Have CEOs Changed? (nber.org) 58
A new paper on the National Bureau of Economic Research: Using more than 4,900 assessments, we study changes in the characteristics and objectives of CEOs and top executives since 2001. The same four factors explain roughly half of the variation of assessed CEO characteristics in this larger sample of executive assessments as in Kaplan and Sorensen (2021). After the global financial crisis (GFC), the average interviewed CEO candidate has lower overall ability, is more execution oriented / less interpersonal, less charismatic and less creative/strategic than pre-GFC. Except for overall ability and execution oriented/interpersonal, these differences persist in hired CEOs. Interpersonal or "softer" skills do not increase over time, either for CEO candidates or hired CEOs. Pre- and post-GFC, we find a positive correlation between the ability of assessed CEOs and other C-level executives assessed at the same company, suggesting that higher-ability executives complement each other. Finally, we look at the relation between the objectives for which the CEOs are interviewed and CEO characteristics.
I'm not sure whether CEOs have changed (Score:5, Insightful)
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But I can guarantee you their pay has.
50 years ago the CEO to worker salary gap, wasn’t described as the guy who won the fucking lottery vs. the guy running the maintenance shop.
If you already know you would behave differently after winning the lottery, then know they certainly do.
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Re: I'm not sure whether CEOs have changed (Score:2)
Why would index fund companies want the share price of companies to go down?
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Why would index fund companies want the share price of companies to go down?
Index funds can be both short and long. Compare SPXL with SPXS, LABU with LABD, SOXL with SOXS.
Very handy when you think the market is going to go down, you can switch from long to short easily.
Re: I'm not sure whether CEOs have changed (Score:1)
Re: I'm not sure whether CEOs have changed (Score:2)
Corporations only care about profits and the share price going up, especially investment vehicles like index funds. Any DEI initiatives will be in service of that, not instead of it. If the CEO of Harley Davidson isn't delivering profits and a share price trending upwards he'll be replaced.
Re: I'm not sure whether CEOs have changed (Score:1)
Wrong - Keep cash flow up - buyback shares (Score:3)
> is more execution oriented / less interpersonal, less charismatic and less creative/strategic than pre-GFC
It's been since Clinton signed into law allowing companies once-again to buy back their own shares, the shift from active CEO to keep the lights on CEO started.
Prior to Clinton signing the share buyback law, a company buying back its own shares was considered stock manipulation and illegal.
Now CEO becomes:
- Sell a little bit more each year
- Keep profits growing slowly
- Keep cash flow growing slowly
Love "duh" studies (Score:5, Insightful)
You need them to confirm your gut feeling, because your gut can be very wrong, and it is no e to know it was correct.
When you hire people who are the best at promising short term profit increases as you primary and almost sole job requirement... Is it really any surprise that you get more sociopathic assholes?
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Also... Damn autocorrect. What kind of algorithm corrects "nice to" to "no e to"???
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Also... Damn autocorrect. What kind of algorithm corrects "nice to" to "no e to"???
The autocorrect where your fingers had slid one key over.
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What kind of algorithm corrects "nice to" to "no e to"???
My guess would be: Baron Yam's fingers.
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The one used by people who don't click the preview button and proofread? :-p
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Who has time for that? I miss my Blackberry with a full QWERTY keyboard and NO autocorrect. I never had a problem when I had proper tactile feedback, I could type at least twice as fast (for a phone, I still need a full keyboard to breech 60 wpm), and a had far, far fewer typing errors.
Admittedly a larger screen area is pretty nice, but a slide-out keyboard works too.
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Apart from tactile, I have that by installing the Hacker's keyboard (available in F-droid) and turning off autocorrect.
Two of the first things I do with a mobile phone.
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Sometime they have interesting results... (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps not what the study was aimed at but interesting nonetheless.
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Bureaucrats (Score:4, Interesting)
* That's an oblique reference to Nietzsche. Did you get it?
Meaningless [Re:Bureaucrats] (Score:5, Interesting)
How the hell do you measure "ability" in a non-subjective way? If the data is garbage, the results are, too.
And the paper has some completely uninterpretable paragraphs. What does
mean?
