Viswanathan K's Thoughts

As software and AI increasingly replace humans in more and more jobs, how far is it before the CEO of a company too is replaced by algorithms? Just two years back, Frank Pasquale wrote that “automation of the top management functions at firms like Uber and AirBnB would be “trivially easy.” Nicholas Carr wonders whether with the resignation (ouster?) of Uber CEO, Travis Kalanick, Uber’s shareholders now have that opportunity: “Uber and its investors have a perfect opportunity to disrupt the executive suite, and indeed the entire history of management, by using software to run the company.” But first, why is Uber such a good candidate for such an idea? Says Carr: “A fundamentally numerical company, constituted mainly of software, Uber is the perfect test bed for the robot CEO. And since its staff includes exceptionally talented programmers, it already has the skill needed to gin up the algorithms necessary to do the work Kalanick and his lieutenants did.” But the CEO ...

Why are higher ups so grossly overpaid? Pretty much everyone agrees that they are (even the higher ups feel the even more higher ups are overpaid!); but why are things that way? Tim Harford analyzed just that question in his book, The Logic of Life . His answer is both interesting and depressing. The higher up you go, luck plays an increasingly important role in the outcome of your work. The General Manager may allocate funds for a new product: whether or not it succeeds is a function of so many uncontrollable variables. Like a recession. Or the best brains quitting halfway into the project. Or a new game changer launched by a competitor. You get the idea. As luck’s role increases, the career risk for the guy higher up increases. When Microsoft’s tablets bombed, the engineers who worked on it will easily get other jobs. But the CEO (is rumoured to have) lost his job (it cost $900 million). The CEO’s job may be an extreme example, but the principle applies for middle and upper...

When Microsoft released its Office suite for the iPad (and Android phones), the comments on the Net were scathing: - Ben Evans titled the event, “Hell freezes over”! After all, that's what Microsoft software on an Apple device sounds like. - Others said it was too little, too late. That the world has moved onto other editors on their phones and tablets and nobody even wants Office anymore. And it is fashionable to call Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's ex-CEO, an idiot. But when it came to coming up with a mobile OS, Microsoft didn't really miss the opportunity (Windows Mobile came up in 2000); rather, as Ben Thompson wrote , they just got “out-executed” by Apple first and then by Google. Then again, Ballmer is (in)famous for having laughed at the iPhone when it was launched saying a phone without a physical keyboard would never succeed. He could not have been more wrong about anything in his life. By 2012, as Forbes said : “One Apple product (iPhone), something th...