CEO Departures Hit Record Levels (msn.com)
- Reference: 0177353187
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/05/06/1843232/ceo-departures-hit-record-levels
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/why-more-ceos-are-heading-for-the-exit/ar-AA1DXkZp
Public-company CEO departures reached 373 last year, [1]jumping 24% from 2023 levels . Among U.S. businesses with at least 25 employees, 2,221 chief executives left their positions in 2024, the highest number since Challenger began monitoring departures in 2002.
Corporate leaders are citing AI, tariffs, recession fears and scrutiny of diversity initiatives as key stressors driving the exodus. "It's a very difficult time to lead," said Blake Irving, former GoDaddy CEO. "Given all the weird gyrations going on in the economy and with our new administration, it's really hard for even great leaders to find a true north." The trend extends beyond the C-suite, with managers 1.7 times more likely to report high workplace stress than rank-and-file employees, according to a recent McLean & Co. survey of over 200,000 workers.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/why-more-ceos-are-heading-for-the-exit/ar-AA1DXkZp
There have been higher rates of CEO departures (Score:3)
the last few years, pretty consistently since 2019 with a small percentage dip in CEO departures in 2022. It's a continuing story and an interesting one. No one wants to be CEO if they think things are going to shit and they'll be to blame, even if they know they get a golden parachute out of it.
[1]https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/0... [cnbc.com]
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/07/2019-had-the-most-ceo-departures-on-record-with-more-than-1600.html
Re:There have been higher rates of CEO departures (Score:4, Insightful)
> No one wants to be CEO if they think things are going to shit and they'll be to blame
And there we hace the core of the problem. Real leaders would value a challenge like this and rise to the occasion. I guess CEOs are very rarely leaders these days.
Re: (Score:2)
"No one wants to be CEO if they think things are going to shit and they'll be to blame, even if they know they get a golden parachute out of it."
Bullshit. Virtually the entire world's population would want to be treated like a CEO for even a single day. Sociopaths who exploit workers and pocket obscene salaries and incentives also do not want those benefits to end or to be accountable, that is what you mean to say. There are boatloads of cretins who will exploit a company to get a golden parachute and al
Re: (Score:2)
I'm talking about people who would even be in the running to be a CEO at a large company
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Hence they are leaving. These guys are strategic thinkers. Right now they are thinking get out before the company contracts, let the next guy take the blame. In a few years i can come back and get another CEO gig via my connections after "having spent some time with my family" after all just look at the charts $CROP was wildy successful under my 'leadership'
The reality the world is changing right now in significant structural ways. What these guys are saying is "I don't have the smarts to anticipate and
Boards of Directors are at fault (Score:2, Flamebait)
If a significant number of CEOs are departing and cashing out golden parachutes, the boards that hired them are at fault for (a) selecting the wrong person and (b) improperly incentivizing them.
Of course, no BoD can hold a card to the set of sycophants who gave away another large chunk of Telsa to Elon, only to watch him hose the company's reputation and revenue. At least for a while, there was some accountability in the Delaware courts for that. Of course, that's why Musk moved Tesla to Texas.
Re: (Score:2)
> the last few years, pretty consistently since 2019 with a small percentage dip in CEO departures in 2022. It's a continuing story and an interesting one. No one wants to be CEO if they think things are going to shit and they'll be to blame, even if they know they get a golden parachute out of it.
> [1]https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/0... [cnbc.com]
I'll take all that blame for millions of dollars.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/07/2019-had-the-most-ceo-departures-on-record-with-more-than-1600.html
Is this really a a good thing? (Score:2)
Since they get golden parachutes and the next one will get paid more than their predecessor, is this really a good sign?
Re:Is this really a a good thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate to be the guy defending CEOs but not only have I been one (a very small company), but i serve on Boards of Directors of several companies (again all small, most less than 10 and one above 50 employees).
