net worth is). Unless your net worth is $500M or more, you're closer to being homeless than ever seeing that kind of wealth.

> So?

It doesn't make sense to accuse someone of not feeling the economic impact of a downturn at all while downplaying the fact that they actually lost $5billion.

If there's no functional difference between before and after the loss, it damn well does.

Tell me, how did his lifestyle change as a result of losing this $5 billion? What actual pain of loss did he feel, above and beyond seeing some numbers go down?

classic example of moving the goalposts

I haven’t moved anything. You just didn’t know where my goalposts were to begin with.

You guys are going at it like cats and dogs.

> Tell me, how did his lifestyle change (...)

If you were serious or had devoted any thought into the issue you wouldn't even consider the silliness of framing a $5billion loss as a lifestyle issue.

In that case, how did his life change from his net worth going up 9% after layoffs? Which was the comment I replied to.

5 billion dollars.

His point, which you failed to address with your smug response, is the well-understood fact that the utility value of money falls greatly, the more money one has. The utility of 5 billion dollars is essentially zero to someone who already has a billion.

The marginal utility falls, but it's a hell of a lot more than zero.

Other than ownership of an NFL/NBA/Premier League/etc sports team, what life satisfaction or happiness improvements are unavailable to a one-billionaire?

Many people would love to own a major sports team.

He didn't make the money because it's unrealized gains, but your point still stands. The market certainly agrees that this is a good direction for the company, and if the market is correct, he will stand to benefit eventually

The phrase "net worth" claims another victim's mind.

You could take all of his comp, then fire him, then bar him from any work for the next 5-10 years and he'd still probably be a millionaire. In terms of quality of life, he will never face the same situation.

But at the end of the day, he won't work for nothing if you took all of his comp, so fair accountability is not really possible in this light.

It’s symbolic. He built a juggernaut that went from nothing to industry leader in a few years. Just like Cisco did with WebEx, they can park the company for a few years and print billions until the next disruptor arrives.

Indeed. Such a drag to share the spoils with the proles who built such a successful company.

Ahh, that confluence where capitalism intersects with socialism.

Did the workers build the company? Did the capital build the company by providing the pay to pay the workers?

Did the workers take any risks? Or did they sign an employment contract, and get paid the same every month regardless of performance? Their only risk, that the contract will end, perhaps unexpectedly [1]?

In the case of small private businesses (which of course the vast majority of businesses are) did the "Capitalist" worry about making payroll this month, get short paid when cash is short, try and predict the future, make tough decisions when things go wrong, and somehow be a human?

Of course the socialists believe the capitalists should keep those people hired forever (or better yet, not hire them to begin with?) - ironically that's what the capitalists want as well. But life happens and hard decisions have to be made.

[1] risk costs money. If you have one employer you are at risk. As much as you can, hedge this risk with liquid savings. This has been good advice for thousands of years. Most workers live so close to poverty that this is unattainable. However folks at (big tech whoever) have the means to do this AND get decent severance, so I'm not crying for them just yet.

You can bang on about risk all you want but Adam Neuman lost $40bn and still walked away with a billion of his own.

The best you can hope for is for the CEO to have his incentives aligned fully with the company. Given his enormous ownership stake, that's already true. This is a rounding error compared to the billions of book value he lost and the billions he still retains.

Any CEO in his position is accountable by default. They lose a literal fortune when the company doesn't perform. This meme of "but how are you taking accountability" confuses the heck out of me given this context.

> probably the best you can hope for

The cynic in me suspects that this is going to trickle down - there will be 20% salary reductions for everybody, and this will become a trend just like the layoffs did.

> executives put themselves financially in the same situation as the lowest level people they are letting go

Except, lately anyway, those people were probably already living close to paycheck-to-paycheck, as many low six figure earners are in this horrible economy. Whereas, the CEO and other execs will likely not even miss the money.

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