I Write Letters to CEOs • Hacker News Board

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#131

Post by adventured » Thu, May 31, 2018, 1:31 PM UTC

alien_at_work wrote: post #105

joering2 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you sensed it, but both hajrice and Xavdidtheshadow were sarcastic in their posting :) At least what I take from it, good CEO would answer you with "thank you" or whatever, as Benioff is know to be more of a Ellison / Jobs type of asshole CEO, rather than let's say polite Elon Musk, so hajrice made fun that instead, Benioff asked him to buy his book in order to just squeeze few extra bucks from someon…

>let's say polite Elon Musk Uh... where do you get this impression? My impression is that Musk easily fits in the same bucket as Ellison / Jobs / Bezos

I get that impression from almost everything I've read about Musk over the last 15 years. He absolutely does not fit into that bucket. Bezos is also not in the Jobs / Ellison group in regards to behavior. Bezos is a difficult boss, he's not a terror like Jobs & Ellison, he isn't known for attacking people, belitting people, throwing epic temper tantrums, threatening people, etc - much less doing the borderline criminal things that Ellison has (such as hiring PIs to dig through Bill Gates & Microsoft's garbage).

With Jobs and Ellison there are endless examples of them behaving as assholes toward normal people. What are the examples with Musk? He overwhelmingly seems to treat most people extremely well by comparison. The worst I've seen about him is that he pressurizes the work environment, that he's hard charging, although it certainly doesn't appear to be anything like Apple or Oracle under Jobs / Ellison. I don't believe you can build Tesla & SpaceX without anything less than the approach Musk has used.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#132

Post by occams_chainsaw » Thu, May 31, 2018, 1:35 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #108

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being too busy is of course a legitimate reason. Without knowing why he declined it is silly to criticise it, I think.

Not too busy to send letters to the CEO. I never get this: you start a conversation and then when the other party engages you disengage. The CEO's response was about as good as you could wish for and would give an opportunity to influence the view of the company at the level where it matters. That's what you intend when you write to the CEO, you do that because they are the people that can make stuff happen, includin…

"hey! Long time no see. We should meet up!"

"Definitely! How's the day after tomorrow sound?"

seen: 4 days ago

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#133

Post by anoncoward111 » Thu, May 31, 2018, 1:38 PM UTC

zafka wrote: post #114

anoncoward111 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is an incredible story and has personally made an impact on me i didn't know paul before he died (on my birthday even), but because of your comment, i researched his story i work in sales, so rejection and silence are very frequent. it is rare for anyone to connect through writing or through voice, and quite often i feel like nobody desires to brainstorm and have fun thinking about ideas in a low pressure enviro…

Your username caught my eye. Anon or a non ? Regards, Jim

Haha that's funny! Anon coward, as in anonymous coward. The other user that replied to you is correct :) :)

Thanks for writing Jim :)

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#134

Post by jnbiche » Thu, May 31, 2018, 1:39 PM UTC

jakobegger wrote: post #100

afarrell wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to meaningfully answer this question, we need a much more well-articulated definition of "asshole". People's definitions vary widely. For example, suppose you see someone broadcast online about being very distressed about a problem and your response is to point them toward resources that might be useful to solve the problem -- some set of people would consider you an asshole for that pattern of behavior. Som…

Being an asshole has a lot more to do with the tone of the message than with the content. In my experience, most people will accept feedback if you do it in a respectful manner. You can tell someone they are underperforming without insulting them. Respect your employees. Even when you tell people to read the manual, you can do so in a way that doesn’t feel insulting. There’s a world of a difference between “RTFM!” an…

> Being an asshole has a lot more to do with the tone of the message than with the content.

Bingo. God I wish more software developers realized this. Being open with criticism is important. But for most people who are not a very certain type of programmer, we don't want to hear the criticism given with words like:

"What were you thinking? Are you stupid? Of course you don't do x."

and

"I've found through experience that it's important to do X, because if you don't, then Y happens."

The fact that I run into so many people on software developer teams that communicate in the former manner has led me to leave traditional software development in favor of data analysis where I don't have to work on a team of 5-6 people, of whom 2-3 are complete assholes.

Plus, if you want to know why there are so few women in programming, this alone is a huge factor. Yes, there are a very few women who can give and take criticism in the abrasive fashion I outlined above, but most women prefer to give and take criticism in the polite, productive manner of my second example. Once again, the criticism is the same in both examples, all that's different is the tone.

Too many people in the software development industry have taken Linus Torvald's communication style as something to emulate.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#135

Post by jnbiche » Thu, May 31, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

darkerside wrote: post #113

jakobegger wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being an asshole has a lot more to do with the tone of the message than with the content. In my experience, most people will accept feedback if you do it in a respectful manner. You can tell someone they are underperforming without insulting them. Respect your employees. Even when you tell people to read the manual, you can do so in a way that doesn’t feel insulting. There’s a world of a difference between “RTFM!” an…

This is way more difficult in person than it is online in writing. And the fear of getting it wrong can increase with each time that you actually do get it wrong (leading to you replaying the event in your head, eg).

If you're actually worried or concerned about how you're communicating, you're probably fine or at least acceptable.

