Comment by dctoedt
3 days ago
> I think there is some blame for not standing up to Musk and leading better.
That seems in the same category as saying there's some blame on her for not working harder on basketball in her youth and so never becoming a WNBA Finals MVP. (Narrator: Um, no, she's not nearly tall enough ....)
I'm just not sure her complete lack of power to stand up to Musk is a defense. If a controversial rich guy offers you a CEO job that consists entirely of laundering his reputation by pretending his decisions are your own, you have a social responsibility not to take it. I'd be more sympathetic if she were some random person who couldn't otherwise dream of an executive level pay package, but she was the head of ads at NBC.
> If a controversial rich guy offers you a CEO job that consists entirely of laundering his reputation by pretending his decisions are your own, you have a social responsibility not to take it.
I don't think you become the CEO of any major company by believing that "social responsibility" exists. Doesn't the job pretty much select for the type of person who thinks the world owes them $20+ million a year?
With that said - it's dumb to blame the puppet for the acts of the ventriloquist.
"just following orders" has been well established as no defense, and is more relevant than usual.
3 replies →
> a social responsibility not to take it
She was paid $6M a year + undisclosed stock package. A lot of people will set aside their morals for this amount of money.
She was making $4M at NBC! Again, I can imagine and be sympathetic towards a story where a billionaire gives you otherwise unimaginable wealth if only you'll sit in a comfy CEO office while they run the company around you. That isn't what happened here, and not because of some tactical mistake by Musk - her experience and connections as an ads executive for a major media company were at least a big part of why Musk wanted her, if not the entirety of it.
“We have established what you are, madam. We are now merely haggling over the price.”
This analogy would work if she actually was the WNBA Finals MVP but didn't score a single point.
I mean, you are hired as a CEO by Elon Musk, there must be some certain expectations on the capabilities of a CEO, and I think one of the first one is being able to stand up for yourself, if nothing else.