Comment by nostrademons
15 days ago
Because they are publicly traded and subject to lots and lots of checks on corporate governance. The CEO actually didn't want to lay people off (and did a shit-poor job of it when he did). He was getting pressure from the board, who in turn was getting pressure from a lot of activist hedge funds.
Small-fry who operate secretly are able to take the long view and enrich themselves off the masses' stupidity. CEOs of a multi-trillion-$ company that is ~10% of the retirement portfolio of every American are not. At that level you have to go with the market consensus, because you will be ousted and deemed not a fit steward of the enterprise that you are entrusted with otherwise.
> Small-fry who operate secretly are able to take the long view and enrich themselves off the masses' stupidity. CEOs of a multi-trillion-$ company that is ~10% of the retirement portfolio of every American are not.
From my math, you're off by several orders of magnitude, unless somehow we're not talking about Automattic anymore.
He's a Googler, he's talking about Google.