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Janitors provide a valuable service (i.postimg.cc)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 9 months ago (2 children)

If all janitors disappeared, you'd notice the dirty facility.

If all CEOs disappeared you'd get paid better.

[+] [email protected] -7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Alas, if all CEOs disappeared, the company would fall into ruin and you'd need another job. CEOs are important people too, even if they're overpaid and over-respected and overalls (wait, that should be the janitor? Or the Germans?)

[–] repungnant_canary 19 points 9 months ago

There are actually examples of quite big companies without CEO at all.

But it really depends on what type of company we're talking about. In small and medium companies usually (not always unfortunately) CEOs do a terrific job and, depending on the company's financial condition, might even earn less then some of their employees while bearing a huge responsibility (financial and moral).

Even in small companies it is sometimes a case that managers do all the work and the CEO is eating profits - there are stories where employees actually prefer the boss to not show up in the office because they only mess everything up.

Yet if we're talking about big and huge companies then CEO existence is much harder to defend. If CEO disappeared then by pure inertia the company would work for at least months. Then there's the Peter Principle and numerous studies how MBAs are actually rather bad boses, in which case if the company keeps existing or even growing then someone else is doing all the management.

And then, you can't convince me that someone like Musk, who spends days on posting hateful tweets and attending meetings promoting reproduction, does a meaningful job at all.

What companies actually need is some decision making body. And that body doesn't have to be a rich white asshole, but can be for example board representing (proportionally) all the groups in the company, which then can use deliberative democracy to make decisions. Virtually any other solution is better than old rich white sexists CEO.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

CEOs aren't the genius level visionary you're making them out to be. They're a legal requirement of having a corporation. Doubly so if the company is publicly traded and has a Board of Directors. Fact is, without a CEO at the helm, there are tons of SVPs and VPs at most companies that know exactly the strategy to increase sales or decrease costs (the root of a CEO's responsibility). So while executive leadership is important, it's not thousands of times more important than any given worker at the company. Not by a long shot.