Au Revoir

Also if you're doing key scans in redis, you're doing it wrong, it's possible to work around with indexes you have to manually maintain, but it's not worth it

A classist lie? What are you talking about?

Statistics are pretty clear in the failure rate of founder-CEOs when they scale past certain sizes. Even Zuckerberg -- if it weren't for Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook wouldn't have survived as well as it did. Zuckerberg didn't know the first thing about running a large organization, I might argue that he still doesn't -- but when a company can basically print money, there's a huge margin of error afforded to Zuckerberg-type leaders. If Zuck where competing in the energy business, banking or autos, he'd have been long since buried.

Steve Jobs also wasn't particularly good (managing a large org) during his first stint at Apple -- it took a lot of maturity and learning at Next and Pixar before he was really ready to lead Apple.

Mark Benioff is another founder-CEO that did really well -- however, he was an Oracle Vice President before starting Salesforce. He was both incredibly smart but also had experience within a large organization.

> Any reasonably smart CEO can learn his way from 10 - 10000. Yes, (s)he may not be capable of 10k on day one, but they can grow along the way.

Citation needed.

The list of successful founder-CEOs who have scaled to huge orgs is a very short list.

Nobody is suggesting that a large company CEO is "special." It's a different set of skills, that's just a fact. And, the idea of a CEO of a rapidly scaling company to learn through on the job training isn't always a good one. People learn by making mistakes and the marketplace isn't very forgiving -- too many mistakes and the company is toast.

There's nothing classist about it. You could train an army corporal to become a general. But you can't just take an army corporal all the way to the experience needed to become a general in a year or two. It takes generals 20+ years before they have the skills to lead thousands of soldiers. To suggest that any reasonably smart corporal can go from leading a squad to leading a division in a few years of on-the-job training is just ludicrous. If I'm wrong, then please provide some data. Actual data, not anecdotes.

Nobody is saying that a corporal can't ever become a general. The suggestion of classism is implying that a corporal can't become a general because he's not of the right class. Of course a corporal can become a general (at least in the US Army) -- which is the very opposite of classism. We're just saying that a corporal doesn't become a general through a few years of on the job training and that a corporal doesn't become a general while on the battlefield.

What I'm saying is that a good large-company CEO is gets those skills over years of experience. If a founder-CEO slowly scales, then perhaps on-the-job training would work. But when an org goes from 10 people to 1000 people in a few years -- it would take an extraordinarily lucky person to be able to handle that transition without prior experience.

What's interesting about what you said is that if one were to look at the CEOs of the Fortune 500, this idea of classism breaks down.

CEO of IBM: Ginni Rometty -- grew up in a single parent home, with a mom that worked multiple jobs. Ginni got in to Northwestern and studied computer science and electrical engineering. She certainly didn't have any upper-class advantages. She went to public school.

Geisha Williams, CEO of PG&E (part of the Fortune 500) -- daughter of Cuban refugees -- literally arrived in the US with nothing, her father was a political prisoner in Cuba before being released. He worked multiple jobs to support his family. Geisha started her career as a residential power auditor and worked her way up to CEO. Hardly a "silver spoon" story.

Rex Tillerson (former) CEO of Exxon -- one of the largest companies in the world. Picked cotton and worked as a janitor before getting accepted to the University of Texas with a band scholarship. He joined Exxon as a production engineer and then worked his way up to CEO over the next 30 years. Hardly an "elite."

Tim Cook -- son of a dockworker and a pharmacy worker. Went to Auburn University (hardly an Ivy League, "elite" school.) He worked at IBM from 12 years working his way up to the director of North American fulfillment while earning a Duke MBA at essentially night school.

I could tell these stories all day. There certainly are some elites who do go on to be CEOs, but there are even more CEOs and self-made millionaires that aren't Boston Brahmins or cousins of the Kennedy family.

This whole "classism" idea is promoted by three types of people:

a. those who are actually ignorant about American business and its leaders. Spend some time actually learning the backgrounds of American business leaders and you'll see more "State U" than "Harvard U."

b. those from other countries where a public school girl from a broken home would never become CEO of IBM or a redneck janitor on a marching band scholarship could never become CEO of Exxon -- these are often Europeans where, in places such as France -- if you aren't a male who went to a Grande Ecole, you will never be CEO of a major French company. CEO of Groupe PSA (France's largest car maker) -- Carlos Tavares, graduate of Ecole Centrale Paris. CEO of Renault? Also a Grande Ecole graduate. Former CEO of Airbus? Louis Gallois, also from a Grande Ecole. CEO of LVMH? Bernard Arnault, another Grande Ecole graduate. The "egalitarian" French have nothing but elites leading their top companies. In the US, the most valuable company's CEO? Tim Cook -- Auburn University -- a state school. Rex Tillerson? University of Texas. CEO of Walmart (the top company on the US Fortune 500 by revenue) -- University of Arkansas and University of Tulsa. CEO of United Health? Dave Wichmannm, Illinois State University with an Accounting degree -- not even an MBA and he's the CEO of the number 6 company in the United States. CEO of United Airlines? Oscar Munoz, the oldest of 9 kids in a Mexican-American family in California and the first to graduate college in his family. Some elite. What "classism" helped Munoz? He's the CEO of the world's largest airline.

c. the type of person that is angry at their own life, their own bad decisions or their own lack of success that they want to create a political narrative that supports the "evil capitalism" trope. This is the type of person that feels like they have been wronged by life and society and rather than looking at their own failings, instead attempt to blame some boogeyman. Maybe their daddy didn't love them enough. I don't know. But these are negative people that claim conspiracy when there is none. They themselves just don't think they're good enough and they need an excuse to justify it.

Now, if we were talking about politics -- THEN I might agree that classism has some influence. When we have a brood of Bushes, a variety of Clintons and an infestation of Kennedys, then it's pretty clear classism does have a real impact. But in the C-Suite -- I would argue that the evidence suggests that classism isn't a factor at all, instead it's about hard work, tenacity, luck and intelligence.

Good - it's not just me!