One wonders. If they did a search of the Seattle metropolitan area, how many candidates would they find that would have the chops to do, just as good, if not a better job than this one CEO?

I understand why you cannot just pick a random person to be a CEO. But in theory, there are probably many people who have the leadership skills and industry insight to be really good CEOs of Starbucks, and probably for a much cheaper compensation package. It's just the bureaucracy of having to somehow justify the selection of a CEO to the board, forces the company to select from a tiny pool of CEOs many of them with a checkered record. One of the many ridiculous things that we do as a society.