Which CEOs are actually worth keeping around?

CEO of Ben &Jerry's. They are not just posting the black square on their insta and then moving on, like half their posts are about fighting inequity, encouraging people to vote for actual human rights, openly pro abortion, pro immigrant rights, pro black rights, pro women's right, about fighting climate change etc. they are walking the walk, conservative dollars be damned

Also AFAIK they are one of the few companies that have been removed from the BDS list after improving behavior and leaving illegal Palestinian settlements. Recently they sued their parent company for silencing their statements on Palestinian rights.
I don’t love ever setting any people or corporations on a pedestal. Nevertheless this is reassuring behavior to see amidst all the Starbucks, AirBnB and Re/Maxes of the world.
It's a shame they don't fully move to vegan ice cream
Edit: When the very base ingredient of their ice cream is based on exploitation and torture, how much are their initiatives really worth? It's virtue signalling at its best
Plus I'm yet so see someone giving a valid reason as to why they shouldn't. Just tell me you don't care and I'll move along
- Why should they? I have no problem with people being vegan and I have no problem with vegan food being provided as an option but I don't think vegans have the right to dictate to everyone else how they live their lives.
- That would be an absolute disaster.
Adding my vote of confidence to them

GabeN has been pretty cool.

Gabe has 6 yachts worth about $1 billion dollars. Not very cool at all, imho.
- He didn't kill anyone by denying them insurance or anything like that tho. Just took a commission on every game sold on Steam, a platform nobody's forced to use.
- Im a huge steam fan.
  I am not a fan of someone who can own multiple yachts.
  Sorry GabeN.

This CEO, Gabe Newell, and (if he was still alive) the founder of Little Caesars, who, if I recall correctly, secretly paid for Rosa Parks apartment until her death.

The founder of Little Caesars was a typical magnate developer who bought up much of downtown Detroit and let it rot until he received tax incentives to build, and kicked out many low income residents from apartments he let sit until they got city money. His family continues this tradition. The Rosa Parks thing is the only good thing I've ever heard of that man and his family do.
Add Steve Wozniak to the list of the ones to be protected. The Woz has done more to pull people up and we should all aspire to that level if we ever have the means.
- Woz isn't a CEO and was stabbed in the back so many times he makes the Ten of Swords look like a sign for future friendships
Nah people need to stop jerking off Gabe and valve I general.
They started predatory lootboxes, ridiculously expensive cosmetics, early access, owning a licence instead of the actual game, had to be sued just to get refund policy and the vast vast majority of his wealth has come from just skimming a bit off from people who actually make games he distributes.
If you look at valve without the "omg steams sale XXXDDD"" mentality, then they are no better than ea or Activision.
- Do you understand how much work goes into distributing terabytes of content around the world?
  Valve give you AAA games. For free. No material restrictions on game-play or competitive advantage. They pay for the server hosting, anti-cheat and matchmaking.
  The provide a storefront that anyone can sell their games on. And they don't contract you into exclusivity periods like others do. Do you think it's coincidence that they have, by far, the largest games store in the world?
  They have supported games, for free, for over 10 years. You could have 10 years of world-class online gaming (CS:GO/2 or DOTA2) and have not spent a single penny, with no hit to your ability to play and win.
  Sure, they're not perfect, they are at their core a profit-driven company and they can do things that are not in the consumers best interest.
  But to compare them to shitbags like EA and Activision/Blizzard is an incredible thing to do. And removes any weight from your argument.
- Truth.
  Valve been private company allows them to avoid some shortsighted decisions of public corps, but they're no saints.
  We need more stores, with an interstore protocol allowing you to move your licenses. EU get on that please
- He also normalized hosting kid's content and adult/gambling content on the same platform. Anyone who tried to open up a game store that also sold adult material would get crucified nowadays.
  The reason Steam is praised so much is because unlike EA and Activision, regardless of what they try to push that they shouldn't, they do put in the effort of going back and looking at issues from gamer's eyes. Those cosmetics? They came about at a time when P2W was much more of a concern, and paying for something merely visual was considered much more acceptable. Early access? It came about from trying to open up development to more indies instead of just the big devs and publishers. Licensing instead of owning? The alternative were much more costly physical copies that also degraded with time and which you had to maintain a backup of yourself. If your local game store didn't have it, you were screwed, and there could be no discounts. Porn on the platform? Don't care, not a child and I'm responsible.
  Even then, I still damn Valve on both normalizing licenses on a subscription service that were it not for its market dominance could easily be teetering right now along with most people's game library's, and for not bothering to make an adult/gambling only version of a game store. GOG needs a competitor (remember Devotion and now Nine Sols), and it has none. It is possible to make money and be a digital distribution service without being a subscription service. There should be far more distance between adult and predatory content and normal gaming content, not all parents are responsible and it more easily creates communities predators can target from overlapping interests.
Gabe Newell owns fleets of yachts and private jets. The man is using your sweet gaming money to burn the planet.
- Yeah but daddy gaben let's me play my games 😩 so it's okay
- maybe he's just buying up all the yachts and private jets so no one else can have them.
- Yeah we need a source.
  Also, as far as CEO's go, speaking from an outside perspective obviously, the man is wonderful. Valve makes solid business decisions in favor of long term growth instead of short term profits. They do this buy making sure that their platform is easy, safe, reliable, and not abusive for their consumers. They institute their own consumer protections into the platform that make them less money, just to make sure they remain a place we WANT to shop, when everyone else tries to make themselves the only place to shop, and then fucking over their consumers at every opportunity. Valve is a fucking case study on how companies should be ran, and a perfect display of how modern american capitalism is ruining everything, by being the antithesis of it.
- Sources or STFU.
aww