Most CEOs do NOT have golden parachutes. And those only trigger if the Board choses to remove them; this article implies they are leaving meaning they are leaving their severance packages behind if they have it. On top of that, most CEOs are actually quite human, particularly small companies. Yet they are the ones who have to live with the responsibility of letting people go, or manage expectations of investors, Board members, customers and employees which very often don't align very well, or potentially losing millions of dollars of investment entrusted to them to build the company. You have to make a guess if the market is ready for a product or a strategy shift, and if you get it wrong you lose big time for investors, employees get laid off, and you are likely out of a job. The job market for CEOs doesn't turn on a dime; many find themselves in a new role 6 to 12 months later (hence the severance packages, which if they have one is usually one year salary at most, and that's not always).
When we talk about CEOs getting overpaid with golden parachutes, we often think of guys like [1]Robert Nardelli [wikipedia.org] who was CEO of Home Depot for 7 years, didn't move the stock price at all, resigned and triggered a $210M golden parachute. Those are few and far between though, and they make the news and becomes the story. But there are [2]211,130 CEOs in the US [bls.gov] and packages like Nardelli's are maybe 1 in 1,000 and could be as high as 1 in 10,000. instead most are hustling to make the companies work, barely scraping by in a lonely position at all times where failure on a massive scale is a constant threat with no safety net below you; you're the last line of defense and there's no one to turn to.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nardelli
[2] https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes111011.htm
re: defending the CEO (Score:3)
I absolutely agree with you. But the problem is, you're talking about your smaller companies and not the big names that the general public is familiar with.
"Golden parachutes" aside? The CEO of any company with a household name is paid exponentially times more compensation than the rank and file employee working there.
People are generally fed up with the disparity there -- especially when these businesses are so large, many of the workers doing the customer-facing work may be managed by several bosses above
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Your information changes nothing. The CEO pay is ~$725,553/year. I don't care if the corporation is 2 people or 2000 people, no CEO has ever done $725,553/year worth of work. And speaking of board of directors, the average board member is paid ~$325,000/year, which is also way too much for the lack of real work. I'm guessing you weren't one of them in either role, which, I guess, is unfortunate for you. No one at Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, Honda, Toyota, or any company ever, has worked "hard enough"
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average CEO pay**
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There are reasonable arguments that Steve Jobs was worthy of his hire. And once upon a time I think Elon Musk was also.
Note that neither of those was someone I'd want to work under, but they did the job. (OTOH, I've heard it claimed that Musk was just lucky. I don't believe it, but I've never checked enough to be sure that's wrong.)
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> no CEO has ever done $725,553/year worth of work
Define the worth of work? What do you do for your job? I know what I do. My decisions don't impact my colleagues, their retirement packages, or society in general. On the flip side there are several CEO's whose job is literally to define the fate of thousands of not just employees but can define the stability of public communities in nations, changing the land scape in the most literal sense of the word with their decision.
Responsibility is worth something, even if you think you work harder, the reality is
"Corporate leadership decisions"? (Score:2)
You mean it has become too obvious to hide that they are incompetent, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Or simply unnecessary
Golden Parachute (Score:2)
At the executive level, it is common to negotiate the terms of your exit before you begin working.
When times get tough pull the ripcord and move on. Take a long vacation, and polish up your resume: "under my leadership the business grew!" (don't mention that you bailed just before it cratered...those were market conditions beyond your control.)
Rinse and repeat. Or take your mountain of cash and retire.
AI CEO (Score:2)
It will happen. I remember 25+ years ago on slashdot the topic was companies outsourcing people from India to do IT jobs. The joke was "why don't the CEOs outsource themselves to Indians?" ... Today a bunch of CEOs (Microsoft, Google, Adobe, IBM, etc) are in fact Indian. Therefore, we can predict 25 years from now that CEOs themselves of public corporations would be AI. Humans will be taken out of critical decision making.
"In three years, Cyberdyne will become the largest supplier of military computer syste
Since 2023 (Score:2)
Record levels for last 2 years.
