There is no academic training to be a good CEO. They are not easily replaceable. If they were, board members wouldn’t bother offering such high pay. Shareholders don’t appreciate wasting money.
Don't hate the player, hate the game (seriously, the system is screwed up horribly)
There is more going on with people and work and money than most people seem to acknowledge when speaking in general.
I know it’s probably multifaceted, but my first thought was that increasing inflation since the 70s has meant that there is an incentive to have as much debt as possible, the hope being that it will be inflated away
1. Friedman, Milton. "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits." The New York Times, 13 September 1970, https://web.archive.org/web/20230913104415/https://www.nytim...
2. Carstens, Delphi. "HYPERSTITION." Xenopraxis, n.d., http://xenopraxis.net/readings/carstens_hyperstition.pdf.
I say it is fair to hare the player unless they are working to change/improve the "screwed up" game they are playing.
If Steve Jobs—who first created and then basically rescued Apple and started it on the path to where it is today—can be 'replaced' then any other leader can be replaced.
Similarly there are plenty of CEOs that are paid oodles of money that were or are absolute garbage: see Boeing for the last 15+ years as Exhibit A.
I wasn't try to show that they don't matter, but that they are replaceable. And few companies need to have "the greatest mind in Operations that history has ever known" to function well.
Does Eli Lilly, Unitedheath, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Home Depot, Pepsico, Walmart, Coca Cola, Accenture, Intuit, Caterpillar, Lowes, Nike?
* https://www.slickcharts.com/sp500
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S%26P_500_companies
Heaven knows that the last few CEOs of Boeing mattered as they have completely screwed the pooch and basically wrecked that company—all the while making a whole lot of money.
Everyone is replaceable, but some people are simply better suited for their role than others.
I do think a lot of CEOs are way overpaid. That said, if a couple hundred million package means the difference between a company folding and firing everyone, or being a multi-billion dollar business with thousands of employees, the math works out.
Yes, I explicitly mentioned that: without Jobs AAPL would not be where it was today. But he was replaced.
If someone as instrumental as Jobs can be replaced then so can any CEO that is/was less instrumental.
And what other CEOs are / were as instrumental as Jobs? What other major companies need to have someone of that calibre?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S%26P_500_companies
> That said, if a couple hundred million package means the difference between a company folding and firing everyone, or being a multi-billion dollar business with thousands of employees, the math works out.
Now do the example of packages that cost millions of dollars and the CEOs wrecked the companies, like Boeing, or Enron, or WorldCom. Or Jack Welch's financial shenanigans at GE.
AirPods launched 5 years after he died. It's highly unlikely he was involved at all. That's now also a multi-billion dollar business.
Apple Vision is about to come out. I wouldn't be surprised if that turns into a mult-billion dollar business after a few years.
Yes, Tim Cook does not have the charisma of Steve Jobs, and probably doesn't have the design sense either. But he's awfully good at putting the right people in the right places to steer the ship with him and have quite a strong vision of the future.