Have we seen this happen in the past? Did Microsoft go through a general sense of despondency when it cut people in 2009? Did it recover?
"Slumping stock price and unimaginative vision has left Microsoft marooned between a fading past and an uncertain future"
An unimaginative vision is a common result of mass lay-offs. The ones that stay behind do not dare to take risks and prefer to stick to the status quo. Only after Satya Nadella took over, did Microsoft start to recover.
It's one thing and bad enough if board members have sometimes dozens of posts... but Zuckerberg, Musk, Dorsey all show it's not a good idea when an actually active C-level exec has too many things on their table. And it's especially not good if they use company resources for their personal pet projects.
Good grief.
I guess if you are a CFO, or finance guy, sure.
But a "pet project" is conjoined with passion. And R&D, and testing the waters in other markets, is what causes true motivation.
People often complain that big corps can only innovate via acquisition. Yet, this comment is complaining that big corps are innovating by... startup methods!
For what does a startup do, other than live as the pet project of its founders?
We should encourage CEOs of large corps to go out on a limb, to R&D, to bring change to the market, to explore new growth streams.
At some point, they have to start being profitable, and this constraint is what forces them to be adaptable and listen to users.
Billionaire pet projects do not have this constraint, and as such can become endless money sinks.
There's a difference between legitimate R&D and pulling Tesla engineers to put out fires at Twitter. The latter is a blatant abuse of Tesla's resources and to be honest it's a miracle how Musk has not gotten under serious fire from at the very least the Tesla board or a lawsuit by shareholders.
Did you ever think, this may be why there is no issue?