Couple of British examples of what should be the standard for modern business:

Julian Richer, founder of Richer Sounds (hifi store in the UK), seems like one of the better capitalists around. He signed over majority control of the company to an employee trust when he turned 60, donates 15% of their profit to charity, runs a nonprofit dedicated to exposing corporate tax avoidance, campaigns against zero hours contracts, and devotes company resources to promoting unsigned bands: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Richer

James Timpson recently stepped down as CEO of Timpson, another UK retailer that specialises in things like key cutting, shoe repairs, passport photos etc. He made it company policy to hire people who had been to prison and help them get back on their feet, and his campaign for prison reform saw him step down from the company to become Minister for Prisons in the current government. The company has a "Director of Happiness" who is paid to keep the front line staff happy, resulting in policies like getting the day off work on your kid's first day of school, compassionate leave for the death of a pet, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timpson_(retailer)

Timpsons apparently has really interesting business models.
A friend of mine has worked on a few of their conferences, and apparently it's both fascinating and they come across as a genuinely wholesome business.
It's a franchise, but the franchisee (ie the shop) has complete control over what they sell and what services they provide (I dunno if there are any guard rails). So if they want to offer dry cleaning, they can. If they want to offer phone repairs, they can. If they want to only partially offer something, then they can rely on the Timpsons service network to provide the actual service (so dry cleaning without owning dry cleaning equipment).
https://www.timpson.co.uk/about-timpson
The management teams delegate authority but retain responsibility and we have only 2 rules:
Look the part
Put the money in the till
And apparently they look after their staff really well. Actually good/useful perks & benefits. In addition to the compassionate leave you've mentioned, I'm sure my friend said something about timpsons owning some property that they allow their staff to book for free (like free accomodation for holidays). Or maybe they do block bookings of stuff, or something. I wasn't hugely paying attention tbh.
- franchisee*
Plus their stores smell even better than petrol.

Is the CEO of costco still a decent guy?

The hot dogs are still $1.50
- And the roast chickens are still the cheapest in town.
- nuff said
'Frade not. They are currently executing union busting measures against their workers.
- Did they actually go through with it? I remember them attempting it, but then immediately backing down and issuing a very reasonable response letter basically saying they were clearly in the wrong and allowed the union to form. I could totally be unaware of any more recent developments though.
Costco recently got a new CEO. The company had been pushing scummy tactics ever since.

Craig Jelinek the (CEO of costco until recently) was always considered a good guy for putting his employees first and concentrating on keeping a high bar for product quality.

Until recently? Did something happen recently to change this? (Genuine question, I've only heard good things about the Costco ceo)
- For actual clarity, Craig Jelinek stepped down in 2023. Ron Vachris is the current CEO. Not sure if there's been any negative policy change since then though.

Newman's Own salad dressing. Privately owned and all profits go to charity.

