
How to organise a large org without hyper-salaried execs? - a3n
Counter example: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thedailybeast.com&#x2F;frontline-workers-are-going-without-pay-as-hospital-ceos-keep-their-seven-figure-salaries?ref=home<p>I feel that execs and administrators have become parasites.<p>How could you organise large corporations and institutions so that they don&#x27;t need C suite executives? I find it impossible to believe that anyone actually does $8M plus stock and bonuses worth of work.
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Spooky23
At a broader level, taxes.

When it comes to workers, the deep economic thinking is that money isn’t
something that drives performance. When it comes to the back-scratching world
of corporate governance, cash is king.

The public sector demonstrates that you don’t need to pay excessive salaries
for many types of executive workers. The most senior generals in the military
make $300k. The most senior executives of government agencies tend to make
$150-250k depending on geography. The no-name CEO of some small hospital
network makes $3M.

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jekrkek9
Yeah my response to Marc Andreessen on what we should build:

A tax system like the one that lifted the families of these rich trolls before
they lobbied to tear it all down.

Watch us make tons of money off technology that was initially funded by
government because the rich, as usual, didn’t want to invest in it themselves.

IBM got gifted what would today be billions in handouts by being the only
seller of machines produced originally by taxes.

It’s a mathematical fact how that all shook out for that entire generation:
benefited immensely from government socialism. Then lobbied to take it away
from the next generation, acting instead like a grifting middle man on their
agency.

Let’s build a world that does that handout shit for everyone.

Do we build iPhone because of markets or because holy shit this is cool?

Fuck these outdated semantics for what we do shit. These guys aren’t gods.

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woofie11
Well, there are two correct arguments:

1) If a CEO makes a company 5% more productive, that's worth millions of
dollars.

2) More expensive CEOs aren't better. Indeed, they're often worse. The
selection processes are political, corrupt, and wonky.

I could do a better job than the CEO of about half of the organizations I've
worked at, /especially/ the larger ones. That's not a comment about me, but
about them -- many of my co-workers would have done better than I would. But
we never would make it to such a position, because the skills to become a CEO
are very different than the skills to run a big company.

If you figure out how to align the two....

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burntoutfire
1) If a CEO makes a company 5% more productive, that's worth millions of
dollars.

Only when he's 5% better (making company 5% more productive) when compared
against the next-best CEO available on the market.

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woofie11
... And that seems to be more-or-less a random die role influenced by
corruption. Odds are, though, that CEO will be more than 5% different, and
some people will /predict/ they will be more than 5% better (probably
incorrectly).

There really isn't any objective way to know who the best is, or who the next-
best is. If we had a stack rank, it'd be an easy problem.

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octokatt
W. L. Gore and associates have a nearly entirely flat organization with self-
directed employees. No teams, no managers, just leaders, and people decide I’d
they want to follow a leader. [1]

As organizational structures go, it’s worth sharing.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._L._Gore_and_Associates#Cult...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._L._Gore_and_Associates#Culture)

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statquontrarian
Why do you use the word parasites?

There are many examples with names such as "organizational democracy," "flat"
organizations, etc. with examples such as Gore-Tex, Morning Star, etc. Here
are a few starting points for you to research (I don't know much about them):

* [https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers](https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers)

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIxHmsWCd7g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIxHmsWCd7g)

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teal_organisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teal_organisation)

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a3n
I use the word parasites because of the example i linked, which made me angry
before my coffee.

Like many, have thought similar about the negative contribution of the growing
academic administrative class, in parallel with ridiculously high tuition.

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ystad
In my opinion, a hierarchical organization is the cause. In an organization,
which have heavy middle and top management, is excess fat. You are paying them
a lot more to "manage" the employees. This gives a lot more power to C-level
executives.

It surprises me, why companies would deviate to organizing themselves as a
hierarchy.

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mrfusion
I think you need a flat organization. Next you need a “constitution” that
governs how things get done. Examples: want to fund a new project? X% of the
employees have to vote for it? Want to fire someone, y% have to approve. (Or
whatever rules you want)

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afarrell
Stop publishing the salaries of executives.

Currently,

1\. Executive salaries act as a signal of the confidence of the board in their
leadership.

2\. A successful executive who wants to jump ship can go into a negotiation
armed with information about their counterparty's BATNA.

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sloaken
I think a major part is the lack of independence of the boards or these
organizations. The board of one hospital is made up of executives from another
hospital. And their boards are made up from the first one. So they all keep
supporting each other.

