CEO Departures Hit Record Levels (msn.com) 56
Chief executives are exiting their posts at an unprecedented rate as economic volatility and emerging challenges reshape corporate leadership decisions, according to data from executive tracking firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Public-company CEO departures reached 373 last year, jumping 24% from 2023 levels. Among U.S. businesses with at least 25 employees, 2,221 chief executives left their positions in 2024, the highest number since Challenger began monitoring departures in 2002.
Corporate leaders are citing AI, tariffs, recession fears and scrutiny of diversity initiatives as key stressors driving the exodus. "It's a very difficult time to lead," said Blake Irving, former GoDaddy CEO. "Given all the weird gyrations going on in the economy and with our new administration, it's really hard for even great leaders to find a true north." The trend extends beyond the C-suite, with managers 1.7 times more likely to report high workplace stress than rank-and-file employees, according to a recent McLean & Co. survey of over 200,000 workers.
Public-company CEO departures reached 373 last year, jumping 24% from 2023 levels. Among U.S. businesses with at least 25 employees, 2,221 chief executives left their positions in 2024, the highest number since Challenger began monitoring departures in 2002.
Corporate leaders are citing AI, tariffs, recession fears and scrutiny of diversity initiatives as key stressors driving the exodus. "It's a very difficult time to lead," said Blake Irving, former GoDaddy CEO. "Given all the weird gyrations going on in the economy and with our new administration, it's really hard for even great leaders to find a true north." The trend extends beyond the C-suite, with managers 1.7 times more likely to report high workplace stress than rank-and-file employees, according to a recent McLean & Co. survey of over 200,000 workers.
Oh no! (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway,
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"It's a very difficult time to lead,"
It ain't all roses for us galley slaves either mate!
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"It's a very difficult time to lead,"
It ain't all roses for us galley slaves either mate!
yeah, but they have the ability to jump ship, collect their golden parachute bonuses, and not have their names plastered all over failing companies.
They did learn one thing from the lessons of the Great Depression, which was to not be associated with the failing companies, to not have one's name or wealth tied up in them.
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yeah, but they have the ability to jump ship, collect their golden parachute bonuses, and not have their names plastered all over failing companies.
And that's the information that's not being flapped -- TFA talks about three CEOs who got out and are now either retired or working in a 'less stressful' position, but it doesn't say how big a share of this increase in exits are taking the standard 'jump ship, collect golden parachute, roll over to a new CEO position for more money' exit route rather than the 'exit to less or no responsibility' route where they can duck the consequences of their bad decisions.
Re:Oh no! (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway,
I take it you don't work? While I have zero love for rich arseholes, a change in CEO is hugely disruptive to many organisations as the new people come in and "leave their mark" on the company. We have gone through several CEOs in the past 7 years and it feels like we are in a perpetual re-org. Nothing is more demotivating than finding out a project you worked on for two years gets cancelled during construction because the new CEO thinks the company should go in a different direction.
Nothing is more fun that having the central engineering team split up in two teams with different focuses, and then just as your start to figure out an efficient way to work having a new CEO decide that actually one central engineering team is objectively better.
There's no "anyway" about it. Our current CEO is fighting for his job with shareholders at the moment and I'm just dreading what pointless change their replacement may bring and what disruption that will cause.
There have been higher rates of CEO departures (Score:5, Informative)
the last few years, pretty consistently since 2019 with a small percentage dip in CEO departures in 2022. It's a continuing story and an interesting one. No one wants to be CEO if they think things are going to shit and they'll be to blame, even if they know they get a golden parachute out of it.
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnbc.com%2F2020%2F01%2F0... [cnbc.com]
Re:There have been higher rates of CEO departures (Score:5, Insightful)
No one wants to be CEO if they think things are going to shit and they'll be to blame
And there we hace the core of the problem. Real leaders would value a challenge like this and rise to the occasion. I guess CEOs are very rarely leaders these days.
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We don't pay these people because they have values outside their own net worth, we just tie their net worth to their business. If you know the economy is going to suck for the next 5 years, and no matter what you do your pay is going to decline, it's a good time to focus on that yacht.
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"No one wants to be CEO if they think things are going to shit and they'll be to blame, even if they know they get a golden parachute out of it."