Privately owned doesn't mean anything. SpaceX, Twitter (I'm not calling it that), and Tyson are all privately owned.
- Privately owned at least means they aren't slaves to their quarterly reports. Every time a company goes public, they're subject to the delusion of infinite growth in a finite system.
- In fairness SpaceX isn't run by Musk, which is why it's actually doing constructive things and not getting into culture war arguments every 15 minutes.
Same with their frozen pizzas? I had never bought one before, then saw they were on sale the other day and figured I'd try them. Think it was 4.99 a piece. (Bogo 9.99) The pepperoni and ricotta one wasnt bad. The sourdough wasn't very decipherable, but better than many cheaper pizzas. The 5 cheese I can't speak for... As I overcooked it. The timer went off and I checked it, said to myself the cheese could melt a bit more and closed the oven. Saw the bottle of strawberry wine I was making didn't look like it was bleeding air properly next to the sink and decided I should slowly turn the cap to drain the pressure and let the fermentation continue. (Have gallons of strawberries I froze left over still from spring that I grew). Turned the lid a bit and it of course exploded so much worse than I expected. Ceiling, floor, cabinets and everything within 10 feet got hit. I went to the bathroom and took my shirt off washed myself, started cleaning up the mess and cleaning the ceiling, cabinets and finally the floor when I remembered, oh shit the pizza.... Yeah. The cheese was melted by then.. just a bit darker than intended
Seconding this, Paul Newman was probably the best person to ever come out of the state of Ohio.
He co-founded Newman's Own, a food company which donates all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of May 2021, these donations totaled over US$570 million. Newman continued to found charitable organizations such as the SeriousFun Children's Network in 1988 and the Safe Water Network in 2006.
(Pasted from his Wikipedia page)
And, sadly, no longer available in Canada for some reason :-(

Sam Reich of Dropout TV

He's been here the whole time!
- "Teachers and nurses should be paid less, stock a vending machine with Advil and it could to the same job" - Sam Reich
Is he even technically rich-rich? Or is he just my-parents-have-money rich?
- It's to my understanding that Dropout is doing pretty damn well, so I imagine he's pretty rich from that. Not billionaire rich, but likely a millionaire.

All of them

at minimum wage

- I always forget that in America minimum wage is just a suggestion

Any CEO that is willing to part with 50% or more of their wealth before they die and not to their family or close friends, should be good. No idea about names

Any CEO that is willing to part with 50% or more of their wealth before they die and not to their family or close friends, should be good.
And that includes their ~~totally above board charitable organization~~ money laundering and tax shelter organization masquerading as charity.

Bill Penzey would be safe in my book. Penzey's spices are a fantastic product, but he's an activist who very vocally supports equality, respect, and human dignity.

Shortly after the election I received a blanket from them with a very kind note. Apparently they had a promotion where you could submit the name and address of someone who is struggling and could use a hug. I have no idea who nominated me, but I'm so grateful. Penzey's didn't change any money for this, which is crazy to me.

I just went to the website and was my attention was first on the link "About Republicans". An essay on the current fall of the Republican party and why they don't believe in them anymore. I think they deserve some of my money.
- You will be well rewarded with a quality product, too! It's so good, even my MAGA mother in law is on their mailing list. If you enjoy the essay About Republicans, you'll likely also love their emails. They have great sales, too. The weekend before the election they offered half off almost everything in their stores if you mentioned the promotion, and I got a free coffee mug, sticker, and sample product. They offered me two mugs because my partner came with me, but I didn't want to be greedy.
- An essay on the current fall of the Republican party
  This has been going on since at least the 2000s and possibly earlier, that's the point at which I started paying attention to US politics. It was even noted in the Newsroom which I think is circa 2012
I loved going into the Penzey's near me. Just about every spice you could ever need, and my store had an entire section dedicated to different types of cinnamon from all around the world. The people that worked there were all super nice and helpful too, it was always a joy going in there. Unfortunately that location didn't survive COVID 😢
Their emails are amazing. And the spices are very very good. I need to get some more of their vanilla. It was on sale, I think it might still be for today.
Also there's sometimes pictures of pets in the emails.

The ones without public shareholders.

The ones that are vocal about issues and on the right side of history.

I know he's not American, but Hidetaka Miyazaki of FromSofware

Great games but sadly working conditions at fromsoftware were not the greatest. Sure this is another country we're work life balance is different then in Central Europe but the pay was not good given how much work is was and how successful the studio got. But to give credit where it is due, AFAIK there have been significant wage increases.
- than*
Aren't they literally in the process of cashing out and selling to Sony?
- FromSoft's parent company is in considerations, iirc.

Maybe all CEOs get a yearly review. If they are good, they continue working. If something doesn't add up, they get to choose to quit or they get executed right on the spot by placing their head between two large metal plates. The top plate is then dropped from 3 stories high.

