141–150 of 244 posts
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A personal friend is this form of executive assistant. I think that's effectively exactly what they signed up for - a very wealthy couple pays them to do whatever needs to be done. Delegating everything explicitly seems like it would significantly reduce the value of an assistant. My understanding is once the trust is built in these kind of roles, the assistant is a professional/personal boundary crossing extension o…
There are a lot of people in this thread who seem outraged because someone is expected to have skills they don't have. I personally know both people who are, and people who have, this type of help. There are people in this world who are very good at empathizing and very good at organizing, and those people can make a ton of money as what used to be known as being a majordomo. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majordomo
My EA-style friend is in a major US city right now supervising the construction of a house - that absolutely wasn't in their employment contract, is not something they have experience in, but it's something their employer wanted. It's hard to get too up in arms when the position is well paid, exciting, and voluntary.
Oversight is extremely important for a PA. We had one at one of my old firms charging 10k of personal charges to her boss' cards and then just approving it herself because she did the invoicing and his approvals. If I recall, she billed a $470 custom tiered birthday cake for her boyfriend to the card and also had her Equinox membership on it. EAs are safer ground and less risk but with PAs they can become too entrenc…
I want to plug a friend's company that she bootstrapped: https://www.chatterboss.com/ . They offer remote executive assistants on demand. There is no commitment. You pay for the hours they work for you. They care very deeply about the personality match between you and your assistants. On top of that, they strongly believe in documentation and a cover system so you'll always have coverage even if your primary assistan…
Oversight is extremely important for a PA. We had one at one of my old firms charging 10k of personal charges to her boss' cards and then just approving it herself because she did the invoicing and his approvals. If I recall, she billed a $470 custom tiered birthday cake for her boyfriend to the card and also had her Equinox membership on it. EAs are safer ground and less risk but with PAs they can become too entrenc…
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>No one's livelihood should depend on having to read the room like a geisha. Why not? Isn't that most jobs? Seems to me a lot of jobs require you to "read the room" in one way or another. If some work doesn't need that, then a machine should just do it since that's what human excel at.
People who expect EAs to read minds are watching too many movies with butlers or pepper pots like secretaries. Imagine asking your EA why they didn't do something you expected them to do without being explicit about what you want.
Oversight is extremely important for a PA. We had one at one of my old firms charging 10k of personal charges to her boss' cards and then just approving it herself because she did the invoicing and his approvals. If I recall, she billed a $470 custom tiered birthday cake for her boyfriend to the card and also had her Equinox membership on it. EAs are safer ground and less risk but with PAs they can become too entrenc…
And yet expensing $470 for a custom cake for an important client who's birthday party you have to miss because you're heading up the shareholder meeting may be money very well spent. As long as most of the $470's are well spent, and total value for money is better than someone else could achieve, I don't actually mind who's boyfriend gets a fancy cake. But I do need to have confidence that I'm seeing enough of the pi…
An assistant pretending to be their own boss, so they can approve their own expenses, is fraud and a clear fireable offense.
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If you think about it, this feels like the assistant version of a good developer. From a good senior developer I expect initiative. I expect them to have a high level view of the system while still working on the 'in the weeds' stuff. They proactively create a ticket for later to do that refactoring they think is really needed but we don't have time for right now and they ninja it in on Friday afternoon because they…
It seems like you want one person to be willing and eager to fill the role several employees, including half of your own. Or a genie.
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Maybe thats the 'executive' part of 'executive assistant'? They are taking action based on a abstract goal rather than a concrete wish. At least, that is my interpretation!
No, the 'executive' part of 'executive assistant' refers to the assistant typically working for an executive, or performing more advanced executive duties as opposed to an administrative assistant, whose role may be more general across a company. No one's livelihood should depend on having to read the room like a geisha.
After speaking to a friend who lost a lot of money due to a PA that purposely scammed them - make sure they are trustworthy and check their work. They will really be in a good position to cause a lot of harm (even if by accident).
And in the meantime, they could run all sorts of unauthorized charges. Do you review the monthly credit card bills for a couple months, a couple years, or forever?
How do credit card companies treat charges that were not authorized by the cardholder but were run by someone who was authorized by the cardholder to use the card? I assume they don't treat them the same as fraud resulting from a stolen card.