[KaiserJeep]

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.

[Outcast_Searcher]

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.

Why just make stuff up?

For large corporations:

1). The BOD (Board of Directors) decides on things like salaries and bonuses. CEO's don't get to just take whatever they want. As far as passing the buck -- yeah, that can get pretty flagrant, but again, as KJ said, a competent BOD should set objective standards and not allow that.

2). Again, the BOD makes this completely false, unless the BOD is simply negligent.

3). Their jobs generally are about business. Naturally, their job goals are at the discretion of the BOD. Part of their job will be in promoting the company (i.e. the business) instead of, say, building stuff on an assembly line. To this extent they ARE politicians -- that's part of their job. This makes their job no less about "business" than my job as an I/T database guy spending more time with (say) spreadsheets and reports than building things the company sold made my job "not about business".

Bandying about left wing anti-corporate talking points doesn't make them all "true".

Here's an actual link to support my general points about the BOD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_directors

Now, I'm not saying that all boards (or even close to all) routinely engage in best practices. I'm not saying they always stand up to the CEO, who may be chairman of the board. However, the BOD is elected by the stockholders, and is responsible to the interest of the stockholders. The BOD has processes it is supposed to follow. This is completely contrary to your "CEO's just do whatever they want" talking points.

...

And there are better ways of doing things. What do you think a CEO should be doing?

I like the proposal (and way he tends to run things) of Warren Buffett, where he expects CEO's to OUTPERFORM their peers in a business line by a meaningful amount for a long time (say, five years or more) before they get extra income from things like stock options. In other words, just sitting in a chair and letting the business coast along like the average business does NOT earn a Buffett CEO a huge income like giant bonuses or huge stock option awards.