This sounds like the start of how liberal govt. was invented.
We'll end up with elected reps, laws, courts etc.
Which will soon be corrupted by the private sector
We'll need to invent some kind of open source decentralized communications platform to discuss the problem.
- to be fair, corruption will always exist, but without the strongest forces of corruption present (yes the rich surprisingly) it will be a lot more manageable
Why wait a year? Make it bi annual
- I don't particularly mind if they're bi or not lol.

My company's owner/CEO can stay, gives us all sizeable profit share bonuses. During covid people didn't get layed off, even though there was no work. Sure hours were reduced, but work was found around the shop to keep people busy as much as possible.

In other words, small business owners that care about employee and their clients.

Who stay small because they don't squeeze their employees and their clients to grow. They care about risks when opening a new location, even if those risks are primarily to the people they'd hire.
What's it called when something grows out of control without regard to the welfare of their peers or the sustainability of the system?

Well I know for sure ain't nobody mentioning the Nestle CEO, Laurent Freixe, on here 🤣

can't decide yay or nay for Mozilla but

Valve and CloudFlare.

Cloudflare provides valuable services this day on age but they’re building into a dangerous monolith of internet structure. Not sure how comfortable I am with that
- CloudFlare's dns seems like a better choice than Google's (from a mullvad dns user)
Gabe has like 7 yachts doesn't he?
- He's filthy rich and makes some of his money with gambling addiction. But his company invests million into Linux and I really enjoy Valve's products. There are thousands of worse CEOs and companies.
- Gaben is number 107 on the Forbes top 400 billionaires list.
  Dude is fucking stacked
Definitely valve. Say what you will about the man, or don't, I'm not your manager, but he has kept the same formula to steam since it was created. While other empires crumble and fall to enshittification, valve simply is.
We need Gabe to stick around as long as possible. If he wants to buy yachts and gamble with the money he has, let him. He didn't get to where he is by chasing every last dime and dollar, he got there gradually by running the company in such a way that it served the user base. As long as Valve's Software continues to focus on the user, we should leave this one alone.

Bill Long (now retired), who helped to transition WinCo into an employee owned business.

I would rather focus on billionaire and millionaire than CEO since both are not automatically interchangeable.... .

You can be a CEO In a small business without being a millionaire of the same category as the one of United HealthCare

This thread is cursed. First, "lets make a list of CEOs who are incredibly cool aktuly". Then "you know who are better than the mega-rich? The delusional wanna-bes who nickel and dime everyone they do business with in the vain hope of hitting the big time".
Worst human being I ever worked for was a guy who'd franchised out a college exam prep business and expected me to be on call 24/7 for $250/week. Guy was charging $2500/student for a six week course and my class had ten of them. Fuck small business owners.
- So your one experience represent all small business owners... Just wow
  Thankfully you don't paint with a broad brush 🙄

Spains Mercadonas CEO. They follow a very respected model where the consumer is the first priority, then the employees. Works great and they still make a shitton of money. Things like closing sundays because employees should have a life, etc. Employee rotation is super low.

Spains Mercadonas CEO. They follow a very respected model where the consumer is the first priority, then the employees. Works great and they still make a shitton of money. Things like closing sundays because employees should have a life, etc. Employee rotation is super low.
Is this for real? you mean Juan Roig, the guy who forced his employees to work during last DANA (aka 2024 floods in Spain, in which more than 200 spanish people died under it's effects, here is some local news with a capture of one of their delivery vans in which their logo has been deliberately deleted).
Who also had to let their workers stay at home because of popular pressure after they tryed to once again force them to work on subsequent climate alerts, who also tryed to force them to take vacation days if they didn't show up to work...
Who is also well know in the country besides their practices to flood mass media with covert advertising for pressuring their employees beyond the limits of legality?
Who also publicly threatened some guys who happened to come cross him on one of his supermarkets who recriminated his practices?
BTW in Spain all shops stay closed on Sundays except on a few rare occasion every year on a few sectors, but reading what you just wrote maybe some of them still work on Sundays...
- I have read the links. It seems that it's not as nice as they paint it. However, it seems normal that in an organization that size, things will not be perfect, or even near, but it does seem that they are better than most. They are the chain that pays their employees the highest salaries, for example. If you have 105.000 employees, it's a given that some will have problems at some point. About the DANA thing: I'm going to guess that store managers had much more to do than the company. It seems that on the whole they are better than most other chains in that respect. Some of the links you post go against your arguments, and some are from media which is not local, as you mention, but based in Argentina, and which has had court rulings against them for publishing fake news. BTW, stores in many regions in Spain open several Sundays during the year, and in Madrid, all Sundays, except Mercadona.

none of them. you don't need a CEO to keep a drink at $1 a can. I know it's a meme but y'all libs will go too far with it and coopt it into "awww we can't hurt Elon musk he's too uWu smol bean" by the weekend. I saw what you did with brat summer.

