Hacker News Reader

Comment by ausudhz | Hacker News Reader

not bad for doing few meetings a year

Yeah, no kidding. I have a hard time believing that the way corporate board seats are filled has anything to do with maximizing the performance of a company. It seems like it’s just an entrenched, unspoken agreement among the executive class to keep their pockets filled with walking around money—or private-jetting money in their case.

I'm sure there's a bit of that but I think for most companies it's a way to get the foot in the door at another company.

If you think company B could use your services then company A can ask their board member who just happens to also be on company B to push for it.

The right meeting decisions in a few cases can make or break. The hard part is determining which those are, and validating it years later.

I believe a wrong decision can break, but the right decision rarely "make". A simply "adequate" decision followed by brilliant execution is what really "makes". In that sense, they should be compensating the people who execute the decisions more, not the ones who call the shot.

I also believe that a lot of the "importance" of a board member comes from their social network. "Let me call the CEO of AWS and figure out what we can do"- kind of thing.

Opposed to engineers who usually face consequences on bad decisions, these rich people rarely have any meaningful accountability. So tossing a coin is fine.

And these days, probably from the extra-large kitchen with an ocean view, on Zoom.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com