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Comment by DougMerritt | Hacker News Reader

To extend that, if a CEO bucks a trend like that, and then the company's profits appear to suffer as a result, then stockholders will be unhappy, and the CEO may lose their bonus, or worse.

Just to point out that there are often personal implications for the powers that be, if the stockholders feel that mistakes were made.

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I hear arguments like this on HN all the time. This seems similar if not the same as, "CXO has a fiduciary duty to <do something terrible>".

How often do execs actually get punished for _not_ doing something terrible? I never seem to hear about cases where they are held responsible for not following fiduciary duty. I only seem to hear it brought up as a justification for shitty behavior.

I'm not trying to say it doesn't happen. I'm genuinely curious.

How would you know what people didn’t do? Seems hard to measure.

I don't know how often that happens.

But anyway in my case I didn't say it was their duty, I was talking basically about the psychology.

From this angle, it's about whether they think that shareholders will/might think they made a mistake, not about whether they actually made the best judgement for the company.

I have no doubt that at least some CEOs will absolutely choose to do something that they privately believe is not optimal for the company, when they think shareholders will see things differently.

The converse of this is seen when a politician does something out of principle that they know will get them in trouble with voters. We have plenty of evidence that that happens -- and that it's on the rare side.

Layoffs aren't something terrible. They're part of business.

Sure it's not ideal but it does happen.

I don't get why people react emotionally to it as though the company is question is evil.

Being layoff is a terrible experience and is one of the most stressful times in your life

One study found that being laid off ranked seventh among the most stressful life experiences — above divorce, a sudden and serious impairment of hearing or vision, or the death of a close friend. Experts advise that it takes, on average, two years to recover from the psychological trauma of losing a job.

For healthy employees without pre-existing health conditions, the odds of developing a new health condition rise by 83% in the first 15 to 18 months after a layoff, with the most common conditions being stress-related illnesses, including hypertension, heart disease, and arthritis. The psychological and financial pressure of being laid off can increase the risk of suicide by 1.3 to 3 times. Displaced workers have twice the risk of developing depression, four times the risk of substance abuse, and six times the risk of committing violent acts including partner and child abuse. The stress induced by a layoff can even impair fetal development.

10 years ago I was put at risk of redundancy with the rest of my team. I was ultimately fortunate to keep my job and was told later I was never at risk, they just had to include the whole team for some HR reason. However due to the stress at the time both my mental health and physical health (IBS) hasn't been the same since.

In general sure. In specific they are terrible. En masse they are even worse. Not only did someone lose their job, there are now an additional 199,999 other people competing for the jobs that are still out there.

They are terrible for everyone involved.

- Terrible for those who lose their jobs and lifelihood - Terrible for those who in the process lose their visa/life they know - Terrible for those remaining as they are anxious to be next - Terrible for the company as the best people will now look for a job elsewhere (before the axe hits them) - Terrible for the company as anxiety leads to less effective employees

Execs don't get punished at all because of the collusion between boards of directors and executives. This collusion comes into being because both directors and execs belong to the same class. This is not the case with others (the relationship between execs and middle mgmt, between middle mgmt and worker bees).

Thanks to the dominance of mega index funds and pension funds, there is no way to rein in on boards of directors. Activist investors can control a bit. Remember the fight between Carly Florina and her hand-picked board on one hand and Walter Hewlett on the other hand about HP and Compaq merger.

We'll see if that happens to Apple. But to be fair to your point, they're so often an exception to trends that they're the perpetual outlier.

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