[tombert]

Yeah, I really do not understand why these executives get such huge salaries. They get all the credit when something goes well (see: Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, probably a dozen other CEOs in big tech), but when their decisions lead to a drop in revenue they get to fire 12,000 people, get to keep their exorbitant salaries and/or stock options, and just blame everyone else for the problem, or blame a "bad market".

I really do not understand what it is that they actually do, outside of being an extremely overpriced and lazy spokesperson.

[rybosworld]

At that level it's often just a big club that you don't get to be a part of because you don't have the right connections.

Many CEO's (and execs in general) are not extraordinary people in any sense of the word.

I think people underestimate just how often a business leader gets to where they are because of nepotism. Many of the biggest companies in the world operate like a royal dynasty, with children inheriting the leading roles from parents.

When you consider that decision making is often inherited, rather than earned, these displays of incompetence make much more sense.

[tombert]

It wouldn't bother me so much if not for the fact that they get lauded as geniuses for every innovation coming out of their companies.

I've seen dozens of people on LinkedIn claiming that Elon Musk invented self-landing rockets, and they get mad at me when respond with "no he fucking didn't! He hired people to figure that stuff out".

So I think "Fine, I guess you could make some kind of transitive argument that he hired the right people so he's responsible for the self-landing rocket", but in the same breath they will claim he's not responsible for any of the failures involved with his handling Twitter.

Well which is it? Is this executive some genius pulling all the strings of the company and should be given credit for all the innovations? Or are they just idiots like the rest of us and like to take credit for when things go well?

[PoignardAzur]

Elon Musk is kind of a special case, and shouldn't used as a representative example of the class "CEOs".

Most CEOs don't micromanage to the level Musk does, most CEOs wouldn't have ran SpaceX the way Musk did, competent engineers or not. If all it took was hiring the right people, Blue Origin would have left them in the dust.

(That said, yes, he should definitely be considered responsible for the failures with Twitter)

[coldpie]

> Yeah, I really do not understand why these executives get such huge salaries.

Because they can. What do you have to fight back with? All you can do is bargain individually, and they'll laugh at that.

[Jochim]

> I really do not understand what it is that they actually do

Their main purpose is to occupy the same social circles as other executives and board members.