The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study (2018)
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Re: The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study (2018)
#2Kill your boss. Make it look like an accident.
Re: The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study (2018)
#3The fastest way is start your own company and name yourself CEO.
Re: The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study (2018)
#4Something that has always surprised me a bit is how many developers want to run their own large companies. Wanting to run a small company is largely about personal freedom that comes for not having a boss, but wanting to be the head of a large business is a whole different ballgame. It's a role that encompasses strategy, leadership, and management - 3 things that can only really be done by talking to people and understanding them. It's a very different role to writing code. Most developers who enjoy writing code run away from meetings given the slightest opportunity, yet they also covet a job that's 90% about having meetings.
For a very long time that was my own journey. I got up to CTO level for a while. Then I realized I just don't enjoy it, so now I'm a senior engineer again. Wanting to be a CEO takes a very specific mindset.
Re: The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study (2018)
#5> Sprinters don’t accelerate to the top by acquiring the perfect pedigree. They do it by making bold career moves over the course of their career that catapult them to the top.
This article looks like yet another one that screams for a survivorship bias disclaimer: https://xkcd.com/1827/
Re: The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study (2018)
#6I knew a man who turned a CFO of Bank of America not so well known Japanese venture at around 30 when the previous CFO died on the job, and a dozen people above him declined the job.
Re: The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study (2018)
#7Something that has always surprised me a bit is how many developers want to run their own large companies. Wanting to run a small company is largely about personal freedom that comes for not having a boss, but wanting to be the head of a large business is a whole different ballgame. It's a role that encompasses strategy, leadership, and management - 3 things that can only really be done by talking to people and under…
> Something that has always surprised me a bit is how many developers want to run their own large companies.
I am surprised at how few of them do, considering how low the barriers of entry to company making in tech are (compared to other industries with heavy requirements in space, equipment, expertise and regulations)
So I am also surprised at your experience. Most devs I know just wanna code.
Re: The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study (2018)
#8I don't see anything much that's non-obvious here.
- Go small to go big = It's easier to be CEO in a smaller company. Kind of obvious.
- Inherit a Big Mess = It's easier to be CEO in a situation where nobody wants to be CEO. Kind of obvious, too.
- Make a big leap = Take risky bets, in which case you're not represented in the sample of CEOs when they don't play out.
Re: The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study (2018)
#9> Sprinters don’t accelerate to the top by acquiring the perfect pedigree. They do it by making bold career moves over the course of their career that catapult them to the top. This article looks like yet another one that screams for a survivorship bias disclaimer: https://xkcd.com/1827/
Haha yeah, the ones how end up on top always think they made bold moves, while the others didn't.
It is exactly as you said, survivor bias and nothing else.
Re: The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study (2018)
#10I was always a natural leader up until graduating from college. Had plenty of volunteer leadership roles, but never any roles officially employed as a manager. Then after graduating, I suddenly found I could make far more money as an individual software enginneer than my peers were making in management roles at local companies, so I've been chasing the money for the last decade. But it feels like a bit of a dead end in terms of career accomplishments, and I'd like to shift back into leadership roles, but after a decade of structured roles writing instructions for machines, the relatively unfixed day-to-day responsibilities of management, and strategic thinking about people and more "squishy" things than computers, feels foreign to me. I don't know how to change my mindset back to that.