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Comment by rogerkirkness | Hacker News Reader

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rogerkirkness

Why do so many tech executives seem to make the actual worst decisions possible when it comes to symbolic leadership?

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The executive class isn't there to provide leadership, they're there to extract value.

past the startup crunch phase, the CEO job is literally to rally the troops and nothing much else.

And be the punching bag for the company when appropriate.

Executives aren't able to time their sales of stock to events and they shouldn't be able to as it would lead to more manipulation. It is likely the sale of stock was planned ahead of the layoff announcement timing.

As was pointed out in this comments section, they are able to time events to their scheduled sales of stock.

the only time this really makes sense (in my head at least) is selling prior to something that KNOW will tank you stock and make your shares worthless. If you just hold... sure you're making a decision to not sell, but other than looking VERY VERY bad to employees on the timing of things... the stock went up, he sold....

now if he sold a boatload of stock before a horrific earnings report... thats another story

Keep in mind they don't write articles about executives cashing in stock in unexceptional times.

That's the point.

inherent selfishness

7.2 million dollars doesn’t hurt

Because at no point in recent history has any one of them suffered any kind of consequences of being utter avatar of greed and sociopathy.

Why bother when they'll even be defended like in this very thread?

not smart enough to realise that the transactions are public and it may end up in the press

completely destroying their reputation in the process

Couple millions for me would be completely worth my reputation... And how badly will this reputation prevent getting the next job?

looks really quite bad for a CFO

any other officer it would probably wouldn't have any effect

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