Re: (Score:2)
You got your directions backwards. Obama *is* left. The only thing the left wants from businesses is more transparency and accountability (i.e. stop being greedy assholes). I know Europeans consider liberalism to be a "conservative" or right leaning thing, but in the US, Liberals are left. Conservatives, in the US, is basically synonymous with the right (i.e. Republicans and most Libertarians - not to be confused with Liberals).
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect that was satire, and deserves to be highly modded up. Unfortunately, satire doesn't work well in brief text communications, so people will probably take that seriously.
Oh darn (Score:1)
The literal easiest and most overpaid job in the world got a little stressful? Is it like the stress of all their underpaid employees who do all the real work and somehow take it all in stride so much better than these fragile CEOs?
Yeah, sorry, zero sympathy. The average CEO makes $725,553/year. That is ridiculous. No CEO has ever done $725,553 worth of work in a year. No individual person ever has or ever will.
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The ironic thing is that the CEO job isn't playing the game. It is getting qualified so one can be a participant in the game, and getting the company to be able to participate in games. It is sort of like in some countries, it isn't doing the work in the college, but getting into the college where all the testing and competitiveness is done.
If it wasn't for that social aspect and getting to the top, I wonder how many C-level duties could be offloaded to a decent LLM.
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Ivy League schools. It isn't about the education; it's about the connections. The quality of the education in these schools is debatable. The quality of the people attending these schools is also debatable. The connections these schools allow you to form...not debatable, and statistically better for "professional" advancement than the education.
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CEO is not the easiest job. It's the difference between operating a car and building a car. If a person who can operate a car, it doesn't mean they can build a car.
These CEO quitters go through the motions, do "CEO like" things, yet never truly understand what's going on in the business.
The end of the woke executive (Score:1)
They know which way the wind is blowing.
Perception vs. Value (Score:2)
A while back, a large airline went through a bankruptcy/merger. As part of the return to business plan, the judge was to approve a $20m severance bonus
for the outgoing CEO. The judge approved everything but the $20m severance, and the airline merger and exit from bankruptcy concluded.
At the first board meeting of the new company, the new chairman of the board and CEO put forth a resolution to pay the $20m bonus to the now departed CEO. It was unanimously approved.
The lesson here is that leading your compan
Luigi made one depart. (Score:2, Informative)
Be like Luigi.
Re: (Score:2)
So, your advice is to sacrifice yourself in order to cut off the head of a hydra, eh?
2 kinds of leaders (Score:2)
I'd like to make a distinction between leaders that people follow voluntarily and those that are 'leaders' by dint of an org chart and people follow them because their livelihood depends on it.
It only takes a few hundred dollars in filing fees with the state to become a CEO / executive.... not impressive by itself. Like anything else, there are good ones and bad ones, judge them not by their title but by their results.
Regardless of one's position in a company, the test of any competencies is when things ar
Oh no! (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway,
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> "It's a very difficult time to lead,"
It ain't all roses for us galley slaves either mate!
Re: (Score:2)
>> "It's a very difficult time to lead,"
> It ain't all roses for us galley slaves either mate!
yeah, but they have the ability to jump ship, collect their golden parachute bonuses, and not have their names plastered all over failing companies.
They did learn one thing from the lessons of the Great Depression, which was to not be associated with the failing companies, to not have one's name or wealth tied up in them.
Re:Oh no! (Score:4, Interesting)
> Anyway,
I take it you don't work? While I have zero love for rich arseholes, a change in CEO is hugely disruptive to many organisations as the new people come in and "leave their mark" on the company. We have gone through several CEOs in the past 7 years and it feels like we are in a perpetual re-org. Nothing is more demotivating than finding out a project you worked on for two years gets cancelled during construction because the new CEO thinks the company should go in a different direction.
Nothing is more fun that having the central engineering team split up in two teams with different focuses, and then just as your start to figure out an efficient way to work having a new CEO decide that actually one central engineering team is objectively better.
There's no "anyway" about it. Our current CEO is fighting for his job with shareholders at the moment and I'm just dreading what pointless change their replacement may bring and what disruption that will cause.