Which? Less overall ability and more execution oriented? or similar overall ability and execution orientation?
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How the hell do you measure "ability" in a non-subjective way?
Well, you could skim the paper (bad /. form, I know) to find out they use the assessment scores provided by outside management consultants to corporate hiring committees. It would, perhaps, be more accurate to put it this way: corporate hiring committees assign less weight independent assessments of candidate abilities.
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How the hell do you measure "ability" in a non-subjective way?
Well, you could skim the paper (bad /. form, I know) to find out they use the assessment scores provided by outside management consultants to corporate hiring committees.
I did read the paper. That statement saying "somebody else measured it" is a non-answer to the question.
In fact, in many ways it worse than a non-answer. They seem to be saying "we won't tell you how this was measured because we don't really know either".
It would, perhaps, be more accurate to put it this way: corporate hiring committees assign less weight independent assessments of candidate abilities.
?
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These results are fascinating, but meangless.
How the hell do you measure "ability" in a non-subjective way? If the data is garbage, the results are, too.
You don't, and the data is garbage.
And the paper has some completely uninterpretable paragraphs.
It reads like some AI mild hallucination if you ask me.
Trigger Alert for some of us!
But as a CEO, I'd like to make a few remarks regarding the unbridled hatred many in here have regarding their thoughts on CEO's.
It is quite fashionable to hate on some enemy that is pre picked for you. And there are many targets, depending on the group one is in. But CEO's and managers are just another target.
Eventually, one would not be terribly far off the mark to just write i
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These results are fascinating, but meangless.
How the hell do you measure "ability" in a non-subjective way? If the data is garbage, the results are, too.
You don't, and the data is garbage.
See what I was talking about XXongo?
Only on Slashdot can a topic of "Have CEO's changed" can a response from a CEO and on the topic of the perception of many people have of CEO's be labeled "Offtopic"
Funny place, but you do you, mods.
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The big change was stock buybacks & bonuses (Score:3)
If you look into why Boeing planes keep falling out of the sky and read a few articles about it it's basically because of that. We really need to completely restructure starting by banning stock buybacks.
It's one of those things where people who constantly pine for the good old days never want to go back to the heavy regulatory environment post-Depression that gave us those good old days.
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What was supposed to happen (Score:2)
The same thing happened with the "Project", e.g. the federal block housing. They were built to house *extremely* poor rural people (mostly black). Think the sort of people who lived what we'd call "shanties". Bits of discarded wood fashioned into a house.
If you're coming from that they were pretty nice, and there was supposed to
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Reagan was an establishment Republican. A president doesn't do everything himself, his success depends on a team of people around him that make things happen. A traditional establishment model would be to build that team out of individuals educated at elite universities and with years of experience managing government institutions. Regardless of the president's personal experience and understanding of how government works, his team would hit the ground running and have substantive policy and legislative e
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shut the fuck up you bumbling moron.
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Not sure who you mean, since Kamala Harris is nearly 6 decades old so young is not an adjective anyone should use to describe her. And how can she embarrass anyone? By claiming to do a bunch of things when she's in power(b/c no one seems to notice she's been the Vice President for
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"Kamala Harris is nearly 6 decades old so young is not an adjective anyone should use to describe her."
Unless, of course, you're comparing her to someone nearly *8* decades old.
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After all, who here wouldn't want to see the orange one in an orange jumpsuit, I ask you?
That would be great, but only for the initial photo op. After that? Well, prisons be prisons...
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so... sociopaths (Score:3)
These are the oligarchs who buy our electeds using the surplus of our labor to pass laws that benefit themselves over the people.
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In saying CEO's are "lower overall ability, is more execution oriented / less interpersonal, less charismatic and less creative/strategic", they are, as we already knew, more sociopathic. These are the oligarchs who buy our electeds using the surplus of our labor to pass laws that benefit themselves over the people.
This.
Corruption in business investing (such as betting against success with hedge funds and obscene IPO valuations for companies losing hundreds of millions), basically swapped out the bar for the coke dealer in the Boardroom. Behavior changes were predictable when Greed went from being a drunk to being an junkie, strung out on the same drug; money.
