C-suites have always made bafflingly dumb choices about implementing new tech, but it does feel like executives are making those dumb choices at a much faster, more dangerous rates nowadays
Feels like C-suites are speed-running their own tenures at companies more now. More willing to 'burn the ships' for a few good years under them, make good coin, then peace out or bounce to the next thing.
Seems to be way less long-term planning/strategy.. which I have a few different thoughts on..
one more thing I’ll say is this also feels tied to the loss of consequences & loss of the importance of ‘reputation’.
Politics have devolved so much, & this is now impacting the corporate world. Anyone that faked caring about ethics for their reputation feels like that shit doesn’t matter anymore
lmao yes this too. But there used to be a world where some CEOs cared enough about pretending to care or pretending to be inspiring and ethical, et cetera
Also the CEOs 'talk' & this thread might land me on some List of Ire but whatever. If you're a CEO & GAF about others this doesn't apply to you
Maybe I'm cynical but it seems like CEO's have never taken ethics seriously. If a company is big enough to have a CEO, they are doing something unethical, usually screwing their employees.
Yeah. I do understand why people might feel this way. However, I *personally* feel uncomfortable w such blanket statements because I personally know at least one CEO that kind of challenges this.
I also try to avoid viewing any group as a monolith - even privileged?
I also think that a lot of this has become exacerbated w CEO salaries rising so -sharply- vs other employees. So the role is esp good at attracting more folks on the toxic side of things.
To take such a mismatched salary vs the folks that works for you requires a 'type'?
and last, these are my opinions only and I'll never judge yours re: the subject of CEOs. I'm of the opinion that people are allowed to feel however they feel about systems that are severely imbalanced because it impacts all of us differently :)
I appreciate your perspective. I feel like if CEO'S & C suite types were really interested in the opinions of the commoners there's a ton of stuff they could do to make life easier for us, but they don't. They just keep looking for ways to squeeze more blood from the stone.
My *sense* is that in the 50s and 60s, the idea of "civic duty" and that shareholders were not the only stakeholders that CEOs/boards cared about, So they didn't have the same incentives to be unethical. Do I have anything solid to back that up? Of course not.
This *was* true until ~1982 in America. That's when Reagan put Robert Fucking Bork on the bench.
Bork made case law that companies were only supposed to care about money, and couldn't get in trouble if they only cared about money.
But I know what you are referring to & your basically right. Laws & regulations constraining corporate conduct started being unwound by Reagan. Tons of stuff that is legal now used to be illegal, like stock buy backs.
How dare you! (jokes) but for real, we're all just spitballing here, really! I am no expert, I just have strong pattern recognition and have worked closely with some CEOS, been privy to some info from boards, closely observed others tangentially outside of my immediate social sphere et cet et cet
I think this sort of cynicism is common and part of the problem. If you are a CEO, a lot of people will always think you are definitionally "bad" no matter what you do, creating less incentive to behave ethically. Why bother?
I suppose it's easy to justify your bad acts when you are looking for justification. How dare people become cynical after a lifetime of witnessing the legalization of white collar crime.
They never took ethics seriously or were punished for screwing the employees (often the opposite), but my impression is that it used to be if you actually ran *the company* into the ground, you didn't get hired to run another one. Now it seems to be SOP (also applies to university presidents).
Like, the point was to make money for the company and shareholders, which meant corporate profits, not salaries to the C-suite while the company itself takes a massive loss.
yeah, this is one aspect I find especially 'interesting' about the loss or diminishing of consequences. This is one I did not think would be quite as.... reduced? diminished? as others? I'm slowly getting a migraine so losing words but... need to come back to this specific thought when better
Thinking a business has to reach a certain size to warrant a CEO discounts the opinion as well. Maybe being even mildly curious about basic corporate management structure should preface forming an opinion about the ethics of management.
dunno, doesn’t feel like anyone in this thread is ‘sore’. I know it can be hard to read tone on the net & we often therefore over compensate with emojis et cetera.. so the absence of those can feel stark (I often do struggle w this fwiw)
but this thread feels non-emotional & just ‘curious’ to me
That's when they could destroy their company by pissing off customers. Now they can act however they want and know the company is fine cuz it doesn't matter what customers think. Make businesses small enough to fear customers again. That's still huge btw eg Coke in the 80s but not invincible.
“Hypocrisy is the price vice pays to virtue”.
It’s better to live in a world where unethical people feel compelled to pretend to the contrary. Feels like we’re heading towards a low trust society.
