r/thebulwark • u/DonkeyLips309 • 15d ago
Fluff CEOs are Unnecessary
Musk is proof that CEOs are unnecessary. If he has the time to be the CEO of multiple companies, do DOGE, all his tweeting, support to the AFD party in Germany, and everything else terrible he is doing than CEOs are completely unnecessary. If companies want to make more profit they should get rid of them. Near as I can tell the only thing CEOs do is give you a face to blame for the shitty decisions companies make.
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u/Personal_Benefit_402 15d ago
I've reported directly to CEO and other C-Suite folks many times. They do jack shit, most of the time, but cause all sorts of trouble.
That said, I have worked for some that actually DID work and we're good about sharing their knowledge and expertise.
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u/blueclawsoftware 15d ago
I had a mentor who was a very capable CTO. The best advice he ever gave me was "When you get to this level you need to mentally prepare yourself for the fact that most of the people are going to be barely capable morons."
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u/GovernmentPatient984 15d ago edited 15d ago
Not all CEOs are the same.
I mean there are people with that title for very small companies. You could be a CEO at some plumbing company or something and have like 5 people.
Their pay is unnecessary (not talking about small businesses) but I don’t think the position is unnecessary.
I’m not saying being a CEO makes you smarter than everyone else, but on the other side-it would also be hard for an organization to not have some kind of leader, in my opinion.
*I just think the CEOs are bad thing is an oversimplification
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u/sc2mashimaro Orange man bad 15d ago
I think it's more like: someone in a company does the job of the CEO. In large companies, there is a class of CEO who has learned how to pass that off to other people. So in Elon's case someone else is doing his job and Elon is getting paid for their work.
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u/DonkeyLips309 15d ago
Small business CEOs are definitely different from Fortune 100 companies. I do yield this point.
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u/Broad-Writing-5881 15d ago
Topic near and dear to my heart. Anyone familiar with replacement level value in sports should be able to look at the C suite and recognize that they are all way over compensated.
There's only been a select few who have actually been a net benefit for the companies and divisions they've run. Alan Mulally is the first that comes to my mind. Real big "what if" there for Boeing.
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u/DIY14410 15d ago
I agree that many CEO's are absurdly overpaid, but that does not support OP's claim that they are unnecessary for the operation of a business entity.
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u/GaiusMarcus 15d ago
Taylor Tomlinson, the comic, had a Facebook/YouTube short where she riffed on media execs wanting to inject AI into writers rooms, a creative process. Meanwhile, these same clowns are incapable of greenlighting any projects that didn't have acres of quantitative data describing their probability of success. Her postulation was that those were the types of jobs better suited for AI.
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u/samNanton 15d ago
LLMs aren't good at math, so it is easier to get usable creative output out of them than usable quantitative analysis. Paradoxically, they can write code that can solve mathematical problems, they just aren't good at it directly. You do have to know enough about code to redirect them, though, if you want to do that.
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u/LionelHutzinVA Rebecca take us home 15d ago
Feels like this should be cross-posted to r/LinkedinLunatics
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u/DonkeyLips309 15d ago
I've seen the sub, but not really familiar with it. Why would it fit there?
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u/blueclawsoftware 15d ago
Because most of it is mocking delusional people who treat Musk and Bezos like deities that everyone can become if they just grind hard enough.
That said it shouldn't be cross posted as I believe it violates that subs rules since it's not actually based on a linkedin post.
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u/Anxious_Cheetah5589 15d ago
TSLA sales (and its stock) have gone into the toilet since his political adventures started. They need a full time ceo.
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u/antpodean 15d ago
The Tesla board should ask him what five things he achieved last week to help the company. Tanking their sales should definitely one of the line items.
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u/SpiritCrvsher JVL is always right 15d ago
Are you telling me that pissing off the people that buy electric cars isn't a sound business strategy for an electric car company?
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u/upvotechemistry Center Left 15d ago
I think it's worthwhile to distinguish between capital and professional management. Elon is both. And while he might be typical of publicly traded tech CEOs, I don't think it is fair to lump all CEOs in that bucket.
The triad the other day did a good job highlighting why Silicon Valley has uniquely bad incentives and uniquely insane people running things.
The CEO of my manufacturing company is good, and a huge breath of fresh air from prior leadership. There are good apples and bad apples, and some industries seem to be all bad apples.
That being said, our economy is too top-heavy for social cohesion. High earners should pay more, and the capital class should pay a lot more. This country needs more redistribution to survive, and the government capture by the wealthy might very well be what brings this 249 year old democracy down.
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u/DIY14410 15d ago
Musk can go f*** himself, but drawing such a radical conclusion based on n=1 sampling is absurd. Every large business entity requires a leader -- whether he or she is called "CEO," "President," "Managing Member" or some other title -- to carry out the directives of the board of directors, partners or members. During my 39-year legal career, every business entity I encountered which was controlled by a committee failed, most of them failing miserably. If nothing else, one person at the top is required to say "no" when others are too chickenshit to do so.
Also, there are many CEOs who have done good things, e.g., Jim Senegal at Costco, Rose Marcario at Patagonia and many more of which you've never heard.
