Lots of people run things, and lots of them are really bad at it. I've known people who I would classify as way above average managers, and their success is not just due to having carte blanche access to internal state. It's due to being able to manage the goals and expectations and workflow of many groups of people, and being able to keep all of the different plates spinning. Ensuring that everything is moving in the right direction all the time in an organization bigger than a few people is not trivial, and if you think it is, perhaps you are not getting paid enough.

I also think if you can replace a given manager with anyone and the right information, then that manager is as worthless as you think they are. While that may be true of many managers, it's not at all true of good ones. I think there's the daily work of the business, and there's the managing of the daily work of the business, and while the skill-sets often overlap, they are not the same, especially as the business grows.

On the other hand, I find it hard to justify many (most?) of the highest end CEO salaries, but generally a competent manager at a company doing just several million dollars worth of business per year is worth at least several hundred thousand dollars per year (roughly how much someone who owns and runs a business with that much revenue would make).

At the end of the day, I'm going to have to take the cop out though and say that if you've never met a manager that can't be replaced by just anyone with the right information, you haven't met a good manager, because I definitely know at least a few people who can step into many roles, whether it's running a business, or coaching a youth sports team, or helping a local non-profit, where everything starts running better once they start providing direction and it's not because there was no one providing direction previously.

It's difficult for me to describe what makes a CEO worthwhile as I do not have much understanding of the job past the barebones startup level in which case it doesn't really mean much of anything, so let me ask you a question - is there anything about what you do that means you can't just be replaced by anyone off the street, give them the info pertinent to the job, and set them loose?

I think most people on HN would say no I can't be replaced like that, I think I can't easily be replaced in the job I'm currently on. Not saying it's impossible just saying it is difficult, which is why they pay a lot of money for me.

I've worked non-technical jobs in construction and the like, and unless it was the stupidest low-level stuff you couldn't really pull anyone off the street and tell them well here's the job have at it.

But for some reason there does seem to be some people who think management can be replaced like that. It seems unlikely to me.

Now of course this calculation changes if the person being replaced is no good at the job, then yes when I worked construction you could probably have replaced me with some idiot off the street. And I suppose there are bad managers and CEOs that can be replaced the same way.

As for why they are worth their weight in gold, it is because that is what the market will pay, just as I am worth what the market will pay for my skills and the best construction worker I ever knew was worth what the market would pay which was quite a bit less than the money I get paid which is in turn less than a CEO gets paid for their skillset.

You need someone who can do this at the right time and about the right thing: https://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2008/06/24/full-text-an...

The ability to see where you suck and see your opportunities and above all, fight hard to fix it, is rare. It is much more than making a decision based off of information collected by advisors - it is vision and wisdom and political sense and grit. This is no less true when the particular mission is reducing suffering than when it is making money. Solving hard problems is always hard, and there are never enough people around who can make it happen.

> I find that there's always someone willing to clamor that CEO's are with their weight in gold

Keep in mind that HN has a disproportionately high number of owners of startups compared to most Internet communities. You'll see a lot more CEO worship on this site than reddit or any other site.

So you're saying any rando could have accomplished what Steve Jobs did? Leadership matters as demonstrated by all the similar companies which made horrible decisions in hindsight, and now are no longer around.

Are CEOs highly compensated because of scarcity or artificial scarcity? How would one tell the two apart? Answer the second question, apply it to the first, and I think even if we don't find an answer to your original question we would be in a better place.

Personally, I don't know. It does seem to be a lot of 'who you know' over 'what you know' at that level. Some special knowledge, but nothing that couldn't be taught with a 4 year degree. But it would be foolish of me to think I fully understand all that is needed. So I'm left wondering which is the case.

My understanding is a CEO's main capability that earns them a large salary is being able to influence company salaries.

I'm sure there are, that's where a lot of small non-profits find their leaders and board members, but past a certain size, the amount of time required means that they would not be retired anymore, and I presume most of them retired because they had interests to pursue beyond managing large organizations.