Comments on: Save Us from CEOs

By: The Mahablog » After the Surge

The Mahablog » After the Surge — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 18:38:46 +0000

[...] I wrote something along the same lines last April, although I wrote about Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling. I wrote then: It would have worked out if we’d just stayed the course, the chief executive said. Everything would have been fine if people had had more faith. We failed because we were attacked by people who wanted us to fail. [...]

By: End of Silence - Random musings from a geek dad » Holding it in is bad

End of Silence - Random musings from a geek dad » Holding it in is bad — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 15:40:40 +0000

[...] Holding it in is bad By ttrentham Mahablog with another amazing post, this time about CEOs. [...]

By: jawbone

jawbone — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 02:31:03 +0000

Beautiful, Maha–listening to the NPR reports about the Enron trial and Skilling’s testimony, I kept hearing the same things and style BushCo have used since their campaign began for BushBoy.

They play the “sincerity” role and just lie and lie and lie and dare the listener to make any objection. “Compassionate Conservative” anyone? Honest entrepreneur? I just can’t believe they’ll continue to get away with it.

Incisive entry. Great.

By: Swami

Swami — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 02:11:59 +0000

Maha, Excellent analogy and analysis in your message. As always, you’re paying attention with a keen eye to the deciets and in doing so helping others understand the dynamics of the fraud thats been perpetrated upon them by the Bush administration. You’ve done an excellent job of ripping the mask off of Bush and his handlers so that we can see them for the charlatans they are. Your efforts and hard work are apprieciated.

I’m not confident that Bush will be held to account before his presidency ends because the people who have the power lack the courage to defend our democracy. There is no backbone in congress as a whole. What’s the gestation period for a spine?

By: erinyes

erinyes — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 00:31:12 +0000

If your congressperson is a republican, he’ll just tell you to piss-off…in a kinda nice way. We need to replace ‘em in the midterms, then perhaps there is a chance. Until then, I’ll keep on bitchin’ to keep what sanity I have left.

By: maha

maha — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 21:27:54 +0000

A. Citizen: Dear, done. What’s your next plan?

And I really resent people who imply I haven’t worked hard enough to get rid of Bush.

By: A. Citizen

A. Citizen — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 21:16:36 +0000

Yawn….all comments are so, so, so true…..

So what?

I and my posse knew all this shit years and years ago. Git off da damn internets and git on the phone to yer Congressperson and tell ‘em you want Bush gone right now! No waiting…no bloviating…run the Worst President Ever out of town. And call ‘em every week until it gets done.

By: alyosha

alyosha — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 19:57:20 +0000

I once worked for a guy who loved the image of Bush as the CEO president. Finally we’ll get some things done through a strong, decisive, manly man. This boss was a minor tyrant, who surrounded himself with yes-men and mediocrities, and who constantly made poor decisions, because he could trust noone but himself, while blaming others for his failures. I left, because I got tired of cleaning up after his messes, and I got tired of the monologues, the unwillingness to learn from others, and the insecurity this guy had around people who were smarter than he was. Seeing this in my workplace was a real education into the pathology you wrote about.

My question is, what are the pathways to derail this process? Are there positive examples we can work to put into practice? Does a system have to fail massively – as Nazi Germany, or Enron did – before the sick culture and the persons embodying it can be replaced.

By: No More Mr. Nice Guy!

No More Mr. Nice Guy! — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 19:36:14 +0000

Maha, you hit the nail on the head as always. Megacorporate CEO’s are all style and bluster, no substance. Every study I’m familiar with shows no correlation between performance and “compensation”. And as for risk, needless to say those fat cat prima donnas are only risking other people’s money.

I used to work for Ciena Corporation, whose CEO, Gary Smith, was named the most outrageously overpaid CEO in the US. He drove the company and the stock price into the grond – from $200 to $2 in four years – while taking home tens of millions a year. There was one time he came out to our location in Silicon Valley to give his yearly royal audience with the peasants, and one of my colleagues asked him about this disparity. Smith was fuming and cut the meeting short. A few months later he closed the location and laid everybody off. I’m not saying it was related, but this guy was definitely a major league A-hole so I wouldn’t put it past him.

It’s amazing how these CEO types can be so arrogant, fondly imagining that they exude the magic qualities “charisma” and “leadership”, unrelated to any actual competence, and that the “little people” hang on to their every word for inspiration. It’s the modern equivalent of royalty. And you know what happens to royals in the end – they go insane through inbreeding, or they get the guillotine.

By: ironranger

ironranger — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 18:44:29 +0000

Massive egos & testosterone overload. Reading about the bunkerbuster test called Divine (?) Strake (what’s up with that name?) to be done in early June with 700 tonnes creating a large mushroom type cloud near Las Vegas made me think of “manly” men’s penis worship. What could be more of a testosterone rush for these kind of guys than the sight of a gigantic mushroomn cloud? I call it the big wienie syndrome.