Bullshit. Virtually the entire world's population would want to be treated like a CEO for even a single day. Sociopaths who exploit workers and pocket obscene salaries and incentives also do not want those benefits to end or to be accountable, that is what you mean to say. There are boatloads of cretins who will exploit a company to get a golden parachute and al
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Hence they are leaving. These guys are strategic thinkers. Right now they are thinking get out before the company contracts, let the next guy take the blame. In a few years i can come back and get another CEO gig via my connections after "having spent some time with my family" after all just look at the charts $CROP was wildy successful under my 'leadership'
The reality the world is changing right now in significant structural ways. What these guys are saying is "I don't have the smarts to anticipate and
Boards of Directors are at fault (Score:2, Flamebait)
If a significant number of CEOs are departing and cashing out golden parachutes, the boards that hired them are at fault for (a) selecting the wrong person and (b) improperly incentivizing them.
Of course, no BoD can hold a card to the set of sycophants who gave away another large chunk of Telsa to Elon, only to watch him hose the company's reputation and revenue. At least for a while, there was some accountability in the Delaware courts for that. Of course, that's why Musk moved Tesla to Texas.
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the last few years, pretty consistently since 2019 with a small percentage dip in CEO departures in 2022. It's a continuing story and an interesting one. No one wants to be CEO if they think things are going to shit and they'll be to blame, even if they know they get a golden parachute out of it.
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnbc.com%2F2020%2F01%2F0... [cnbc.com]
I'll take all that blame for millions of dollars.
Is this really a a good thing? (Score:2)
Since they get golden parachutes and the next one will get paid more than their predecessor, is this really a good sign?
Re:Is this really a a good thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most CEOs do NOT have golden parachutes. And those only trigger if the Board choses to remove them; this article implies they are leaving meaning they are leaving their severance packages behind if they have it. On top of that, most CEOs are actually quite human, particularly small companies. Yet they are the ones who have to live with the responsibility of letting people go, or manage expectations of investors, Board members, customers and employees which very often don't align very well, or potentially losing millions of dollars of investment entrusted to them to build the company. You have to make a guess if the market is ready for a product or a strategy shift, and if you get it wrong you lose big time for investors, employees get laid off, and you are likely out of a job. The job market for CEOs doesn't turn on a dime; many find themselves in a new role 6 to 12 months later (hence the severance packages, which if they have one is usually one year salary at most, and that's not always).
When we talk about CEOs getting overpaid with golden parachutes, we often think of guys like Robert Nardelli [wikipedia.org] who was CEO of Home Depot for 7 years, didn't move the stock price at all, resigned and triggered a $210M golden parachute. Those are few and far between though, and they make the news and becomes the story. But there are 211,130 CEOs in the US [bls.gov] and packages like Nardelli's are maybe 1 in 1,000 and could be as high as 1 in 10,000. instead most are hustling to make the companies work, barely scraping by in a lonely position at all times where failure on a massive scale is a constant threat with no safety net below you; you're the last line of defense and there's no one to turn to.
re: defending the CEO (Score:4, Interesting)
I absolutely agree with you. But the problem is, you're talking about your smaller companies and not the big names that the general public is familiar with.
"Golden parachutes" aside? The CEO of any company with a household name is paid exponentially times more compensation than the rank and file employee working there.
People are generally fed up with the disparity there -- especially when these businesses are so large, many of the workers doing the customer-facing work may be managed by several bosses above them and never interact directly with the CEO once. In these situations, it becomes obvious that most business decisions that matter are being made by other individuals. Only the real general, highest-level stuff gets determined by the CEO, and when he/she makes a poor decision? It's typical to see him/her change course with some platitudes like "better to act quickly but be wrong than get paralyzed by inaction". A bunch of rank and file workers get punished by way of reduced raises the next year to cover for the mistake, and it's business as usual.
I've always had FAR more respect for smaller operations, where it's clear that the top level people are really keeping a pulse on everything happening in the company, and they really DO call all the shots, taking full responsibility for mistakes along the way.
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Your information changes nothing. The CEO pay is ~$725,553/year. I don't care if the corporation is 2 people or 2000 people, no CEO has ever done $725,553/year worth of work. And speaking of board of directors, the average board member is paid ~$325,000/year, which is also way too much for the lack of real work. I'm guessing you weren't one of them in either role, which, I guess, is unfortunate for you. No one at Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, Honda, Toyota, or any company ever, has worked "hard enough"
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average CEO pay**
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There are reasonable arguments that Steve Jobs was worthy of his hire. And once upon a time I think Elon Musk was also.
