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Comment by dubcanada | Hacker News Reader

You seem to assume a good CEO equals a successful company, and a good CEO also needs to have industry experience.

I don't know if either of those are actually true, there are plenty of good CEOs who came from zero experience in the industry. And plenty of bad CEOs who came from plenty of experience in the industry. Both of these run successful and not successful companies.

For example the currently Boeing CEO does not have experience in airplanes, came from a business background. And is considered a bad CEO by the average person (though considered a good CEO by stockholders, or at least was before the past few months).

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>You seem to assume a good CEO equals a successful company

the only assumption i see is the counter to that - a bad CEO equals an unsuccessful company. and i don't think that's a very controversial assumption.

> And the new CEO (David Limp) used to be in charge of Kindles.

Seems to imply there is an issue with a CEO of a space company previously working on Kindles.

> Bezos had the former Honeywell CEO in charge of Blue Origin, which to me was such an odd choice

Also seems to imply the CEO is bad because their previously only worked at Honeywell on thermostats.

In my mind none of the above has anything to do with how good or bad a CEO is. Perhaps I am misreading it. In which case ignore me.

All things being equal, you'd want a CEO who understands the business, either by coming up through the ranks or a long career at another company in the same business.

Which is basically Gwynne Shotwell, if I read her bio correctly.

Honeywell is also an aerospace company:

https://aerospace.honeywell.com/

A bad CEO can look great on paper and in the stock price. The product however will likely not keep pace, charging more for a product providing less value.

Long term value, employee satisfaction, and customer satisfaction are all intertwined. New management is more likely than not to harm at least one of those 3 .

I reject the notion that a good manager can manage anything.

I also reject the financialization of modern companies where we put accountants in charge who aren't subject-matter experts whose only playbook is to cut costs and jack up prices.

It's exactly what's wrong with Boeing today.

Obligatory Steve Jobs quotes on "idea people" [1] and Xerox [2].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qdplq4cj76I

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlBjNmXvqIM&t=2s

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