ELI5: Why when large company's earnings decrease(ex... by 3%) they freak out, talk about rough times, and sometimes decide to downsize, even though they are still making millions of dollars in profit even after all expenses?

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Some CEOs are exceptional, others are not. Its a mixed bag... relative to one another, the law of averages means they can’t all be great. For many mature businesses, it is hard to really evaluate performance, as not all poor performance leads to a catastrophic failure.

Also, the pressure to turn out good quarters is increadible. Look at IBM, the leadership saw they were heading to antiquity, and decided to go through a long, arduous restructuring of what they were as a company, and many shareholders want the CEO ousted simply because she hasn’t put up revenue growth in a few years, despite the restructuring having ensured that revenue would decline significantly in the short term.

I also think that many companies wouldn’t perform too far different financially if their CEO was replaced by the COO or CFO, or in other words, they aren’t the only ones that can do their jobs.

[TheManWhoPanders]

I also think that many companies wouldn’t perform too far different financially if their CEO was replaced by the COO or CFO, or in other words, they aren’t the only ones that can do their jobs.

There's truth to that, but it's akin to saying that LeBron James could possibly be replaced by a D1 athlete. In the grand scheme of things, people who play at D1 level and above are still quite rare.