Sorry, but that's nonsense. A CEO that tries to 'drive the company in to the lake' would find himself fired just as fast as a busdriver that did the same.
Really, the autonomy of CEOs is vastly overestimated here and I think that it is in part people like Steve Jobs that re-enforce that myth, but typically the CEO is not the person that decides like some kind of dictator how a company is run.
They do carry final responsibility but that's another story.
Please make a distinction between CEO/owners and CEO/minor shareholders, the difference is huge in this respect.
I don't think anyone is trying to make the point that you seem to think they are. I was responding to the fact that in this comment here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2112766), you seem to be drawing some very odd parallels between bus drivers and CEOs. The reality is that most people could drive a bus. Very few could be a CEO. The skillsets and levels of responsibility are just completely different. If you genuinely think that they're comparable, I don't really know what to tell you.
> Sorry, but that's nonsense. A CEO that tries to 'drive the company in to the lake' would find himself fired just as fast as a busdriver that did the same.
But it took them quite a while to fire Darl McBride, didn't it?
Oh, I agree with you. I just think that he unambiguously drove the company into a lake, though I guess it doesn't matter if the board doesn't realize that.
Really, the autonomy of CEOs is vastly overestimated here and I think that it is in part people like Steve Jobs that re-enforce that myth, but typically the CEO is not the person that decides like some kind of dictator how a company is run.
They do carry final responsibility but that's another story.
Please make a distinction between CEO/owners and CEO/minor shareholders, the difference is huge in this respect.