Poor baby. I wonder if he can find something to do with his $4.3M annual compensation to console himself. https://simplywall.st/stocks/us/consumer-durables/nyse-sony/...
none of the people swinging the axe face any pain for their bad decisions. people under them working as hard as they could face the consequences of decisions made above their head and out of their control.
no contrition, no sincerity, no humanity. the C level has failed us and we keep celebrating their narcissism and psychopathy.
we cannot keep celebrating this behavior. it needs to have negative financial consequences or the "bad optics" will forever just be a cost of doing business
we need adults in charge and we have pathetic children
CEOs have reputations, and they do better with their future opportunities when they “turn around” a company or grow it, vs liquidate one. And ‘growing’ includes the situation where the 90% who aren’t laid off share in that success.
But it’s weird to me to imply that executives should be godlike in their ability to predict the future such that downsizing in any form isn’t ever necessary (and that any failure to do so is a sin that needs to be punished). If a ship encounters rough waters and is in danger of not making it to their destination (in this case, ROI), the captain and first mate shouldn’t automatically jump overboard in contrition. (yes, in this metaphor, they are throwing a few of the crew overboard, but I think severance = lifeboats so I’m ok with it). They should do what it takes to preserve the ship. That’s their job. (And neither in the metaphor nor real life is “eliminating most of the crew” something they do, everyone accepts that the crew are valuable, and to be preserved)
I think it’s unrealistic to expect any corporate governance to meet your apparent criteria, that in the event of any RIF the C-suite must all be sacked and their personal wealth set to the median wealth of the rank-and-file at that company.
Nobody is stopping anyone from setting up such a company and having that in contractual agreements with all their executives, though. It would be an interesting experiment.
You think there is not one manager involved in layoffs that faced personal grief over firing people?
> You think there is not one manager involved in layoffs that faced personal grief over firing people?
I am 100% confident that the people who feel "personal grief" over this are extremely well compensated. They have a secure housing situation where they are not afraid of "where will I sleep, where will my next meal come from?"
Trivializing the damage these people are inflicting on others for no reason other than "the board wants more money" is disrespectful at best. it's morally reprehensible to anybody with a functioning conscience who understands ethics.
The only alternative to having layoffs be a fact of life and business is for companies to provide “jobs for life” regardless of profitability or business results. Businesses who do this don’t exist outside of uncompetitive state-owned firms which need to be propped up by state spending (taxpayers).
I worked at a tech startup in NYC that employed many local people in several different non-technical blue collar roles. They were some of the first to go when things weren't even over but sudden changes started occurring. Last time we ever saw the cleaning ladies was at a holiday party. All the developers still had jobs (me included) but the other team yeah we are moving what they do to another state. Ok now switch everything to mongodb and we have to decentralize our API because it's gotta run over there.
Unprecedented fad layoffs are having downstream implications on the job market, my experience was almost 8yrs ago. Yes most of the developers will be fine but the people that are on the margins will suffer first.
> The only alternative to having layoffs be a fact of life and business is for companies to provide “jobs for life”
What I want is less "thank you for your sacrifice" and more "this happened on my watch. I made a bad call. I am doing X so that the remaining hardworking people can continue the mission with/without me"
Was it just a bad luck / market forces, or was it an unplanned / risky bet?
That to me determines with/without. Sunshine cures all.
Let’s suppose CEOs would all sign onto such a pledge, that all RIFs would clean out the whole C-suite, or CEO, whatever. Do you think it might also dramatically limit the upside, though, if a CEO knew they could only hire enough staff that they could only wait to shrink by attrition if a bet didn’t pan out.
I guess I see the role of a CEO as making bets. I’m not saying necessarily “risky bets” but if you have to guarantee never having a layoff, I think you’ll be very conservative. There are businesses that work sort of like that (It’s a little funny that we are discussing Sony, because if I understand correctly traditional Japanese business culture was a lot like that).
If someone wants pretty-much guaranteed steady work at the trade off of not a great deal of growth potential or possible equity, I’d recommend they don’t work in tech. Government work, utilities, etc. are far better suited for that kind of risk/reward preference.