CEOs dont do work, they bear responsibility.
AI cannot bear responsibility, so who is going to take a blame if AI does a very bad job?
AI cannot bear responsibility, so who is going to take a blame if AI does a very bad job?
When the AI screws up - the Board will loudly blame it, then watch as the SecTeam installs a new AI CEO.
CEOs are consequence avoidance machines.
And just to be clear: I don't think we should be considering paying yourself an obscenely high exit bonus after you fucked up as "bearing responsibility".
Same way no good FAANG engineer would sign up without good pay package like base+RSU+bonus - same way no good CEO would sign up for a high risk CEO job without golden parachute.
Because it could well be their last job if they fail. or last good CEO job.
Imagine having only one shot at working as Engineer and without ability to jump ship because all your actions are public and you are associated with your company success
This doesn't make sense
The golden parachute means that these jobs are not "high risk" at all
Oh no you got fired and wound up with a severance package that is big enough that it could set you up for life and you can retire right now? The horror!
That's not risk. Someone working a minimum wage job living paycheque to paycheque is taking more risk when they take a sick day than any CEO with a golden parachute contract ever takes in their whole life
If you want to hire CEO, that means your company is in trouble and desperately need good steward. You want to hire strong CEO, but he is taking a risk that he demands to be compensated for in case you change your mind want to change CEO again.
with engineers - risk is smaller, plenty of engineers just jump ship to another company (and many even get a pay bump) after failing at current job. Thats why severance is smaller than CEO
CEO may get $20 min as severance, but would potentially lose hundreds of mils had he not taken this job, and instead pursued another job that lasted for longer
Same situations with politicians and police forces, they create a club whereby all members are unduly supported.
Two of the companies I've worked for have had their CEOs fired/replaced for poor performance.
One of them was also mismanaging finances and spending for his own gain. It became common knowledge in the local investor community. He was never able to return to being a CEO again, except for some unknown company in Europe where he was briefly a remote CEO.
If you want more public examples: Sam Bankman-Fried, Elizabeth Holmes, etc. are literally in jail. Many public companies also ditch their CEOs publicly, and most don't recover to the same career level. You just don't hear about those stories much because they don't generate rage-clicks the same way another dozen articles about Jeff Bezos or Sam Altman will.
Ah. Like employees.
Didn't seem to be a question any AI proponent asked when they said that AI can do the job of a lawyer. Not that I disagree with you.
sounds like a gamble
As opposed to sometimes deliberately leading companies to failure by mortgaging the company's future so they can maximize short term profits, including their bonuses, then leaving before it all bursts into flame?
if the company has failed after squeezing short-term profits, there could be a chance that failure was inevitable, and CEO just salvaged and cashed out what was possible and left debtors/employees/suppliers on the hook, while shareholders (CEOs boss) got paid in $$$
It takes a very convoluted definition of "work" to be able to say that CEOs aren't doing any work.
Being a CEO (a real one of a real company of more than a few people that has real customers) is a huge amount of work.
Namely, lay off an bunch of employees then talk about "difficult headwinds" or some such thing?