> Every decision is affected by what they really are or think.
This is called micromanagement :-)
I am sure there are organizations where the actual work that people do day to day is unaffected by who the people at the top are or what they think on matters other than the business (people at the top are often rather unpleasant anyway). I can't say whether such organizations are common or whether Vercel is one; but I believe I worked at such.
Most people in the company do what they are told to, because they are there to get money for the living. That is just about shifting responsibility to the upper level in hierarchy. So they are definitely affected by the decisions of the upper management.
Whenever there is a decisions to be made about increasing profits, for example, someone needs to judge based on moral weight. Outsource to India? Do something gray and think legal matters later? Maybe there is no moral, and the company should operate based on the risk assessment of fines breaking the law and negative PR. In all cases, "what person is", highly influences the outcome of these decisions.
In a well-functioning organization, the upper management set the vision and the goals for the company and for the product(s); and then let the people who do the actual work use their best judgement to move towards those goals. The upper management, of course, may decide that it would be more profitable to lay off the employees and to outsource to India; and that, of course, would have a direct impact on the work of those at the lower rungs; but I don't think that is the kind of concern that people have when they complain about Vercel's CEO.
This is called micromanagement :-)
I am sure there are organizations where the actual work that people do day to day is unaffected by who the people at the top are or what they think on matters other than the business (people at the top are often rather unpleasant anyway). I can't say whether such organizations are common or whether Vercel is one; but I believe I worked at such.