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Comment by TheCapn | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, I fail to see what sacking a CEO has to do with a technologically negligent practice. Yes, their Canadian expansion was botched but it seems like there might just be bad media reporting trying to link everything back to their very public fuckup? Wouldn't the CIO be more liable for such faults as a massive data breach? I do see the small comments in the article regarding CIO upheaval but unless there was some evidence of the CEO actively undermining security in the information sector of the company is this just another case of chief officers canning the guy to save face?

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> Wouldn't the CIO be more liable for such faults as a massive data breach?

Two thoughts:

1. The outgoing CIO, Beth Jacobs, was also their Chief Content Officer. Given her background [1], and the fallout, I'd suggest she was hired for the content side of her job, not the traditional technology-centric CIO skill set. She was promoted in 2008, the same hear the now outgoing CEO came in. I didn't find a connection, but my guess is the CEO brought in the CIO. If so, he's responsible for the mis-hire.

2. Beyond that, I think we'll see more of this: CEOs wouldn't be able to pass the buck on poor technology decisions as easily as they might have 10 or 15 years ago.

[1] http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/05/business/la-fi-mo-ta...

That's one of the curious roles of CEO. If things go wrong, you resign. Helps the company draw a line under the incident and show that they are "moving on", even when it's complete nonsense.

A big part of the CEO's role is to manage investor confidence. Confidence in a company's vision, execution, and communication underwrites its equity value. Replacing a CEO who has lost the market's confidence is more than ceremonial.

Not, it's not ceremonial. But, I don't think anyone used that term, except you. The parent said it was nonsense, which is true.

Sure, it's part of the CEO's job to inspire confidence, but what's nonsense is that virtually any CEO would be responsible for any single tech-vulnerability down the line.

So, it may well be that investors expect that, which would mean that the nonsense is on their part. And, perhaps Target is simply responding to that nonsense, but it's still nonsense.

Said another way, it's not ceremonial if it matters. But, it is nonsense that it would matter.

I had assumed it was similar to the role of a plant manager: they are public responsible for the company. There are circumstances where, if a plant is found to be in breach of the law, the plant manager can be sent to jail as part of the punishment (I think often in relation to environmental regs and safety breaches - never seen it in person, though).

I don't think this fact is discussed much when people talk about excessive executive compensation. It's sort of like TV actors who negotiate tens of thousands of dollars per episode or sports stars who may not have more than a five year career.

Multinational corporations have adopted the CEO firing as a customary response to major scandal. It lets them publicly demonstrate that they're changing, while simply replacing the CEO with a near-equivalent.

There is a saying in the UK "Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss" (it's also a lyric in the Who song "Won't get fooled again").

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-12-02/

In this case?

The CEO might not be to blame for the breach but he is responsible.

Personally, I think it's good that the CEO has lost his job over this. It's the sort of incident (along with the cost of Sony's breach[1]) that can be used as a cautionary tale pour encourager les autres to take security seriously.

1: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/sonys-data-breach-costs-likely...

It seemed strange to me as well, especially in the face of their rapid rollout of chip-and-pin "Target" cards, announced only last week:

http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/30/technology/security/target-c...

Ever heard the phrase "the buck stops here"?

the CIO resigned in March

or the CISO

What CISO?

http://www.ianetsec.com/blogs/ians-perspective/target-proves...

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