by Outcast_Searcher » Wed 01 Sep 2010, 21:05:35
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', 'W')ell why it does make perfect sense. CEOs, in general, get paid according to the performance of the company that they are CEOing. Contrary to the popular belief, there are a lot , a lot of people hired in a private sector that do nothing, just like their colleagues in the governmental sector. And the bigger the company the more human ballast they have. So obviously the company will perform better once they are gone, hence bonuses.
That's how it SHOULD work. Lately that relationship seems sadly random for CEO's. Example: huge golden parachutes for being fired when the company performs badly and the stock tanks. (Big reward for success -- downside should be big risk for failure and they should get NO bonus OR salary when they royally screw up, IMO).
Also, I suspect some of this is that companies that want to lay off a lot of folks may hire a "hit man" CEO to take all the blame (credit), and get paid a huge salary/bonus for doing the dirty work.
IBM's Louis Gerstner comes to mind. As an IBMer, overall, I didn't have too big a problem with that, as during Gerstner's tenure, at least (generally) the least productive folks were those tending to get cut. (After that they just started cutting everywhere by quotas, even folks who were performaning well in areas with too much work). He was essentially ending a long period of corporate culture, where IBM would just carry under/non performers in the name of "respect for the individual".
What really fried my gizzard was when he left IBM, Gerstner then wrote a book where he took ALL the credit for IBM's progress during his tenure. Yes, the 300,000+ folks building software/machines (often working every night/weekend for no extra pay) had NOTHING to do with that -- it was all Gerstner.

He should have just kept his big bonus and kept his egotistical trap shut, IMO.
edit - finger check in egotistical.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.