Now laid-off employees are paying the price
In an attempt to explain why the company had $4, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google's parent company, Alphabet, $4 after a "rigorous review" of Google's internal structures and organization. Pichai suggested that the company "hired for a different economic reality" than the one it faced and that the layoffs were necessary to $4.
But while Pichai, $4, said he took "full responsibility for the decisions that led us here," he failed to elucidate those choices. He didn't mention that during his time at the helm Google has been $4, been $4 by $4 despite "pivoting the company to be AI-first," and seen its $4. And though Pichai later said at a company town hall that "all roles above the senior-vice-president level will witness a very significant reduction in their annual bonus," $4, the vast majority of the pain from his missteps seemed to fall squarely on the shoulders of the 12,000 people who were let go. The employees who were laid off — via email — included $4 and longtime employees, such as $4 and who described the sudden layoff as a "slap in the face."
This sort of responsibility dodging is running rampant around Silicon Valley. CEOs at companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Meta set their companies on an unsustainable course, investing in boneheaded new ventures and assuming the pandemic-driven tech boom would be a new normal. Now that those expectations have been shattered, rank-and-file tech workers are bearing the brunt of these bad decisions, while the executives most responsible for the messes face little to no meaningful consequences.
Any executive who participates in decision-making that leads to hundreds or thousands of people losing their jobs should be the one leading them out the door. Pichai and other tech CEOs shouldn't be making $280 million a year or even $1 million a year — they should be fired for poorly managing some of the largest companies in the world.
CEOs made mistakes, workers bear the brunt
In their layoff announcements, pretty much every tech company placed the blame for the cuts on the economy. At Amazon, the cuts were $4 of "supply chain difficulties, inflation, and productivity overhang" and economic uncertainty. $4 the "economic downturn we're now facing" as the reason for the company's 10% headcount reduction, and Workday $4 a "global economic environment that is challenging for companies of all sizes." PayPal CEO Dan Schulman pinned the blame for his company's $4 on the "challenging macro-economic environment."
But in many instances, the real source of concern at these companies comes down to boneheaded decisions made by CEOs — whether it's $4, who authorized a hiring binge over the pandemic and invested billions of dollars into his metaverse folly before having to cut 11,000 jobs, or Tobi Lütke at Shopify, who laid off 1,000 people $4
While many of these companies have made serious strategic blunders, layoffs won't solve those problems — cutting workers won't suddenly make the companies more productive or improve their products. And many of these tech behemoths are still eye-wateringly profitable, making the economic case for layoffs questionable. Microsoft's $4 in the last quarter of 2022 from the same quarter in 2021, but it still pulled in a whopping $16.4 billion. Amazon pulled down a profit of $2.8 billion in the most recent quarter, below the online-shopping highs of the pandemic but in line with its historical average. But the company still $4.
It seems that when profits or even projected future profits slipped a bit, something had to give — and it certainly wasn't going to fall on the CEOs. When one company chose to lay off thousands of people, it became optically justifiable for other companies to follow suit — a natural way for the CEO to seem "disciplined" or "responsible" despite the brutal cost to employees.
While they may protect the CEO's reputation or placate investors, layoffs are immensely damaging for workers, even well-paid tech employees. People who are laid off face $4 and harm to their $4. Not to mention that layoffs are of dubious value to the company; studies have found that $4 for productivity, that they $4, and that they can lead to a $4. Studies have also suggested that layoffs $4 for the employees who weren't let go, especially since many of these companies $4 and $4 that could help remaining workers. Given the human and business downsides of layoffs, a CEO's top priority should be to avoid them at all costs.
Some companies have managed to do just that. Apple has managed to cut costs without layoffs in part by $4. While one can't necessarily applaud a company for paying a CEO "just" $50 million, there's something to be said for the chief executive willing to slash their own pay before resorting to letting employees go. Similarly, $4 and reduced the salaries of his executive team by 15% to avoid broad layoffs.
For the companies that turned to job cuts, the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of their CEOs. As the sole person in charge, they're responsible for misjudging the macroeconomy, making terrible investments, and then following along with the industry in a shortsighted attempt to please Wall Street. And yet, despite a smattering of pay reductions, none of them have faced real consequences. By focusing on "broader economic uncertainty" rather than admitting the cutbacks are because of executive mismanagement, CEOs can save their reputation while sidestepping the blame.
With great power comes no responsibility
The blame-shifting of these tech companies and their CEOs is not unprecedented, or even that uncommon. Corporate America has pledged fealty to the almighty executive, applying a totally different evaluation matrix to CEOs than to other employees. Because of this noxious adulation for the most powerful person in the company, companies will contort themselves to try to save money in any way other than cutting the pay of or firing their most responsible and most expensive employee: the chief executive officer. $4 by 1,460% from 1978 to 2021, and the ratio of average-worker pay to CEO pay ballooned from 20-to-1 in 1965 to 399-to-1 in 2021. And it's not as if this staggering rise in pay has made CEOs any better at their jobs. Top executives abandon companies $4 and always treat workers as disposable, $4. Analyses $4 that these staggering pay packages are far from justified.
When high-ranking executives make a serious blunder, they almost always get the benefit of the doubt. The modern executive $4 or oversight, only occasionally reporting to typically pliant boards. They're largely insulated from the consequences of their actions, even if they're performing poorly. If any other kind of worker made a series of decisions that led to a double-digit drop in profitability, they'd be threatened with termination or terminated. Instead, tech CEOs have passed the pain off to people who in many cases were performing well in their roles. And while many employees in tech and elsewhere have received generous severance packages, they pale in comparison to the $4 on their way out the door. Take, for example, the car-rental company Hertz, which let go of 10,000 people in 2020 as it stumbled into bankruptcy, all while $4.
If CEOs are expected — and paid — to be some visionary demigod at the top of an organization, they should be expected to bear that weight and pay a commiserate price when they mess up. At some point, the chief executive has to be held as accountable as the people they employ. There is no reason that the best-treated and highest-paid member of an organization should experience less scrutiny, unless the company does not truly care about operating efficiently.
If companies are wary of firing top executives, then fine, refashion the job of the modern CEO. Instead of trying to be swashbuckling saviors with gobsmacking salaries allowed to operate the company with relative impunity, these top executives should focus on actual management and execution to sustainably grow their companies. Instead of focusing on short-term investor relations and public accolades, CEOs should put in the time to manage their companies and help improve the products they create.
The fundamental problem with corporate America is that it no longer makes any sense. The CEO, the most powerful and influential person at the company, is now a figurehead who receives all the benefits of a company's success without being endangered by any of its failures.
$4 is the CEO of $4, a national tech and business public-relations agency. He is also the author of the tech and culture newsletter $4.