No I think for the last 10-15 years, ivy types could legitimately just raise series A type money, run a company like shit, but capital was a moat and so ended up as CEOs.
This is actually how the world works
This is actually how the world works
The level to which our algorithmic feeds have made us so confidently wrong about things is so deeply problematic. Tech's original sin keeps biting us back. This rampant cynicism and nihilism borne from constant bombardment of headlines has us acting like we know the personal stories of all leadership all around the world, and it's deeply damaging to our trust in the system.
Plenty of Ivy League leaders quietly working away at their job, doing the best they can with great results and no one to write about them and you'll never hear about it anywhere. This is obvious to anyone on a second thought, but the first reactionary thought is what's acted on...always.
I'm much more a descriptivist than prescriptivist so if there's a pattern among people I'm inclined to think it's a true issue instead of people just thinking "wrong" en-masse
No it is not. The feed is optimized for what will increase the intensity of feelings, and bad feelings are more easily optimized than good. Meta (patient zero for this nonsense) has pretty much said so, multiple times.
" more a result of the environment than algorithms"
What environment? People are sitting on their algorithms for 100x more time than any physical environment.
The one seeing themselves or co-workers laid off while companies report record earnings.
The ones seeing a CEO tank a company then move on to the next company next week with a huge pay package.
The one seeing their little sibling or kid graduate with honors and multiple internships, and having the complete inability to get a job in their field.
Do I need to explain more? Media reflects reality at the end of the day. You acn talk about doomscrolling, but part of it only works because exaggeration always starts by exploiting some truth you've seen first hand.
Meanwhile, you could spend years grinding for nothing without the above information
Ivy types have a poor history of figuring out which is which in advance though.
Leaders should be paid for outcomes not activities.
If you pay by success of the company, noone is going to want to do a 5 year corporate turnaround.
How can you tell if a company is good? Because trillions of dollars are spent by banks, private equity, hedge funds, and others truing to figure out if a company is "good."
> By that measure, you might as well save yourself the executive compensation and potential for disaster by just not having a CEO at all
Sure, but somebody is still making the decisions the CEO would have otherwise made. Maybe it's a good thing that the power isn't concentrated in one person; I'd be open to that. But you now have to trust that each department head is making good decisions. That's fine if they were already making good decisions, hit it's disastrous if they weren't.
Which helps explain the "need" for CEOs to meddle.
There is a lot of evidence that corporate mergers destroy value.
What if... they were disintermediated by markets instead of being one company?
There are tons of reasons why companies exist (the whole Theory of the Firm line of research), but the information asymmetry barriers are constantly coming down.
We know what good looks like in financial results and reputation. It's really not that complicated.
The rest of that bullshit isn't about evaluating a working company, it's about gamblers gambling on non-companies before they become real companies.
Blockbuster was good until it wasn't. Sears was good until it wasn't. Barnes and Noble was good, then it fell apart, and now it's good again. The lesson to learn is that by the time your financials say things are taking a turn, you're a year to multiple years late to start fixing the problem.
Except that's not what we were discussing.
Any company that is thrashing around, constantly changing priorities, executive turnover, lots of layoffs is obviously being poorly run, yet this is typically exactly what happens when a new CEO is bought in to fix whatever was ailing before: the almost inevitable new-CEO plan: fire executives, bring in past cronies, have a few layoffs (because he's a tough guy, making those tough decisions), and change company priorities. Rinse and repeat - in a few years there'll be a new CEO coming in and doing the same again.
It's an extreme abuse of power, especially since workers are the sole reason why a company is able to succeed or not and they don't get the same privileges as a board + executive.
Not too mention most corporations + startups are setup to encourage the worse forms of human collaboration (dictatorships + centrally planned economies).
You think he can raise a huge round and just decide to pay himself $20m a year?
Capital is not a moat. There are entire industries (VC, PE, Banks, etc) that are looking to write checks. Nothing would make them happier than to give you money, under the condition that there is significant upside (more VC) or assets (PE, Banks) and you commit to doing the hard work for very little pay.
This is actually how the world works.
there is alot of beta involved, i.e. put 10M into payroll startup xyz, expect some rate of return.
From the vast amount of VC money going around, nearly half a trillion expected in 2026, not including other forms of funding, it's safe to say that there is a lot of capital for people that can execute.
I don't see how you can translate money to product/startup success. You think there's some magic lever you can press to get people to use your product? Selling $10 for $5 and building a market like that is rare (moviepass) but even that is incredibly difficult. Advertising is very inefficient and sales is hard.
They are not dumb, just incompetent in the domains where they invest the money. And surrounded by yes-men because they are the ones writing the checks.