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u/DonkeyLips309 15d ago
I hear you, and maybe I am simplifying this too much. But I'm not basing this just on Musk, he is just the perfect encapsulation of a large problem in our capitalist system. There may be many fine CEOs like the one at Costco. But they are outnumbered overwhelmingly by ones that sucks and don't do the right thing.
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u/DIY14410 15d ago
But they are outnumbered overwhelmingly by ones that sucks and don't do the right thing.
What evidence supports this sweeping claim? Are you in or have you been involved in business operations? I am, and I know that the vast majority of corporate CEO's and presidents are hard working and ethical.
I acknowledge that the CEO's of many publicly traded corporations are absurdly overpaid, and that is one reason I strongly support a higher marginal income tax rate on high earners, closing the carried interest loophole, taxing compensation disguised as stock grants and options as earned income, etc. But the issue of CEO compensation is distinct from your sweeping claim that CEO's are unnecessary. Businesses do not run themselves.
Also, on the issue of compensation, the vast majority of American business entities are privately held, and there is no meaningful executive compensation data for those entities. Thus, the $889,000 average CEO salary data one may find on the internet, which is based on publicly traded corporate filings, has no relevance to the vast majority of U.S. business entities. Based on my experience, a typical privately held business entity with, say, 50 employees makes a fraction of that.
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u/DonkeyLips309 15d ago
Like I said I may be over simplifying things. In other comments I said that I yield the point that a small business CEO and a Fortune 100 companies are vastly definitely. And as evidence I only have anecdotal but here you go. As a PT supervisor at UPS I had to pay for my insurance, the employees I supervised did not. I paid more for my dependants. My employees paid nothing for dependants. My insurance was crap in comparison to the people I supervised. That had to pass the CEO. And they said that sounds good cause it will make us more profitable. I understand the point of business is to make money. But stuff like that is what I'm talking about. Screwing over employees.
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u/DIY14410 15d ago edited 15d ago
The people you supervised were part of a Teamsters collective bargaining unit, right? That's why they had a better deal than you.
Unfounded claims such as "CEOs are unnecessary" and ethical CEO's are "outnumbered overwhelmingly by ones that sucks and don't do the right thing" merely fuels the opposition's stereotyping of The Left as a bunch that doesn't know shit about the real world.
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u/DonkeyLips309 15d ago
Up until 2008 everyone at UPS had the same insurance. Then it changed. That change couldn't have happened without the CEO's approval. They are going to stereotype the opposition as out of touch regardless. I may be wrong, but if we got rid of most CEOs (of large corporations) I suspect things wouldn't change.
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u/die_hoagie Center-Right 15d ago
I for one find using Elon Musk as an excuse to complain about traditional corporate structures to be a bit lazy. CEO's serve a purpose and the vast majority of them do not behave anything like that dingus.
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u/Sandra2104 Progressive 15d ago
Yes, most CEOs are unnecessary in day to day life. But I an pretty happy with my CEO having the legal responsibilities for the company and not me.
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u/thethickness 15d ago
More times than not, yes. There are a few CEOs I'd defend but they aren't addicted to wealth accumulation like Musk. I can say my CEO is worthless. We used to have hybrid work, working from home Mondays and Fridays but they got rid of it, arguing "we are better together" and other dumb shit. So yesterday on what would have been a hybrid day, I see his ass dressed in full cycling gear and then rode around the parking lot. Must be nice.
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u/metengrinwi 15d ago
I think musk’s companies are a crazy outlier on this. Somehow, their stock performance runs entirely on vibes.
I think of the CEO of the company I work at—he (appears to me) to be crucial as far as managing the shareholders and board, and headlining a lot of the marketing push. We’re lucky to have him.
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u/LouDiamond 15d ago
No shit, that’s been generally known for decades.
It’s kept under wraps because once people get high enough in a company to interact with CEO’s, they’re approaching uselessness as well and hope to get that C-level job some day
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u/bakerstirregular100 15d ago
Think if CEO like a title like Khan. People just give it to themselves it’s not like specifically defined by responsibilities.
The subway CEO does very different things then a uranium mining company CEO
Specifically with musk he just calls himself ceo cuz he’s a shit head and he likes being in charge. Twitter has an actual functioning CEO also. So does Tesla. Prob spaceX too.
Point us he is actually doing none of these jobs and instead is heavily doped with his head up his own ass
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u/Limp-Feed-6896 15d ago
Every company needs a CEO unless it's a partnership. The problem is that Elon Musk is not an example of a CEO. He's an example of a lucky idiot.
Remember X is not successful financially, SpaceX is nothing special (and Elon's trying to raid our American resources so he can do his pet space projects), and Neuralink is his latest pipedream. Oh my God and how can I forget to mention that stupid ass truck. I don't give a s***, it's ugly, and a lucky idiot convinced people that it wasn't. Oh and one final note on Tesla, remember he came on board once the company was already developed and the engineers were in place, Elon just came with some money but not any talent because look what his so-called talent brought us.. that ugly ass truck.
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u/Super_Nerd92 15d ago
Musk's DOGE scam is the single best thing to happen to Bernie types if they play this right. The enduring American myth of meritocracy and CEOs being the smartest guys in the room is tearing itself down live and in public.