For pretty much my entire career, CEOs have been almost invulnerable. Even when Steve Jobs, Apple's founder and lead spokesperson, tried to get then-CEO John Scully fired from Apple, he lost and got fired himself.
I've watched CEOs at companies with zero-tolerance employee dating policies have affairs with subordinates and get a pass. (At Intel this was so bad it seemed like an unofficial CEO perk.) Even though Jobs went behind his board's back to issue himself stock options, he survived that during his term as CEO.
Holy crap -- have things changed. Almost every week, another CEO bites the dust for misbehavior. Last week it was brand new Texas Instruments CEO Brian Crutcher. The week before it was Papa John's CEO John Shnatter (which I think was an obvious coup).
Other than the U.S. president, the CEO who is acting out the most right now and still has his job is Elon Musk. (Without any proof, he accused one of the heroic divers who carried out the Thai cave rescue of being a pedophile.) That leads me to wonder whether Musk is next.
I'll share some thoughts on that possibility and close with my product of the week: the Fitbit Versa, which appears to be the best fitness smartwatch in market. It's closer to Steve Jobs' Apple ideal than the Apple Watch is.
I've long expected the market to turn on CEOs and put them on the endangered list for employees, largely because their compensation has become unreasonably large. It really looks irresponsible, if not negligent, for boards to pay some of these folks -- particularly those running companies that can't seem to spell profit -- massive amounts of money.
Instead of being humble about it, many of these folks seem to want to rub their employees' noses in this fact. I was particularly taken aback by Brian Krzanich, Intel's now ex-CEO. While announcing a layoff, he argued that he needed to be paid millions more because he was underpaid. It was the modern equivalent of the Marie Antoinette "let them eat cake" event. Given that she was beheaded, I expected his term to end badly -- and it did.
Lately CEOs have been dropping like flies even though it's often not known why the guys -- and yes, they are mostly men -- have been fired. The implication is that most of them were behaving badly in connection with some female employee. However, as with any feeding frenzy, you are likely to see some CEOs who likely shouldn't have been fired get caught in the melee.