No clue what libs you're talking about, gonna guess ur using the word lib too broadly when you mean neo-lib. All the actual libs i know have had guillotine on their wishlist for years now.
You want someone at the top of the management hierarchy. You can call that guy a CEO or not, but it's the same job. You can take away private investment and have the workers own the means of production at that company, but it's still the same job. You can flatten that hierarchy until it resembles the terrain of Kansas, but it's still the same job. You can pay that guy only somewhat more than the median wage at the company, but it's still the same job.
You went from "I like the tea is cheap" to "I bet you're in love with Elon musk and I hate liberals" in like... No steps at all.

The Patagonia CEO seems like a genuinely good dude

It’s $1.29 now printed on the can here

Not much of a price increase over nearly two decades.
I'm sorry for your loss. I got the green tea at a gas station the other day for .99 cents in Nashville. So it must be regional
I haven't seen that.
I only see that it's 22oz and not 24oz now.

What is "the People's Cookout"

I'm gonna guess it's the sort of situation where you bring your own torch and pitchfork.

Mike "My Pillow" Lindell... HEAR ME OUT... I don't agree with his politics, but the dude is hilarious.

I couldn't find mirth in his behavior. It disturbs me to greatly how completely a man is willing to hollow himself out so entirely, so they can be filled entirely with nothing but hatred.
So I must disagree. What humor is actually found in misery?
He's gonna Mcafee himself eventually anyway.

Been decades since I saw one of those cost a dollar

They’ve been a dollar everywhere I see them sold. If you see someone selling them for more you can contact the manufacturer and they may stop selling to them. They’ve done it before.
The price is on the can though
Been buying them at my local market for 89¢ each on sale for the past few months. I have seen them for like $1.25 or so at some places though, even though the can says 99¢

Management is a skill. You can collectivize property relations and keep the positions of Capital Managers. Moreover, in underdeveloped sectors, Markets are a good way to rapidly develop a framework that can then be folded into the public sector and centrally planned by the degree to which it has developed.

Do we need Capital Owners? No, we don't need any. We will still need managers and directors of Capital, even within Communism, ie Central Planners. If the question is how many Capitalists do we need, the answer is 0. If the question is how many Capital managers and planners do we need, the number is much higher than 0.

Management is a skill
Of course it is. And production is a skill. Why is one being paid so much more than the other?
- Because they have all the power within Capitalism. I'm a Communist, I want to collectivize property, we can have economic planning of public property and those positions would look similar to CEOs without the ownership aspect.
  People seem to be misinterpreting my comment as justification for Capitalism, when it's the opposite.

As long as keeping them around doesn't mean not taxing the shit out of their extant assets, I think a few are probably worth being spared.

Lower on the list, but still on the list.

Discussion not worth having tbh

Surely, you don't think the CEO making 50k a year managing a small business needs to be on the chopping block.

Not a single fucking one

Where are the CEO's that lead with fair income distribution and implement company policies that follow the Danish, Norwegian, Swedish or Finnish labor laws and lifestyles?

Crickets...

Only the ones who relinquish all of their wealth and offer to become a rank and file worker.

Ah yes, so that they will be replaced with someone much worse. Great plan.

Shane Te Pou maybe ? (from mega.nz)

BofA is totally worth keeping around

Bofa deez nuts maybe, but the Bank of America can fuck all the way off
- This is the best possible answer.
Terrible bank, like most that aren't credit unions, they have over leveraged tens of billions against individual account balances and been a leaky sieve in tech security.
- I have no idea why most people don't use credit unions. I guess just ignorance. My "overdraft fee" is "keep at least $50 in your savings account and we won't charge you one."

What's also crazy thing that no one mentions that these money numbers are just a digital stamp. There's no real currency or value backing it

Dude the moment that becomes real we all lose everything. THEY have their wealth tied up in non liquid assets....ie VALUE behind the numbers. When monetary value collapses All of us tied up with digital value that means nothing are screwed.... The wealthy will loseout too but they're protected.
Edit: Digital value = us dollars in the bank...market or notes under your bed. Not talking crypto anything.