[notme77]

It's targeting what is easiest to automate. This happens to be mostly low skilled workers.

Software engineers constantly cannibalize their own jobs, but there are so many positions for software engineers available (or potentially available) that we (software engineers) don't feel the affects.

[mbrumlow]

Seems like CEOs could be replaced with a spread sheet. As far as I can tell most CEOs basically follow a spread sheet provided by the PE that owns the company. So I never knew why PE would ever seek to fire the 30k a year office manager, when they could fire the 7 figure CEO and half his management team -- if meetings need to be had, we can still have meetings rooms and all the spread sheets can show them self on the projectors -- automated and all.

[notme77]

The CEO is the CEO because he makes profitable decisions. You have to replace her with someone / something that makes at least equally good decisions.

[hakfoo]

From that perspective, the big question is if their decisions statistically more profitable than cheaper alternatives.

There are some companies on a very predictable path. You could replace Eddie Lampert or Johnny Ive with a D20 mapped to management tactics and get pretty much the same outcomes at least on a short to mid term.

Plenty of competent companies have enough self-contained knowledge that you could make good decisions simply by surveying the on-the-ground employees, weighting them in some way, and generating policy that way. One would hope a widget factory with a combined 200,000 man-years of widget industry experience would know more about the widget business than a drop-in CEO that had to look up what a widget was on Wikipedia before he made his introduction speech.

I suspect the real justification for the wildly overpaid C-suite is that you need someone to be a scapegoat for Wall Street's whims.

A local and autonomous team that knows their market and is competent is not going to sack half of their own to finance a stock buyback, but a $30 million a year stuffed suit can impose it from above.

[mbrumlow]

The vast majority of decisions that make or break companies are not done by the CEO. Or any of the C level people.

Most companies are like a train. The C level guys mostly report to the board where they think the train is going to be -- which is normally wag or ferry tail.

I know I am speaking in broad terms. There are companies out there where the CEO matters, but those are few and far .

[conanbatt]

It should target what is most valuable to automate. Thats normally how markets work.