[pcurve]

When your compensation consists of $500,000 fixed salary with bonus of $2 mil - $5 million, naturally you're going obsess over Wall Street numbers.

I think executives should be penalized for layoffs, because with proper resource management, layoffs can be greatly minimized.

In fact, EPS increase through asset sales, layoffs, stock buyback should all count against their bonus figures.

[RexRollman]

Corporate executive greed is a cancer that no one seems willing to cure.

[mseebach]

> with proper resource management, layoffs can be greatly minimized.

This is a pretty bold assertion. We're not talking about a few jobs at the margin, eg. one report speaks of 25% of the hardware business.

[gaius]

No company hires just because. They have a plan and need people to execute it. If those people do their jobs well and still the company fails, then logically, you would keep the workers and replace the management. But it never seems to work like that.

[derefr]

Say that IBM had a plan that involved hiring 5000 pastry chefs. They did their jobs excellently, but it turned out that nobody wanted servers that baked doughnuts. Fire the management who came up with that stinker, or not, either way--but what good will come in keeping the 5000 pastry chefs?

[gaius]

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

[mpyne]

Still though... some way of tying the effects of management actions that harm workers to the compensation of management themselves would at least reduce the inherent moral hazard here.

But I'm not even sure the most "fair" way to do that... what if you bring in a new CEO right as the mismanagement of the last CEO finally blows up the balance sheet? Wouldn't seem fair to the new guy to make him pay for it.

[gaadd33]

Is IBM selling or otherwise closing 25% of their hardware business? If not, haven't the executives horribly failed at resource management to have 25% of the workforce underutilized for a long period of time with no efforts to actual utilize them?