[jm4]

Generally, you don’t want to punish people for making decisions. At least I don’t. I value people who are willing to try things and I generally believe any decision made in good faith is better than no decision. My litmus test is was it a reasonable decision given the information available at the time in service of a greater goal. I can live with the consequences of that. If it turns out to be a not so great decision then we can fix it. I’m not going to fire someone for the result when the process was sound.

That said, this application of AI was profoundly stupid from the outset. You don’t necessarily fire people for a bad result from a reasonable decision making process, but you do fire them for poor judgment and reasoning. There’s nothing that can fix that except for not letting those people make decisions anymore.

[asveikau]

Even from the selfish perspectives of these executives, it can be quite bad to isolate people from the consequences of bad decisions. It will prevent learning from mistakes, and lead to more bad decisions.

Which I guess is getting at another thing. The failure was predictable. People shouldn't be rewarded for failing to avoid obvious predictable failures. Maintaining their status quo could also be seen as rewarding them.

[toomuchtodo]

If you're unwilling to fall on your sword and face material consequences for decisions that cause quantifiable harm the people who work for you or your customers, you do not belong in a leadership position imho, but that isn't where we are today. The people making these decisions will face no consequences for the harm they cause. Its likely they continue to be employed and receive generous compensation.

Workers get fired when they are wrong at much smaller scale, why not these people? They are not special, they are simply lucky and connected.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42639566 ("Pharaoh must signal, to shareholders, to a board, and to their peers. There will be no consequences for failure to adhere to this proclamation.")

Salesforce will hire no more software engineers in 2025, says Marc Benioff - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42639417 - January 2025 (390 comments)

https://www.salesforce.com/company/careers/jobs/?search=soft... (724 results, as of this comment)

[jm4]

Not getting fired is not the same as isolation from consequences. People who make rational decisions and achieve results get opportunities to make more impactful decisions. People who don't get results don't get more opportunities - or maybe find themselves in a situation where the scope of their decisions (and blast radius) is limited. Firing is for misconduct or when someone has no value to offer. It's more of a spectrum than a binary thing.

I can't speak for how these particular executives were handled. I've never worked at a place where people were quickly fired for mistakes unless it was something extreme. It's usually based on track record rather than a single thing. Most employers understand that if they fired people for making mistakes they would run out of employees very fast. On the other hand, someone who learns from a mistake probably isn't going to do it again so you may have a better employee than a hypothetical replacement. It's also generally understood that people with a large scope of responsibilities have a large blast radius when things don't work out. It just comes with the territory and it's not exclusive to the executive suite.

[asveikau]

> People who don't get results don't get more opportunities

This shows to me that you have a lot of faith in these companies that I can't share based on my own experiences.

My experience is more like: the defining characteristics of what gets you more opportunities is personal attachment to the boss. They like you? You get more. The whole performance review culture, as an example, is based around phony justifications around this. They get to re-define what "getting results" means to favor buddies. This is the only determining factor, period, and people come across to me as absurdly foolish when they believe something else.

[jm4]

I don't have faith in these companies. I don't know how they operate. I know how I operate.

[superxpro12]

We only need to look at the consequences (or lack thereof) from the 2008 financial crisis to understand that there will be no consequences for the corporate class.

[alpha_squared]

While I agree that you don't want to punish people for making bad decisions, I do think there should be a carveout for when those decisions impact people's lives.

[Forgeties79]

Yeah they didn’t like… migrate them to bad software they had to undo or something. They laid off hundreds of people due to overhyped products/trend chasing.

[jm4]

Lots of decisions impact lives. Some are literally life and death decisions. Sometimes the best decision possible with the information available at the time is going to turn out badly. Or maybe a bad decision achieves a good result.

That's why I'm saying to separate the process from the result when determining consequences. Someone who consistently exercises good judgment and who makes well-reasoned, thoughtful decisions is likely to achieve good results more often than someone who doesn't. But, event then, some things just don't work out and it impacts people's lives.

I would absolutely fire those idiots at Ford though. There's nothing wrong with trying to leverage AI. Personally, I like AI tools and I rely on them daily. But if someone lacks the judgment to figure out when a job should be performed by a human then they shouldn't be able to make decisions about how to use AI. These people are clearly out of their depth and just faking it. Clown show.

[markus_zhang]

IMO that’s what used to be “accountability”, especially for decision makers.

[barkerja]

It's easy to take that stance in jest .. when it has no material impact on you. But if your life was uprooted by the decision of an executive because they made what was a "good faith" decision for the benefit of the shareholder, then I'd wager you may feel differently.

[jm4]

My life already was uprooted by those exact decisions... A couple times... The first guy fucked up so badly that every last one of us lost our jobs, including him. He was an unqualified moron who weaseled his way into a position where his bad decisions had major consequences. It was extremely frustrating. It happens. It will happen again. That's life.

[dominotw]

> Generally, you don’t want to punish people for making decisions.

riff-raff cogs get fired for making bad decisions all the time. also if not punished for making decisions. how do execs ever get punished because all they do is make decisions.

[mothballed]

Society is incredibly inconsistent on this point. If a CEO shit-cans 500 people who sacrificed future career prospects for the company and end up destitute, society say's that's capitalism and they need to learn to code in a month or something. If a stay at home wife gets "bored" and divorces her husband of 20 years, he commonly owes her a decade+ of alimony to "make up for the sacrifice and time to get on her feet" or some such.

As usual it's communism for the plebs and something entirely different for the capital wielding class.

[boplicity]

A job doesn't usually involve a lifetime contract. And if it does, the severance required had better be incredible.

Nobody should "sacrifice future career prospects" just for a job. And if they do, it's hard to blame the employer on this, especially considering the premise implies they had choice in the matter.

[mothballed]

I'm not sure how on earth you could consider marriage a lifetime contract when it's no-fault divorce at any second. The divorce process is at-will, though it takes some time to finalize.

[shwaj]

I don’t think society is a monolith. Many of those who support your proverbial alimony are also against CEOs acting with impunity.

[mothballed]

Sure, but the interest of "society" is what judges typically claim to represent when they bang that gavil.

If you wish to change it to "the law of society" which is what "society" backs with violence, go for it.

[buran77]

> As usual it's communism for the plebs and something entirely different for the capital wielding class.

Bad example. Ask Bezos how much he paid his wife after the divorce.

[mothballed]

It's a good point, the counterpoint is, he really only had to cushion the post-association lifestyle of one of thousands whom became dependent on his amazon business, a tiny fraction. A typical pleb will be held to cushion the lifestyle of nearly everyone who depends on their paycheck if someone decides to terminate the relationship (usually, their spouse and kids -- in USA this doesn't extend to elderly parents though it does in some other countries).