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CEOs are running companies from afar even as workers return to office

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Re: CEOs are running companies from afar even as workers return to office

#121

Post by threatofrain »

RangerScience wrote: post #65
rtpg wrote: post #40

A recurring theme in so many startups I've seen inside is how the CEO in particular is extremely aloof with regards to presence. Sometimes that translates to aloofness for staff, but what more often happens is that when the CEO _does_ come in they expect other people to be there. So long as the alignment is good they don't care, but when it's not aligned, they just assume nobody is ever around and get real pissy abou…

> A proper theory of the mind can often be quite absent. +1 spicy! > Make a fun space, and make people's work schedules be loose enough to where they can actually relax in the space, and some people will show up! I've tried to tell this to a couple of places that wanted me to work in a office. The conversations didn't go anywhere - perhaps because of your prior quote? :)

IMO theory of mind fails at scale and distance due to the sheer diversity of humanity and disconnection from local signals. No human can accomplish this, which is why we need population-level studies.

Re: CEOs are running companies from afar even as workers return to office

#122

Post by kolbe »

itake wrote: post #88
zooq_ai wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The way I have started looking at it is CEOs/founders won the lottery. They control the keys, but they share a tiny fraction of the gold with the employees. I come to this conclusion, b/c I think its extremely rare that the 'best' person to be the executive on day0 is rarely the 'best' person to be an executive in every stage of a company's lifecycle. but the executives can cling on, b/c they have low accountability…

Chipotle's stock dropped 10% and Starbucks's rose 25% when the CEO switched from one to the other this past week. If this guy is just a meritless lottery winner, then you can make a lot of money betting against the market and the extremely large group of heavily motivated and intelligent investors who think otherwise.

Re: CEOs are running companies from afar even as workers return to office

#123

Post by 6bb32646d83d »

andirk wrote: post #35

CEOs of medium/large companies are the face of the company which means making a couple key decisions per week (a few work hours) and meeting with current/prospective clients (leisure activities). Coupled with making far more $ than the rest of the employees, I suspect they're both bored at the office and feel downgraded to a regular employee. Thus, out-of-office with nothing to show. But if the company is _coincident…

I work for a medium (~$10B) public company and when I check the CEOs calendar he's booked 12 hours a day, and it's a lot of hard staff meeting with complex outcome. Not sure where this idea that CEOs don't work come from

Re: CEOs are running companies from afar even as workers return to office

#124

Post by ryandrake »

karaterobot wrote: post #10

I think it's more important for CEOs to be located in the same city as the company HQ than it is for any randomly selected employee to be. When VIPs visit the company, they expect the CEO to be present, not on Zoom. Plus, there used to be this thing where leadership had a more than tenuous connection to the legacy and culture of the businesses they ran, and even to the cities their companies were a part of. That's ha…

> Imagine hearing a CEO say something like "I care about Company X" but they're saying it from a thousand miles away, over a Zoom call, while all their employees are on site and hating being there.

And they're so insulated from what it's like to be a normal non-Ivy-League rank-and-file worker that they probably don't even know how tone deaf it is. Either they don't know or they know and don't care. They get off the Zoom call and call their chauffeur to drive them to their jet to fly to their third home, thinking just how wonderful a leader they are.

Re: CEOs are running companies from afar even as workers return to office

#125

Post by nox101 »

ern wrote: post #109
brandon272 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes that translates to aloofness for staff, but what more often happens is that when the CEO _does_ come in they expect other people to be there. Anecdotally, I have seen companies that have "oscillations" in their WFH policy and this, in my experience, has often been the driver of it. Instead of putting trust in the process or the data, you will simply have a situation where the CEO or (especially) where a g…

I think the introduction of WFH during the pandemic hurt a lot of IT workers in the long-run. In the interests of “fairness” they are being ordered back to the office post-Covid even when their work processes mean they can be done perfectly well remotely, and even if they have widely geographically-distributed teams. Anecdotal, but we had a team that was split with 50% working remotely before Covid, and we saw an imp…

I see the opposite. Conversations that used to happen in ear reach so I'd know what was going on with various team members and be able to contribute when I knew a solution are now conversation that happen in private chat or private VC.

