What's this about?
After a CEO cut developers to make room for AI, the developers responded by open-sourcing an AI executive — OpenExecutive — that performs the CEO function instead.
What exactly is the argument underneath the joke?
Automation discourse assumes it flows downward, from expensive judgement roles to cheap task roles. But executive work is disproportionately made of things models do well: synthesising reports, writing communications, choosing between options with stated tradeoffs. The gag has a real point — the tasks most legible to a language model are not always the ones lowest in the org chart.
What's the community saying?
The thread enjoys the joke and then takes it half-seriously, debating which executive functions are genuinely automatable versus which consist of accountability and relationships that cannot be delegated to something that cannot be fired.