Before the 80s the top marginal tax rate was obscene, so as a CEO or exec the way you’d extract value from your company was to make sure it’d last a hundred years and keep paying you the whole time. Reputation was of the utmost importance.
Now it makes more sense to just cash out whenever you can. We’ve changed the incentive structure. Who the duck cares if the planes stay in the sky six years from now, you’ll be out by then and it’ll be someone else’s problem. There’s so much money to be made by taking existing reputation and cashing it in.
The best part is that in many industries, especially in software, you can fire people now and won’t really feel the effects for years. You can take the money now, and maybe try to deal with the problems caused when they come up.
Before the 80s the top marginal tax rate was obscene, so as a CEO or exec the way you’d extract value from your company was to make sure it’d last a hundred years and keep paying you the whole time. Reputation was of the utmost importance.
Now it makes more sense to just cash out whenever you can. We’ve changed the incentive structure. Who the duck cares if the planes stay in the sky six years from now, you’ll be out by then and it’ll be someone else’s problem. There’s so much money to be made by taking existing reputation and cashing it in.
The best part is that in many industries, especially in software, you can fire people now and won’t really feel the effects for years. You can take the money now, and maybe try to deal with the problems caused when they come up.