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Comment by ztrww

> There's nothing obvious about this to me - how would you distinguish that from survivorship bias?

So success of companies is entirely random? That seems statistically unlikely…

I mean are you really saying that there are no decisions that CEOs regularly take due to which a company might lose/gains up to millions to billions of dollars? Why wouldn’t you pay a CEO whose actions can bring the company billions a 100m or so? Seems like a good deal..

e.g. if you put a random highly competent, educated and very hardworking person in charge of Apple back in 1997 is it more or less likely that he would have done better than Jobs?

I mean, yeah I agree with you in part. In most cases it’s hard to distinguish real impact (even after a few years) from survivorship bias which is why this whole process is so inefficient. I’m sure that quite a few companies are just as likely (if not more likely) to hire a 100+ mil CEO who’ll be a net negative on as one who’s action will bring 10x+ in additional revenue compared to what most other candidates would have.

parent ztrww 3 years ago

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