Nexon’s CFO, Owen Mahoney, talks to the Wall Street Journal about online gaming monet

I think you're ignorant of how many levels stand between him and his function and the actual functions you're complaining about

Why the antagonism? There's other ways to correct someone if you think they're wrong. Anyway, I'm fully aware that there's a fairly complex organizational hierarchy. I was just asking your opinion. I think I finally got it though not in the way I've expected to.

Let's look at where the average CFO falls in an org chart.

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> CFO -> VPs -> Directors -> Managers -> Supervisors -> Employees

CEO - > Regional VPs -> Directors -> Managers -> Supervisors -> Employees

> CTO -> Managers -> Supervisors -> IT Employees
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Every one of those is likely numerous branches unto itself, but the first key point here is the people who actually develop the game are very likely not on a direct branch linking to the CFO any more than the people who support the game are in the same branch as the developers.

The actual number of steps below the CFO on his own tree may be fairly small in a company nexon's size, but the chasm between him and grunts isn't.

Have you ever played telephone? At that degree of removal what do you think happens to communication?

I get it, and I've got it since you've corrected me about the communication between someone like the financial department head and a customer relations grunt being non-existent. I work in an organization/department myself so I know about hierarchy a fair amount. Yes there is a long and tedious communication line.

Everything gets summarized and only the good bits get passed up because no one wants to look bad to the people above them, therefore everything is always 'under control' and 'being worked on'. More importantly the people communicating with the CFO are marketing people who's entire purpose in life is to sell you a spray painted turd while pretending its gold, so his office is clearly not the place to be looking for realism. He deals with the media, with investors, with relations, not with customers. Not with the actual products.

Wouldn't he also be at least partially responsible for human resources of his own branch, at least for hiring those in the ranks directly below his? If he's the company's CFO wouldn't he also be responsible for how much money goes to a certain branch (I.E. the tech branch might be underfunded while the financial branch may be overfunded)? This is the core of where I'm getting at.

The middle managers are most likely the ones you need to be directing your anger at, because they're nearest to the problems to know they exist, and high enough to actually escalate to somewhere it could be addressed if they can't handle it entirely in their own department.

Well yes, the middle managers are probably sitting on their asses doing nothing or seem to hire incompetent, untrained, or underprepared individuals. But who is responsible for hiring the middle managers? It's their own supervisors and/or directors. Who is responsible for hiring those supervisors/directors which are negligent enough to let the middle managers do a crappy job and look away? It's those ranked above them. Maybe the incompetence is seen from the top down and they still do not care. Hence this guy and his cohorts to me aren't completely excluded from blame even if they are on a different planet from a separate branch.