Note that neither of those was someone I'd want to work under, but they did the job. (OTOH, I've heard it claimed that Musk was just lucky. I don't believe it, but I've never checked enough to be sure that's wrong.)
Re:Is this really a a good thing? (Score:4, Informative)
no CEO has ever done $725,553/year worth of work
Define the worth of work? What do you do for your job? I know what I do. My decisions don't impact my colleagues, their retirement packages, or society in general. On the flip side there are several CEO's whose job is literally to define the fate of thousands of not just employees but can define the stability of public communities in nations, changing the land scape in the most literal sense of the word with their decision.
Responsibility is worth something, even if you think you work harder, the reality is the impact of your decisions are often meaningless compared to those in the C-suite team who at the flick of a pen decide the fate of thousands.
Yeah at the high end CEO pay is excessive, but $750k / year is not at all outrageous.
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When I was CEO, I was bringing a struggling startup off the ground, was responsible for millions of dollars of investor money and trust, the careers of over 20 people given the lifespan of the company as well as managing customer needs, desires, and expectations.
CEO compensation isn't about value of work. It's about the weight of responsibility. It's about setting expectations, and a term that doofuses like him that don't understand the le
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CEO compensation isn't about value of work. It's about the weight of responsibility.
That is full on horse shit. That still isn't an excuse for the general average pay disparities between the top and the bottom. The top may be "responsible" for the bottom, but without the bottom there is no top.
forcing your business partner out of the company because he sexually harassed an employee, but per the law still has legal ownership as a partner
Perfect, thanks for an example I didn't know I even needed. This is a wonderful example of how the system is garbage. Sexual harassed an employee? They don't get have legal ownership anymore. I do not give a fuck.
It's about compensating for a key employee who needs 3 weeks off
Don't put all your eggs in one basket. No singular employee should be so important that
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In my opinion, small businesses with less than 10 employees shouldn't be allowed to be a corporation to begin with.
How did you come to determine that the number of employees should be the guiding factor in whether or not incorporation should be allowed? Wouldn't that create huge liability issues and severely disadvantage small businesses prior to reaching 10 (or whatever number we pick) employees, stifle genuine grassroots entrepreneurship, and just further entrench the already massive corporations that do exist?
And speaking of corporations, their current legally required structure is bullshit and should be completely redone from the ground up.
What is it that you dislike about corporate structure? The owners (Shareholders) elect/appoint the Board of D
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How did you come to determine that the number of employees should be the guiding factor in whether or not incorporation should be allowed?
Arbitrarily for argument's sake.
Wouldn't that create huge liability issues and severely disadvantage small businesses prior to reaching 10 (or whatever number we pick) employees, stifle genuine grassroots entrepreneurship, and just further entrench the already massive corporations that do exist?
Without redoing the current system, probably. It's not a one-step snap fix. There are many cascading changes that would need to happen.
What is it that you dislike about corporate structure?
All of it, pretty much. But mostly how they are treated as legal entities.
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In my opinion, small businesses with less than 10 employees shouldn't be allowed to be a corporation to begin with. And speaking of corporations, their current legally required structure is bullshit and should be completely redone from the ground up.
And then watch all the small business's disappear. I love fools like you who complain about big business's, but then say foolish things like that which simply gives big business's more power due to less competition. But wait, let me guess you will simply push for more regulations which again always favor big business because they have the money to find the loopholes, and those regulations eventually squash what is left of the competition.
I can always tell the people that have no idea just what it takes to n
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You seemed to ignore the second part where the current legal structure for corporations needs to be redone from the ground up. Which implies a new system that potentially (in my mind) would benefit only small businesses while actively not helping big businesses at all. In fact, I would design a system that harshly punishes those who attempt to find and use loopholes. And not just with mere fines, I would revoke business licenses and ban those people from starting new businesses as a start.
It comes down to b
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It's also absurd to suggest Bo
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Your information changes nothing. The [average] CEO pay is ~$725,553/year.
You are talking about different things. You're talking about CEOs of gigantic corporations. He's talking about CEOs of tiny corporations.
