It’s not a good time to be a CEO, judging by the recent wave of layoffs in the US. HSBC’s Noel Quinn unexpectedly announced on Tuesday that he will step down as CEO when the board selects his successor. Bob Bakish of Paramount Global resigned from the media giant on Monday, and Kenny Wilson of Dr Martens recently announced that this will be his last year at the shoe company.
Their departures are part of a broader trend. Last quarter, a record number of CEOs changed in American companies — 622. This is 48% more than in the same period last year, and 27% more than in the previous quarter. This is according to the staffing firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which has been tracking these changes since 2002.
«C-level leaders have been through incredibly challenging years, and they are stepping down from their roles for new opportunities or to start a new life elsewhere,» says Andrew Challenger, Senior Vice President of the company.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk complained that running a company «is not really that much fun» and sometimes «is just terrible». According to him, CEOs are overwhelmed by the «worst problems in the company» that no one else can solve. In 2022, Musk also complained that he sometimes feels «quite lonely» if he lives alone while working on a project and doesn’t even have a dog to companion him.
The combination of enormous pressure, stress, loneliness, and lack of work-life balance that often accompanies the job of CEO may well explain why few people stay in the position for long.
But there are exceptions to every trend: Warren Buffett has been CEO of Berkshire Hathaway for more than half a century. The 93-year-old has probably lasted so long because he hires an army of CEOs to run the many companies he has acquired over the years.
«We delegate almost to the point of abdication», — he wrote in his «Owner’s Manual». Handing over the day-to-day responsibilities allows Buffett to focus on what he loves to do: allocating capital inside and outside his company.
Source: Business Insider