True. In addition, more and more CEO candidates don't want to come in and have to clean up the mess their predecessor left for them.
Across my career I’ve worked for a number of CEOs and C-suite leaders, sometimes up close and personal.
In my own job I’ve interacted with them.
To be sure, some of them were zeros, to the point where other execs would openly but subtly call out their idiocy. That lot rarely lasted 2 years.
The really solid CEOs that I saw in person, and in action, earned their millions. They go in TV, often Fox Business and answer questions from the press, have countless internal meetings (often where the committee distributes pointless PowerPoint decks of 217 pages of CYA) where they zero in on the problems and opportunities and challenge the businesses and staff - and are often right - absorb feedback, travel the footprint and meet employees, deal with regulators/the govt, chair investor calls, so on.
Yeah, they’re not doing gritty jobs. But they also aren’t losers. Usually.
It’s easy to make fun of them, call them stupid, and so on, like you often hear from left-wingers, since that lot doesn’t get basic economics, finance, capitalism, or life. However, I’ve seen a bit of that class envy and hatred creep into Conservative, Inc. over the years….I think it started with Willard becoming the Prez candidate, but it accelerated with corporations becoming quasi-social justice enterprises.
And I get it….cronyism isn’t capitalism. And corporations aren’t ipso facto capitalist. But the free market is preferable to the alternatives.
The trough of this cesspool of envy was the delight expressed at the assassination of US Healthcare’s CEO. Even a few on FR cheered. Marx and Engles are laughing in hell.
Again, some firms are run by dolts. But most folks who joke about CEOs would collapse into a puddle of tears if they shouldered the burdens of these leaders.