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I Write Letters to CEOs

johnwdefeo.com

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Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#11

Post by addflip »

baxtr wrote: post #9
winter_blue wrote: post #7

How do some of these CEOs have the time to respond so throughly to random letters? Is it possible that someone is ghostwriting for them?

I work a lot for these guys. The larger companies have whole teams responding to these kind of emails. They triage incoming emails and then the team can send the emails on their own on behalf of the C-level exec.

Exactly this. Tim Ferriss had Frank Blake, the old CEO of Home Depot, on his show where he discussed this. Super interesting. https://tim.blog/2018/03/15/frank-blake/

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#12

Post by mykull »

derpittyderp wrote: post #6
mykull wrote: post #5

This is some real ball-fondling born-into-privilege nonsense. I could write to CEOs too, but I wouldn't be so impressed with their boilerplate social interaction, and the predictability of it is why I won't.

I don't think it's a case of being born into privilege. From another blog post on the same site: "I graduated from college with six figures in debt and no savings or investments. My first job out of college paid $400 per week. I ate dollar-menu fast food every day until I got sick and landed in the hospital. I paid $650 a month to live in a dank basement, ridden with bed bugs, and I slept on a mattress strewn on the…

Where's the part about not having a safety net? Rich, secure people love to tout their riskless efforts as perilous when they did it voluntarily with no potential for long term negative consequence.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#14

Post by mykull »

dang wrote: post #8
mykull wrote: post #5

This is some real ball-fondling born-into-privilege nonsense. I could write to CEOs too, but I wouldn't be so impressed with their boilerplate social interaction, and the predictability of it is why I won't.

This breaks the HN guidelines. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The substantive part is that nothing they wrote back to him, and nothing he wrote in this article was substantive aside from a vague claim about how CEOs who respond (with junk) are better CEOs.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#15

Post by auntad »

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…

I'd suspect a valid correlation that's not a causation. If a company is generally doing well, presumably the CEO isn't under as much stress and doesn't have as many firefighting responsibilities as those whose companies are doing poorly. Hence having the time to write a letter to a stranger.

Maybe those underperforming companies will bounce back and you'll find a (much delayed) response in the author's mailbox a few months down the line!

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#16

Post by losteric »

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…

My theory is CEOs that pay attention to smaller things miss fewer opportunities, and build a culture of doing so across the company. Look up Bezos' infamous "?" emails.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#17

Post by groby_b »

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…

The time cost for CEOs to respond to your letters is likely zero - they've got staff to handle that. And so replies are really a proxy for "how deeply does the company care about its customers"

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#18

Post by megamindbrian2 »

This is awesome. I've written Jeff Bezos dozens of emails, I should write a blog post on it. Most of them complaints that some time get directed to the right forum and a proper response, a few of them praise, and a few of them completely insane or mean that I assume are ignored or caused some secretary to ask for a vacation.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#19

Post by ordinaryperson »

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 sent the letter, his secretary called me and scheduled a phone call for the next day.

Paul could not have been nicer. He said he appreciated the criticism and offered to have his district manager tour a location with me so I could share in greater depth my concerns.

I declined (too busy) but was obviously taken aback with his generosity and patience.

Sadly, he passed away in March of this year from brain cancer at the very young age of 53.

He had no real incentive to respond to an angry letter from a random customer, but he went way out of his way to at least listen to me (even if the stores haven't improved much).

R.I.P. Paul.

Re: I Write Letters to CEOs

#20

Post by Orangeair »

winter_blue wrote: post #7

How do some of these CEOs have the time to respond so throughly to random letters? Is it possible that someone is ghostwriting for them?

I believe that they're actually responding. Gabe Newell (the CEO of Valve) is worth billions[1], and has been known to respond to emails personally[2].

[1]https://www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newell-is-worth-55-billion-acco...

[2]https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/2keaco/i_sent...

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