Accountability to me, means that your actions have consequences. Saying "I'm accountable" but it not having any material affect based on the outcome of your actions feels unfair to most people. Especially when it's really 11,000 people who are the ones to actually feel the consequences.
Zuck's net worth dropping from one unfathomable level of wealth, to another unfathomable level of wealth, isn't really a consequence here.
So each time someone makes a mistake there should be a material consequence to the person?
Would this not create an atmosphere of fear and drive society towards a fixed mindset where everyone would in case of mistake try to hide their mistake?
AFAIK the biggest upgrade to global aviation safety happened when mistakes were de-penalized, and all stakeholders could honestly discuss what went wrong and how to improve things in the future.
IMO, the biggest issues is not punishment, but understanding that a mistake was made, and an honest attempt to avoid similar mistakes in the future.
If a perpetrator fails to honestly see the harm in their actions, and perpetuate the same mistake repeatedly, then yes, they should probably face secondary consequences to make it understandable to every stakeholder that such behaviour is not acceptable. The reasoning here, however, is not some sense of global justice, but to simply de-normalize the pathological behaviour (if you repeat something without consequences it becomes 'accepted way of working').
Even "perpetrator" is harsh - overhiring is a business mistake, not some ethical or legal violation. It's part of the deal - you get hired, and you can get laid off later. It sucks for the employees to go through but they aren't victims.
I think you're dishonestly trying to equate a CEO having to fire 11,000 people due to his decisions, to something like an engineer wiping out a DB and having to restore from backups.
If suddenly, 11,000 people died today in airplane crashes in a single company's air fleet, you're be sure that their CEO would be under question. I'm not saying this is a fair analogy - but just as similar, your one wasn't either.
I suppose it boils down to how serious is the mistake of the CEO from the point of view of society, Facebook owners and other stakeholders.
I could imagine Facebook doing things that would indeed merit the sacking of CEO. For instance, doing something that leads to the death of 11k people would warrant severe consequences. I have no idea how Facebook could do that, but on the same par. They have all the data to do tons of nasty things.
I would view accidentally hiring 11k people from the point of view of the above interested parties indeed on the level of an engineer wiping db via accident (not negligence).
I imagine the mistake would be something like, you look at the market, you see it skyrocketing, you feed the numbers to your trusty excel sheet that has served you years and say, hey, we need more people. Only when market conditions normalize you realize the mistake.
Honestly, I really can't see the harm done here. People lose their jobs all the time. Corporation hire and fire. Why would this be any worse than standard practice in corporate america? (Of course it sucks to be laid off)
as i said in another comment, for 90% of the world's population, the level of wealth fo the average facebook employee is unfathomable too. so it's hard to play the "oh he's wealthy so there are no real consequences" card just for zuckerberg
Zuck's net worth dropping from one unfathomable level of wealth, to another unfathomable level of wealth, isn't really a consequence here.