dissident wrote:CEO's are the corporate equivalent of politicians.
1) They can always pass the buck. So if the corporation is sinking in red ink they can get enormous bonuses and salaries. They are the ones with "vision" and it is the fault of underlings for "failing to implement" their "vision".
They can keep up with this BS for many years. But most have learned to move around to keep the stink off.
2) They have no checks and balances. So they can give themselves endless pay raises and golden parachutes. Just like politicians.
3) Their jobs are not about business. They leave all the details of actual business planning and product design to underlings. Instead they spend most of their time schmoozing with actual politicians and engaging in fancier aspects of lobbying.
People who look up to CEO's are either idiots or posers. CEO salaries are a direct metric of the corruption of the economy. The more that CEO's make, the poorer everyone else becomes in real and relative terms. As the US middle class has been shrinking, CEO's have been acting more and more like the robber barons of the Gilded Era, including acquiring households full of servants. But unlike the tycoons of the past, these clowns are glorified bureaucrats and nothing more than politicians.
One exception should be noted to what you say. Unlike politicians, CEOs are given unmistakable revenue goals by the BoD's, and then held to this standard or they are terminated. I mentioned I counted 11 CEOs in 37 years, four months, and 3 weeks in my management chain. That is an average CEO job duration of 40.8 months.
Politicians regularly fail to deliver on promises and we are stuck with them far longer than we must endure non-performing CEO's.
BTW, I would argue that CEO's are not given the correct goals when they are measured on revenues or stock appreciation alone. But that is the exclusive right of the BoD to decide.