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Comment by bgribble | Hacker News Reader

> “I got this wrong and I take responsibility for that,”

This has always bugged me. Yes I get it you don’t want to put it in some passive-voiced “mistakes were made” kind of thing. But what does it mean to “take responsibility” if there are no consequences?

It would be meaningful if the “take responsibility” statement was followed up with “and I’m submitting my resignation effective immediately.” But “I take full responsibility… and y’all are fired” is just a way to get the good feels of “owning it” without actually owning it.

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Not the only one but it is a highly bogus catchphrase: https://www.itakefullresponsibility.fyi/

"I take responsibility" is a coded way of saying "the discussion is over".

This is a very old management trick to avoid further arguments and discussion. You wanna avoid telling someone they're incompetent? Just say "it was my mistake to have hired you, we weren't ready to have someone in your position". You wanna rescind a job offer because you got cold feet? Just say "our HR made a mistake, and this offer shouldn't have been made". It also means you're not willing to work together to solve the problem.

The reason for those mass-layoffs are not "mistakes" by founders, and they're happening at the same time for a specific reason: to put employees collectively at a disadvantage in terms of salary and negotiations. They successfully shifted the discussion from this to "Why are they taking responsibility without any consequence?".

I interpret the term as "I have to have a lot of inconvenient conversations with the board and large shareholders about this".

> The reason for those mass-layoffs are not "mistakes" by founders, and they're happening at the same time for a specific reason: to put employees collectively at a disadvantage in terms of salary and negotiations.

See, I think they're all happening at the same time because these companies are publicly traded, so executives are primarily concerned about shoring up the stock price ahead of an expected recession.

There’s plenty of mismanagement and failing up that goes on at the expense of the workers, but the rationale is like this:

In the general case, from the company perspective, the layoffs have to happen to keep the company healthy. Regardless why it has reached this point.

When it comes to the CEO, they are admitting fault to the board, but the board is choosing to retain them, perhaps feeling the incumbent CEO may be best situated to right the company.

My assumption is that the consequences come when it happens a second time and the board says “enough, you’re finished”

This is a good summary. We don’t fire workers just because they made a mistake. It’s not even really a moral stance, it’s that turnover has overhead and risks that have to be justified, and those are particularly for a CEO.

It might feel like vindication for a CEO to be fired due to the necessity of layoffs, but on the other hand a CEO who did not overhire to maximize growth in the boom times could just as likely be fired by the board for failure to capitalize on the bull market.

We don't fire workers just because they made a mistake. But we also don't offer those workers $20,000,000 compensation packages because company performance hinges so critically on incentivizing these rare few individuals who are capable of... coasting with the tide along with everyone else?

Not sure where coasting comes in. Hiring during the boom and laying off during the downturn may be exactly what shareholders want. It's up to the board to decide how the CEO is performing. This is incredibly hard to evaluate, but it's clear that CEO choice matters, thus the market rate has ticked up for CEO salaries.

We may find it morally abhorrent, but it's important to understand what's going on. The business world does not start from the axiom that layoffs are always the result of management failure.

> The business world does not start from the axiom that layoffs are always the result of management failure.

So a CEO "taking full responsibility" is what, a claim of success?

No, it's just a platitude. The true assessment is not a binary proposition though, and it's not going to come out directly in a memo or PR, you have to read between the lines a bit. Consider the difference between John Foley and Andy Jassy's performance.

As soon as someone takes the mantle of CEO, they become politician first and leader second.

> My assumption is that the consequences come when it happens a second time and the board says “enough, you’re finished”

This is precisely why many boards are rigged with yes-people. It provides the illusion of accountability.

The cliche response to that is "why would you want to let someone go in the moment that he's learned this valuable lesson?". The "learnings" they discuss in their "retro" are always very specific, they're never that "you suck as a CEO and shouldn't lead a company because you have no clue what you're doing".

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