It seems to me that most CEOs are simply irrelevant. The company does well if it does, and doesn't if it doesn't. It is rare that any one person is able to turn around the fortunes of their company. The only example that comes to mind right now is Steve Jobs.

Carl Icahn put it the best as he described his encounter with a CEO when he asked the question, what does a CEO actually do in a corporation?

His answer was that it was a pretty pathetic one based on his observation. The CEO would take him to different floors and explain stuff but nothing that had any substance or material understanding of operating the country.

Carl Icahn's view isn't alone. Nassim Taleb also blasts overpaid professionals and experts as "empty suits", they literally add little to no value to the organization other than how much they don't shut up about how great they are and what ivy league school they graduated from.

I also have to conclude that CEOs are largely useless and could be replaced by a sock puppet operated by a homeless man.

This Dilbert strip says it best http://dilbert.com/strip/2011-04-14.

CEOs of large companies at least. A big part is supposed to be long term strategy, but Mayer actually outsourced that bit to McKinsey:

http://recode.net/2015/11/09/yahoo-hires-mckinsey-to-mull-re...

She has not done better than flipping a coin would have done, it's a real shame that she has taken so much cash out of the business.

>Someone tell me, what CEO out there actually does anything that justifies their insane pay grade because often it looks like someone just waving a baton thinking he/she's a conductor despite how much the orchestra sucks.

Hard to say what is and isn't related to the CEO. Microsoft's new CEO seems fantastic but it's hard to say what is and isn't contributed to him. I guess ultimately all the good and bad is contributed to every CEO regardless.

"wasn't able to capitalize on Alibaba shares"

I'm thinking they did pretty okay with Alibaba. They sold a chunk for a few billion, I think. They still own $23 billion of Alibaba.

That's some serious capital.

Taking a gamble on a turnaround CEO is in theory warranted when you have a situation like Yahoo back then (or now), and a "hundred million dollars+" is just the price you pay to get someone who just might have what it takes for a job where they'll both likely fail and have their career seriously curtailed.

There aren't many alternatives for a board of directors when just selling the company isn't much of an option.

A "turnaround CEO" with no CEO or turnaround experience is rich. She is a famous person and that's about the extent of her qualification for a $100m pay package.

Yeah, that's the first place where the "in theory" ran into the hard problems of practice.

On the other hand, in this narrow sub-domain of "high tech", how many turnaround experts are there? Worse, even with the "$100m pay package", how many of them, or just plain CEOs with some experience in with adversary, would be willing to take on the job? Maybe she was about the best they could get.

Hindsight is 20/20, but a boring finance type would have been a much better choice. With the huge Alibaba stake it was a dream position for an MBA type. A pet rock could have been CEO and the stock would have kept up fine because of the BABA shares.

Isn't it just a PR stunt? When she took over everyone was praising Yahoo and I'm sure investor confidence went up. Now that Yahoo is spiraling anyways it looks bad in retrospect, but if Yahoo had even managed to hold steady somewhat I think the hire would've been viewed as a total success.