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Comment by mk89 | Hacker News Reader

Profit, short term thinking, incompetence. This triplet is so common that seems to be part of a major study that lots of execs have properly mastered.

Is there anywhere some study/statistics that shows the impact of those 3 elements together? Because I am quite sure it's extremely common, or I just stumble upon such cases really frequently....

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Why should they worry about it? CxO are rarely held accountable for their missteps by the board.

Maybe this time it didn't go out unnoticed because someone actually tried to use their website and got pissed off it didn't work

> CxO are rarely held accountable for their missteps by the board.

Why is that?

Because the company that decides to punish their CxO will have a hard time finding one. People job hunting at that level want a guaranteed golden parachute, whether things go well or not. And the board agrees to pick one of these guys up because that person will implement all the shitty decisions while leaving the board with clean hands. Everybody (who's high enough) wins because they all get their paychecks and bonuses by the time the cookie crumbles. And when it does you can blame the "dead guy", the same CxO that already took off with the golden parachute and is off to another company to do the same thing.

I know a few of these people, moving around in similar positions in every company. They are brought in as hatchet men, with full knowledge that it will be a fiasco. But before this becomes obvious everybody gets to tout cost savings, optimizations, etc. to get their bonuses. Then the person is paid handsomely to leave and take all the blame with them. Their LinkedIn profiles are chock full of 12-24 month stints at all kinds of companies with "successful" projects... until you ask someone involved with those projects.

I think that people who leave when the CEO is replaced are looked down upon for that. However, I think it's a reasonable fear due to this.

We should name and shame those who do that. It's a short term success for long term damage. (It's going to take a long time for Hertz to recover from this, and I can't imagine their lawsuit is going to be too successful [they still need a new site])

For me generally, it's execs that come from Cisco or GE tend to do this kind of thing.

He was eventually pushed out, last summer. But it's not like he had to give his $7 million back.

What's that like? 3 managers and 12 developers/analysts?

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