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You're not the CEO - You're the Fucking Janitor

zachbruhnke.com

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Re: You're not the CEO - You're the Fucking Janitor

#101

Post by btilly »

Mz wrote: post #57
rhizome wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called the Dunbar number, and it varies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbars_number

Thank you. That is why I said things like typical human brain and about 150. As I understand it, Napoleon inspired such loyalty in spite of how he treated his people because he could greet everyone by name and ask how their wife Elaine was doing, etc. It made everyone feel he caredabout them personally. I had similar talents when I was younger but never really knew what to do with it as I was a homemaker, but I am fa…

My grandfather co-founded an engineering company. One of the things he had to do was sales. His trick was that the first time he visited the company, he'd ask to get a company directory. The second time, he'd review that directory (which in those days typically had pictures), and when he walked in he'd greet everyone by name.

He was a very effective salesman.

(BTW the company still exists, http://cmtengr.com/ is their website. My grandfather was Ray Tilly.)

Re: You're not the CEO - You're the Fucking Janitor

#102

Post by steve8918 »

A friend of mine is a multi-millionaire from running her own chain of nail salons. She is always going from store to store, checking on each store and if the store is busy, she'll be the first one taking the used foot water used for pedicures, sweeping, etc, doing whatever it takes to make sure the nail salonists can do their job, and also so that the customer is happy.

She deserves every penny of her wealth.

Re: You're not the CEO - You're the Fucking Janitor

#103

Post by teksquisite »

That was a great read and thank you! BTW - I recently made some new biz cards and switched "owner" to "CEO" (because I had my QR code printed on them :) and I still clean toilets and whack weeds...

I think it is all in the mindset. I've met CEO's that think they can walk on water "Oh, Calgon - take it away..." And I've met CEO's who actually still do the grunt work. I prefer the latter because you should never forget where you began...

Re: You're not the CEO - You're the Fucking Janitor

#104

Post by ido »

blhack wrote: post #25
michael_nielsen wrote: post #2

Seems appropriate to quote an old HN comment ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3905794 ): "After the first night of the 2008 SciFoo conference at Google, @gnat Torkington's twitter stream contained a gem: 'At SciFoo opening session. 300 people standing around networking. Meanwhile, Larry Page is quietly unpacking chairs at the back of the room.' (from memory, not exact)" The CEO (or any leader)'s job is to make s…

I'll share a story an interaction with a company that I worked heavily with while we were launching (this is a startup in a fairly niche, non-technical space. A smallish company with around 200 employees): The "CEO": This guy had a large stake in the company. It was his baby, and while the "CEO" title (which I think gets way over applied) fits him, his official title is "managing partner". While we were in the proces…

    I guess I'll end the story with a question: 
    how do I/we get back to that?
Should you tho? Sure it's a high and fun in a way, but can you really expect people to spend the night sleeping at the office on a regular basis and basically making their workplace their family?

What about people who have their own family (kids, spouse)? Would you still want to do this (I presume that also means working very long hours) in your 50s and 60s? Would you want to make everyone working there do it?

There are virtues to startup life but I'd get tired living it my entire career.

Re: You're not the CEO - You're the Fucking Janitor

#105

Post by entropy_ »

sp332 wrote: post #90
kevinalexbrown wrote: post #64

"In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility. " Benjam…

Humility isn't thinking poorly of yourself, humility is not thinking of yourself at all.

The exact quote from "Mere Christianity":

"Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody.

Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him.

If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all."

This particular quote of Lewis'(in face the entire chapter on Pride from this book) has always stuck with me. I am always amazed on how right Lewis can be on things regarding human nature. When I first read this passage I immediately realized that I had met such people. And I had liked them a lot and enjoyed their presence and conversation greatly. I never understood why I found spending time with them so uplifting until I read this, and then I got it.

Re: You're not the CEO - You're the Fucking Janitor

#106

Post by lsc »

btilly wrote: post #101
Mz wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. That is why I said things like typical human brain and about 150. As I understand it, Napoleon inspired such loyalty in spite of how he treated his people because he could greet everyone by name and ask how their wife Elaine was doing, etc. It made everyone feel he caredabout them personally. I had similar talents when I was younger but never really knew what to do with it as I was a homemaker, but I am fa…

My grandfather co-founded an engineering company. One of the things he had to do was sales. His trick was that the first time he visited the company, he'd ask to get a company directory. The second time, he'd review that directory (which in those days typically had pictures), and when he walked in he'd greet everyone by name. He was a very effective salesman. (BTW the company still exists, http://cmtengr.com/ is thei…

I was talking to a friend of mine a bit ago; I was saying that I wanted some sort of wearable computer rig to do facial recognition for me; I thought that was one of the things holding me back as a bizdev guy. I'm bad with both faces and names.

My friend told me that he could remember faces well, but that more often than not it contributed to awkwardness when he could remember the other person's name, but the other person couldn't remember his.

Re: You're not the CEO - You're the Fucking Janitor

#108

Post by hef19898 »

Mz wrote: post #82
AznHisoka wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's why cities are stressful for the brain, I think. 99% of people we interact with are strangers, and we put up our social guard everywhere we go. Giving us a feeling of alienation, and increasing our fight/flight response.

I generally agree with you, and did upvote you, but I am currently in the largest city I have ever lived in and not really experiencing it that way. I suppose I need to think more about why that is, but I think part of it is that the gaslamp district was designed on a walkable human scale before the auto era. I am not a fan of cars and I find the modern American auto-centric lifestyle and urban design really stressfu…

There is an effect, at least from my perspective, regarding size of cities. It really struck me during a vacation in Sydney. From a certain size on big, read huge, cities tend to break down to almost a cluster of "village communities". within these, you start to know each other. compared to munich for example, there were much more smaller stores and coffee shops right in the center of sydney then in some quarters of munich or any other random german city I know.

In between small and huge you get this ackward feeling anonoumity which stresses you, you get shopping malls out of town, something impossible in Manhatten for example since driving hours to do grocery shopping is just inconvinient. And all that is, I think, not natural to us humans. where this limit between big but not big enough lies, i don't know, maybe it depends on culture... but that's something I tend to see all the time i spend time real big cities. But maybe it's just me.

Re: You're not the CEO - You're the Fucking Janitor

#109

Post by faucet »

michael_nielsen wrote: post #2

Seems appropriate to quote an old HN comment ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3905794 ): "After the first night of the 2008 SciFoo conference at Google, @gnat Torkington's twitter stream contained a gem: 'At SciFoo opening session. 300 people standing around networking. Meanwhile, Larry Page is quietly unpacking chairs at the back of the room.' (from memory, not exact)" The CEO (or any leader)'s job is to make s…

No need to network. All those network nodes were already added to the Google's index by Larry's assistant-crawlers.
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