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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)

#41

Post by smorgusofborg »

aomobile wrote: post #40

The “i regret becoming a manager” theme gets repeated often and I don’t know about you guys but I go to work for the money, plain and simple. Sure coding is pleasurable (I’d do it for free as a hobby anyway) but if being ceo pays many times more, I’d just go for that if possible. Seems almost unreasonable not to desire that job over a coding position..

I'm curious how to deal with the social pretenses in hiring? I.e. do you express this view in a developer interview or do you keep it contained to the low end of where you want to be in 5 years being similar to a motivated developer?

I'd also point out that money is in exchange for something. I would much rather be in a low stress job that pays enough than having more money than I have time to use, ulcers and permanent negative health and behavioral factors that will follow me into retirement..

Re: The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study (2018)

#42

Post by timwaagh »

onion2k wrote: post #4

Something 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…

As a developer you're often seen as a one trick pony who is destined to stay at the bottom. If I get to make it to CEO that would be far beyond my wildest dreams.

Re: The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study (2018)

#43

Post by atq2119 »

gyulai wrote: post #8

I 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.

Nothing is ever non-obvious in hindsight in the social sciences ;)

That said, I like that one way this can be read is that being a C-level executive is typically not about some inherent skill or talent. Instead, people simply grow into the role when given (and taking) the chance. This has implications on what a just level of compensation would be.

Re: The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study (2018)

#44

Post by avereveard »

aomobile wrote: post #40

The “i regret becoming a manager” theme gets repeated often and I don’t know about you guys but I go to work for the money, plain and simple. Sure coding is pleasurable (I’d do it for free as a hobby anyway) but if being ceo pays many times more, I’d just go for that if possible. Seems almost unreasonable not to desire that job over a coding position..

I wish there were more details to the claim, because my hunch is that most people regret becoming middle-management, squeezed between whom holds the budget and whom does the work, unable to affect neither but responsible toward both.

Of course that line of work sucks!

Re: The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study (2018)

#45

Post by [deleted] »

timwaagh wrote: post #42
onion2k wrote: post #4

Something 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…

As a developer you're often seen as a one trick pony who is destined to stay at the bottom. If I get to make it to CEO that would be far beyond my wildest dreams.

[deleted]

Re: The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study (2018)

#46

Post by bserge »

WalterBright wrote: post #3

The fastest way is start your own company and name yourself CEO.

Ha, my first thought.

And actually what I did when I formed my first company. I had two plastic cards designed, one for me as "CEO" and another as a press pass with me as "Chief Editor", which actually got me into some expos!

Blogs were new and people didn't know how to treat these "online magazines" and "journalists".

I even had people from big newspapers contact me with requests to use my online comments in their articles. Good times.

So embarrassing to remember, but I had a lot of fun.

Biggest mistake ever was to not find partners asap.

Re: The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study (2018)

#47

Post by avip »

onion2k wrote: post #4

Something 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…

It's much more surprising that people equate "run a small company" with "freedom", when in every measurable way you're much freeer being a conformant employee in a good place.

Re: The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study (2018)

#49

Post by sokoloff »

Retric wrote: post #38
narvval wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no native English speaker but at least in my experience average is used to mean any "central tendency", and not the mean in particular. We probably should just avoid saying "average" and use "mean", "mode", "median", or whatever we actually mean instead.

As a native speaker average is almost exclusively used to for mean and people specify median or mode when that’s what they are talking about. The same way people say mean without specifying arithmetic, geometric, or harmonic mean then it’s the arithmetic mean. It’s only when someone says something like the average family rather than saying the average income when things get ambiguous. Typical on the other hand is clo…

I generally think of “typical” as being the median rather than the mean.
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