The point is that bus driver is not a derogatory term but that people that drive buses do important work and give direction to a 10+ton vehicle that would otherwise be going nowhere and take responsibility for the lives of their passengers.
Calling a CEO a 'glorified bus driver' is an attempt at playing down the importance of bus drivers and CEOs at the same time when in fact in both professions the responsibilities are substantial and the price for fuck-ups is immense.
Buses and companies do not drive themselves and if there is nobody or a bad choice at the wheel the corporations, their shareholders, the buses and the passengers will suffer.
This is wrong twice, first, a bus driver is in full control of his vehicle, he can't decide on the route but he's totally autonomous in his decisions.
Then, a CEO does not decde 'what the goals of the company are', that's something that will be decided usually in close cooperation with other managers.
CEOs that act as dictators usually do not last very long, typically they'll be the ones to maintain relationships with the outside world at the highest level but that's not reason enough think that they and they alone make the decisions as to what the goals of the company are. A CEO tries to get his people 'on board' with respect to the decision that are being made, and if as a CEO you do not do that you will either find yourself between jobs or you'll face a walk-out of your managers. In many cases the 'goals of the company' are codified either in a mission statement, in the articles of incorporation or in a separate agreement between the major shareholders of the company.
In a company where the CEO is also the largest stockholder it may well be the case that the CEO dictates what the 'goals of the company are', but in that case it is probably better to speak of him or her as the 'owner' of the company in that context rather than the CEO.
CEOs carry out the corporate vision, they do not define it by themselves.
We're writing this in a thread about Apple, and in the case of Apple it is probably right to say that Steve Jobs is the man with the vision who indeed does set the goals of his company but just as he receives only $1 in compensation for his work (he has substantial stock so that is where his real compensation is) he is something of a rarity in CEO land.
You're being really pedantic. The degree of leadership and autonomy required of CEOs is orders of magnitude more than bus drivers. Lumping them together in any meaningful way other than as fellow human beings is disingenuous.
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.
The CEO is also the top salesman of the company. In many companies, the CEO doesn't actually run the company - he's the face of the company and goes out doing sales. That can be incredibly important.
I think there's little doubt that Jobs is the top salesman of Apple.
I read it as saying that most CEOs are skilled but interchangeable workers, like bus drivers. It takes skill, but the route is set, by the board, by shareholders, by expectations. Of course the metaphor breaks down pretty quickly, but I think it's apt. Jobs took Apple in directions that few CEOs could even imagine, let alone implement. Most would have driven Apple straight off a cliff.
Calling a CEO a 'glorified bus driver' is an attempt at playing down the importance of bus drivers and CEOs at the same time when in fact in both professions the responsibilities are substantial and the price for fuck-ups is immense.
Buses and companies do not drive themselves and if there is nobody or a bad choice at the wheel the corporations, their shareholders, the buses and the passengers will suffer.