It's the people who are either oblivious to the need to carefully communicate who are the difficult ones, along with those who intentionally ignore societal norms in an effort to prove their "alpha" status.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#136

Post by castlecrasher2 » Thu, May 31, 2018, 1:43 PM UTC

ordinaryperson wrote: post #127

jacquesm wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not too busy to send letters to the CEO. I never get this: you start a conversation and then when the other party engages you disengage. The CEO's response was about as good as you could wish for and would give an opportunity to influence the view of the company at the level where it matters. That's what you intend when you write to the CEO, you do that because they are the people that can make stuff happen, includin…

To elaborate on why I declined: The District Manager left a voicemail for me asking when he could schedule a tour with me. He was 100% polite, but it sounded like he was gritting his teeth. Maybe I was reading too much into it, but I interpreted it as, "My boss's boss is forcing me to give an idiot like you, someone probably with no experience in retail economics, a tour while I patiently pretend to listen to how you…

You're probably not wrong. The internet's go-to description for CEOs and other executives is sociopath but I've found most leaders at the top to be humble and accommodating. If anyone fits "sociopath" it's more likely to be a middle manager, I find.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#137

Post by kybernetikos » Thu, May 31, 2018, 1:48 PM UTC

cjhopman wrote: post #36

leroy_masochist wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my anecdotal-experience-driven theory of what's going on with the golfing-CEO companies underperforming the non-golfing-CEO ones: it isn't a matter of lost productive hours while golfing instead of working. It's that the golfing CEOs are, as a population, different from the non-golfing ones. The golfing ones are a bit more extroverted and charismatic than the non-golfers; they "look like CEOs". They are more l…

Interesting theory. Do you apply it to men in predominantly female occupations and vice versa?

I think it's entirely plausible that the median woman in a coding job is better than the median man in a coding job because of this effect.

That's why vague claims (like in the google debacle) that women are biologically less suited to coding than men might not be relevant to your organisation even if we were to believe it true in general.

A similar effect may explain some of this: https://hbr.org/2017/09/the-comprehensive-case-for-investing...

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#138

Post by snowwrestler » Thu, May 31, 2018, 1:51 PM UTC

ordinaryperson wrote: post #19

Years ago I wrote a letter to Paul Raines, then the CEO of Gamestop. Mainly I complained how terrible the store experience was. Whereas Apple stores feel like an avant-garde museum Gamestops feel like the inside of a Chuck E. Cheese circa 1987 -- games everywhere, no real organization, no marketing of individual titles or genres, it's just grabbag nonsense of plastic container after plastic container. Days after I se…

I'm impressed but not surprised he responded; that sort of clear, actionable feedback can be surprisingly difficult for a CEO to get, especially in retail.

Most retail CEOs don't reserve much time for popping into stores and talking to customers, and store and district managers tend to dislike it--feels like micromanaging.

But at the same time, store managers and district managers are often not eager to feed a list of their stores' shortcomings up the chain of command. IMO it's a rare retail manager who is willing to stand up and say, "my store is bad and here is what I need to make it good." Most focus on putting the best possible face on things, internally. It's so hard to make good numbers in retail and there is so much pressure to do so... relationships between the management layers can often feel more adversarial than collaborative.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#139

Post by snowwrestler » Thu, May 31, 2018, 1:57 PM UTC

ordinaryperson wrote: post #127

jacquesm wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not too busy to send letters to the CEO. I never get this: you start a conversation and then when the other party engages you disengage. The CEO's response was about as good as you could wish for and would give an opportunity to influence the view of the company at the level where it matters. That's what you intend when you write to the CEO, you do that because they are the people that can make stuff happen, includin…

To elaborate on why I declined: The District Manager left a voicemail for me asking when he could schedule a tour with me. He was 100% polite, but it sounded like he was gritting his teeth. Maybe I was reading too much into it, but I interpreted it as, "My boss's boss is forcing me to give an idiot like you, someone probably with no experience in retail economics, a tour while I patiently pretend to listen to how you…

I suspect this is exactly why the CEO reached out to you in the first place--because they know how hard it is to get open and honest feedback from the store and retail managers.

Whether the district manager liked it or not, they absolutely would have had to report the results of your visit back to the CEO. And they would have had to be honest about it, since they knew the CEO could just call you back to check the accuracy.

I don't blame you for not wanting to get in the middle of that, but I bet the CEO felt like it was a missed opportunity.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#140

Post by snowwrestler » Thu, May 31, 2018, 2:08 PM UTC

wgerard wrote: post #4

> the compound annual return of the respondent group is 8.97% greater than the non-respondent companies. That's actually interesting, because I could easily explain away the opposite result: CEOs who waste their time responding to personal letters aren't focused on improving company performance. For example, there's some potential negative correlation between time spent playing golf and company performance [1]. Grant…

Why do most companies fail? Because of supplier or distributor relationships? Operational inefficiencies? Board relations? Legal compliance issues?

No. Most companies fail simply because they don't sell enough stuff. There's an old joke that "revenue solves all problems" in business. Simply put--companies fail when they don't build a big enough customer base.

CEOs who read and react to customer feedback are focused on the most important thing to their business: their customers. I would definitely not characterize that as a "waste of time." I'd argue it is some of the most valuable uses of time that a CEO can spend.