Productivity is way down.

Even more interesting, a team lead lives in another country 6 times zones away. Some times they visit the main office for 1-2 weeks. Productivity shoots through the roof those weeks.

Re: CEOs are running companies from afar even as workers return to office

#126

Post by teractiveodular »

ern wrote: post #109
brandon272 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes that translates to aloofness for staff, but what more often happens is that when the CEO _does_ come in they expect other people to be there. Anecdotally, I have seen companies that have "oscillations" in their WFH policy and this, in my experience, has often been the driver of it. Instead of putting trust in the process or the data, you will simply have a situation where the CEO or (especially) where a g…

I think the introduction of WFH during the pandemic hurt a lot of IT workers in the long-run. In the interests of “fairness” they are being ordered back to the office post-Covid even when their work processes mean they can be done perfectly well remotely, and even if they have widely geographically-distributed teams. Anecdotal, but we had a team that was split with 50% working remotely before Covid, and we saw an imp…

I think the real pain comes from many managers discovering that if they're going to have remote workers, might as well go whole hog and hire them in Bangalore for 1/10th the price instead of paying SV salaries.

Re: CEOs are running companies from afar even as workers return to office

#127

Post by theendisney4 »

RangerScience wrote: post #65
rtpg wrote: post #40

A recurring theme in so many startups I've seen inside is how the CEO in particular is extremely aloof with regards to presence. Sometimes that translates to aloofness for staff, but what more often happens is that when the CEO _does_ come in they expect other people to be there. So long as the alignment is good they don't care, but when it's not aligned, they just assume nobody is ever around and get real pissy abou…

> A proper theory of the mind can often be quite absent. +1 spicy! > Make a fun space, and make people's work schedules be loose enough to where they can actually relax in the space, and some people will show up! I've tried to tell this to a couple of places that wanted me to work in a office. The conversations didn't go anywhere - perhaps because of your prior quote? :)

I found the solution one time but it is hard to reproduce: I make an angry face and shout from up close "It is important that people enjoy working here. Do you understand?" Then I laugh at my own joke.

Re: CEOs are running companies from afar even as workers return to office

#128

Post by CommieBobDole »

invalidlogin wrote: post #120
CommieBobDole wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company I once worked for hired a new CEO who lived literally on the other side of the country. He didn't want to move, so they moved the whole company with a couple hundred employees to a new office near his house.

How did it go?

I don't know; it was after I left. I don't think they have the same CEO anymore, but they're still at the new location. Maybe they hired local.

Re: CEOs are running companies from afar even as workers return to office

#129

Post by harimau777 »

fourseventy wrote: post #82
harimau777 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't have the capital to create a company and become a CEO.

You can create a software company with 0 capital. Stop making excuses.

Not everyone can simply start a software company. It takes either a lot of capital, a lot of time, or both. Even if you have those, not everyone's aptitude is in business. That's particularly the case in software where there's not the, for lack of a better term, inherent value embodied in a physical product.

Re: CEOs are running companies from afar even as workers return to office

#130

Post by ewoodrich »

What bothers me personally when I read quotes from CEOs describing how often they work in the office or how productive they are is the lack of perspective that their "day in the office" is vastly different for them compared to the rank and file.

A CEO has much more autonomy to set their daily schedule as they see fit, which one day might be showing up at 6am if they're in that grind mindset, and the next day might be showing up at 11am after a tee time and casual breakfast with colleagues or friends. They may have a schedule full of internal meetings but can choose to skip whichever they feel like isn't a good use of time at their own discretion. They don't ask permission from their supervisor or get passive aggressive texts asking if they're planning to come in if they don't show up by 9:30AM.

Psychologically speaking having that much freedom to direct one's own schedule fundamentally changes one's relationship with work. Obviously they have their own non-negotiable obligations so it isn't completely in their control but the typical office worker at most companies is rarely entrusted to manage their own schedule to that degree even if they're keeping up with their tasks and a high performer.

It doesn't bother me that the nature of the CEO job is much different than a lowly software dev but instead it's the lack of awareness or deliberate dishonesty that I find grating in the RTO debate.

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