Noel Quinn resigns as head of HSBC bank. Vernon Yuen/NurPhoto/Getty Images
CEOs are leaving in droves as the top job becomes less attractive for some. Noel Quinn is also leaving HSBC.
There were 622 CEO changes in the US in the last quarter. That is 48 percent more than the year before.
Elon Musk, for example, complained that he “really didn’t enjoy his job at Tesla” and that he often felt “pretty lonely”.
This is a machine translation of an article from our US colleagues at Business Insider. It was automatically translated and checked by a real editor.
It seems like a tough time to be a CEO, seeing how many of them leave the top job.
Noel Quinn from HSBC quit on Tuesday unexpectedly announced that he would step down as head of the bank as soon as the board had chosen his successor. Paramount Global’s Bob Bakish resigned from the media company on Monday and Kenny Wilson resigned from Dr. Martens recently stated that this his last year will be at the helm of the shoe company.
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These resignations are part of a general trend. In the last quarter there was in the USA 622 CEO changes. That’s an increase of 48 percent over the same period last year and 27 percent over the last quarter. This emerges from a study by the HR consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which has been tracking these changes since 2002.
“C-level executives have had an incredibly difficult few years and are leaving their positions to pursue new opportunities or start anew elsewhere,” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice-president of the company, in the latest report.
“Rapid technological advances and the election year could be a good time for changes at the top,” Challenger added.
In recent years, company bosses have had to struggle with many problems. These include labor shortages, strikes, layoffs, culture wars, conflict, the remote work boom, disrupted supply chains, coronavirus lockdowns, historic inflation, rising interest rates and a highly uncertain economic outlook.
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So perhaps it’s no wonder that the average tenure of S&P 500 CEOs has fallen from six years in 2013 to under five years in 2022. That showed one an analysis of CEO longevity.
Pressure, stress and loneliness are commonplace for CEOs
The top bosses have been pointing out the difficulties in their jobs for years.
“Being CEO sucks,” Emad Mostaque, the former head of Stability AI, said in March.
“After five intense years, it is now time to find a better balance between my personal and business life,” said HSBC boss Quinn in a press release on Tuesday. He emphasized how difficult it is for top executives to combine their job with their other tasks.
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Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk complained about it, that running a company is “really no fun” and sometimes “just terrible.” CEOs are burdened with the “shittiest problems in the company” that no one else can solve, he said.
Musk also complained in 2022 that he sometimes feels “pretty lonely” when he lives alone while working on a project and doesn’t even have his dog for company.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he often feels “pretty lonely.” Grzegorz Wajda/SOPA/Getty Images
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky had a similar experience. “The level of loneliness I have experienced as a CEO is difficult to put into words,” he wrote in January on X.
The combination of immense pressure, stress, loneliness and lack of work-life balance that often comes with being a CEO may explain why few people stay in the role for long. The many recent challenges likely also contributed to so many people leaving the top job in the last quarter.
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Warren Buffet seems to be an exception
But there are exceptions to every trend. For example, 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 employs an army of CEOs. They manage the numerous companies he acquired over the years.
“We delegate almost to the point of giving up,” he wrote in his “Owner’s Manualfor Berkshire shareholders. By handing over day-to-day responsibilities, Buffett can focus on what he loves doing most: allocating capital within and outside of his company.
Axel Springer, Business Insider’s parent company, is an investor in Airbnb.
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