If you think that’s bad, remember some are now Too Big To Fail.
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In saying CEO's are "lower overall ability, is more execution oriented / less interpersonal, less charismatic and less creative/strategic", they are, as we already knew, more sociopathic.
I agree with your conclusion; but it's important to be aware that a higher level of charisma seems pretty common among psychopaths who are successful in business:
https://www.psypost.org/charismatic-people-with-psychopathic-tendencies-are-more-likely-to-evade-detection-and-punishment/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/social-instincts/202205/the-quality-makes-some-psychopaths-so-successful
It's a good idea to know the enemy, and to understand that some psychopaths are very good at camouflage.
Additiona
Yeah, they're richer (Score:2)
Keep firing, assholes.
The root cause of the problem is... (Score:3)
...high pay and bonuses
As CEO pay becomes ever more outrageously excessive, it attracts people with a pathological obsession with wealth. Their obsession borders on a mental illness, where all they care about is money, more money, and endlessly increasing wealth
They don't care about the customers, the products, the employees, the environment, or anything else. They are addicts, junkies who crave the next financial "fix".
We need CEOs who care about the products or services the company sells. We need creative people who invent a better future. We need CEOs who love what they do so much that they would do it for free
Cause and Effect (Score:2)
We need creative people who invent a better future. We need CEOs who love what they do so much that they would do it for free
Ironic that the worlds richest might argue they in fact do work for damn near free.
Is Elon Musk, Bill Gates, or Jeff Bezos worth hundreds of billions because of their salary, or because they happen to be CEOs that existed in one of the most corrupt eras of Capitalism that rewards CEOs and competes for CEOs, with an insane stock market that ultimately pays 99.999% of their wealth?
Corruptly obscene CEO pay, is an effect. We should address the root cause. Too Big To Fail sure as shit isn’t the answer f
Understanding business basics is needed (Score:5, Interesting)
For the most part, the job of a president and the job of the CEO are different. The president of the company handles the running of the company, with the primary focus being on, "how do we make the COMPANY do well". The job of the CEO is to hype the company brand and focus on boosting stock price. Now, Steve Jobs was a combination of the two, and he did it well, because not only was he able to hype Apple itself, but he did have the focus on making the company do well.
Then, you get those who are better about running the company, and less about hype. Lisa Su for example is doing a great job running AMD, she doesn't run around saying how wonderful everything is and playing nice with the Wall Street crowd, but she does focus on how to make things better for AMD as a business.
Then, you get those useless CEOs out there they want to be "President and CEO", but they are completely useless when it comes to actually running a business. This is why so many corporations used to be strong, but are now run by people who only care about stock price and if the company were to shut down next week, they wouldn't care. When a CEO doesn't know ANYTHING about the industry of the company they are claiming to run, things go downhill. Look at AT&T as the perfect example of how things go wrong.
Yep (Score:2)
Haven't seen anything like this in recent news:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Have CEOs changed? (Score:2)
No, they're still all sociopaths.
A New Aristocracy (Score:2)
Just like the climate (Score:2)
A whole lot more hot air than ever before!
Anyone have access to the paper? (Score:2)
I'm guessing the name isn't really what it sounds like (a government group), but I don't want to fight to get access to this...
How did they measure this? What is 'ability'? What are the "four factors" that explain half the variation seen? Feels like this a prelude to a book they want to sell... "What 4 factors distinguish good from bad CEO's? And how to fix them."
Have the Mountains Changed? (Score:2)
Look at Google (Score:2)
Old CEO: paint slogan "don't be evil" on main building entrance wall.
New CEO: remove it.
No, of course not (Score:2)
CEOs were always assholes. We only used to enforce antitrust, and they hadn't yet figured out how much they could steal from workers in the form of wage theft. Now we don't enforce antitrust, and DAs also don't prosecute wage theft even when it is grand theft as it can be here in California when the dollar amounts are large enough, despite the fact that wage theft exceeds all other theft combined.
Are there any DAs anywhere in America that actually do their jobs?
Sure they have (Score:2)
They used to arrogantly tell the truth and looked like sociopaths.
They've learned to lie