And without a source, I have no idea what that number came from or what it refers to. But if the top, say, ten CEOs are paid $101.5 million, and the next 90 are paid nothing at all, the average pay of a CEO is over a million dollars, even though most of the CEOs are unpaid.
I don't care if the corporation is 2 people or 2000 people, no CEO has ever done $725,553/year worth of work.
No CEO of a 2 person corporation is getting $725,553/year
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How do you mean?
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Golden Parachute (Score:2)
At the executive level, it is common to negotiate the terms of your exit before you begin working.
When times get tough pull the ripcord and move on. Take a long vacation, and polish up your resume: "under my leadership the business grew!" (don't mention that you bailed just before it cratered...those were market conditions beyond your control.)
Rinse and repeat. Or take your mountain of cash and retire.
AI CEO (Score:2)
It will happen. I remember 25+ years ago on slashdot the topic was companies outsourcing people from India to do IT jobs. The joke was "why don't the CEOs outsource themselves to Indians?" ... Today a bunch of CEOs (Microsoft, Google, Adobe, IBM, etc) are in fact Indian. Therefore, we can predict 25 years from now that CEOs themselves of public corporations would be AI. Humans will be taken out of critical decision making.
"In three years, Cyberdyne will become the largest supplier of military computer syste
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Maybe it already is happening, and that's why so many CEOs are leaving their jobs!
Since 2023 (Score:2)
Record levels for last 2 years.
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You got your directions backwards. Obama *is* left. The only thing the left wants from businesses is more transparency and accountability (i.e. stop being greedy assholes). I know Europeans consider liberalism to be a "conservative" or right leaning thing, but in the US, Liberals are left. Conservatives, in the US, is basically synonymous with the right (i.e. Republicans and most Libertarians - not to be confused with Liberals).
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I suspect that was satire, and deserves to be highly modded up. Unfortunately, satire doesn't work well in brief text communications, so people will probably take that seriously.
Oh darn (Score:1)
The literal easiest and most overpaid job in the world got a little stressful? Is it like the stress of all their underpaid employees who do all the real work and somehow take it all in stride so much better than these fragile CEOs?
Yeah, sorry, zero sympathy. The average CEO makes $725,553/year. That is ridiculous. No CEO has ever done $725,553 worth of work in a year. No individual person ever has or ever will.
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The ironic thing is that the CEO job isn't playing the game. It is getting qualified so one can be a participant in the game, and getting the company to be able to participate in games. It is sort of like in some countries, it isn't doing the work in the college, but getting into the college where all the testing and competitiveness is done.
If it wasn't for that social aspect and getting to the top, I wonder how many C-level duties could be offloaded to a decent LLM.
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Ivy League schools. It isn't about the education; it's about the connections. The quality of the education in these schools is debatable. The quality of the people attending these schools is also debatable. The connections these schools allow you to form...not debatable, and statistically better for "professional" advancement than the education.
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CEO is not the easiest job. It's the difference between operating a car and building a car. If a person who can operate a car, it doesn't mean they can build a car.
These CEO quitters go through the motions, do "CEO like" things, yet never truly understand what's going on in the business.
The end of the woke executive (Score:1)
They know which way the wind is blowing.
Perception vs. Value (Score:2)
A while back, a large airline went through a bankruptcy/merger. As part of the return to business plan, the judge was to approve a $20m severance bonus
for the outgoing CEO. The judge approved everything but the $20m severance, and the airline merger and exit from bankruptcy concluded.
At the first board meeting of the new company, the new chairman of the board and CEO put forth a resolution to pay the $20m bonus to the now departed CEO. It was unanimously approved.
The lesson here is that leading your compan
Luigi made one depart. (Score:2, Informative)
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Re: Luigi made one depart. (Score:2)
We'll see. The chain of evidence is tainted.
2 kinds of leaders (Score:2)
I'd like to make a distinction between leaders that people follow voluntarily and those that are 'leaders' by dint of an org chart and people follow them because their livelihood depends on it.
It only takes a few hundred dollars in filing fees with the state to become a CEO / executive.... not impressive by itself. Like anything else, there are good ones and bad ones, judge them not by their title but by their results.
Regardless of one's position in a company, the test of any competencies is when things ar
Suggests an investment strategy (Score:2)
If these CEOs are bailing because they see problems ahead then divesting from their companies would seem to be a winning strategy.