Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 289 posts

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

#191

Post by swader999 »

ryandrake wrote: post #134
slibhb wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is fairly ideologically diverse. There is a lot of the stuff you're complaining about but there's plenty of the opposite too. Where I work, the people higher than me (remote or not) work constantly, around the clock, to the point where I worry about their health. I also like going into the office 3 days a week. It's a nice space, I like the separation between work and home, and there's good food nearby. As long as…

I'd love to shadow a CxO one day and see for myself how much hard work it is. I have a (likely flawed) picture in my mind of someone who's jetting around the world, constantly on their cell phone all day from Paris in the morning and Tokyo in the evening, saying yes and no to people but not really doing any actual hard labor or much complex cognitive thought-work. But who knows, they live in this parallel universe, p…

You can't measure a CEO's value by their hours or even effort. Their ability to recruit, raise money, sell, and how well they make important decisions are critical. Most of them are in meetings all day, everyday.

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

#192

Post by helloplanets »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #174
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’ve worked closely with the CEOs of a few big companies. People see a few moments of glamor and think that is the job but the vast majority of what they do is an astonishingly shitty and thankless job. You have to be a certain kind of masochist to do what is required in that role day after day. You are also never off the clock, so they never really get a proper break to recharge and prevent burnout. No one with any…

Yep, a lot of black and white takes. And I'm not a CEO.

A big portion of the job is just being able to not crumble apart, over a long period of time. Another metric: How prone are you to making a horrible decision when under extreme stress, instead of an average one?

The depths at which the worst case scenarios can bottom out are deep. However, when the downside does not materialize, all that is left is an average decision. And average decisions are easy to critique in hindsight, for the CEOs themselves, as well as for most other people.

In that sense, programming is similar: When you steer clear of horrible code, consinstently and over a long period of time, the plain looking stuff that comes out the other end can look like a given to somebody who hasn't been through enough code filled with bad decisions to appreciate their absence.

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

#193

Post by randmeerkat »

ryandrake wrote: post #136
theendisney4 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give them good plot lines like: i dont think ive seen you here before? Do you normally work remote?

It's probably just enough to dress them in business casual, and have them walk around the office looking very serious and busy, talking on their cellphones about business-y stuff. All that matters is the "buzz" and "hum" and "pop" of SeriousBusiness getting done.

> It's probably just enough to dress them in business casual…

Bonus points for how little effort you can get the actors to put in while still getting away with it. Just have them wear shorts, some tech vendor t-shirts, and put most of them in a conference room, while two people talk about the last “feature” release.

If it’s not a tech related portion of the business, do the same, but say something about making casual “insert-day-of-the-week” and have said business group talk about how the last “feature” release impacted their section.

Triple bonus points if you get the boss to join in on the discussion with no one knowing what the actual “feature” released was, without the boss figuring the whole thing out.

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

#194

Post by swader999 »

mulmen wrote: post #104
cm2012 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meeting with current and prospective clients is not leisure, it's stressful as fuck even if it's over dinner.

Is it 39x more stressful than destroying your body on a factory floor so you can feed your kids?

I would take the physical job any day over the leadership type manager roles if pay was the same. Way less stress and conflict. I volunteered for a sports club for the last decade plus, was president for half that. Did amazing things, hired tens of coaches etc. I have way more fun now that I've passed the torch and just help out at events. I got PTSD and burnout one particularly bad season while prez.

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

#195

Post by [deleted] »

photonthug wrote: post #173
Gustomaximus wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's absolutely common for many 30 year career stretches to never actually see a decent hard-working executive out in the wild. Really? In my bubble this is far from common and more likely ignorance to what executives are doing. Execs tend to become so because they are highly motivated people willing to dedicate themself to their jobs. I had an employee once would would constantly complain about their old bosses, a…

I bet your bubble congratulated you when you used your soft skills to encourage a problem employee to become a better contributor. Just curious though, could you actually do the job of this contributor? And if that employee had your own job in leadership, do you think they could maybe also come up with the creative idea that for solving personnel problems, one need only loom threateningly, and declare quietly "Maybe…

[deleted]

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

#196

Post by hintymad »

What I don't understand is why tech companies don't believe that they can enforce a high-performance culture without return-to-office. With or without remote work, the way we evaluate one's performance has not changed, right? Then, why can't we enforce the same expectation of engineers and teams? We break down a project into milestones, and we hold teams accountable to delivering the milestones on time and on budget. The process is orthogonal to return-to-office vs WFH. If a company can't enforce the same standard just because its teams work remotely, would it say a lot about the incompetency of the company's leadership?

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

#199

Post by alooPotato »

hintymad wrote: post #196

What I don't understand is why tech companies don't believe that they can enforce a high-performance culture without return-to-office. With or without remote work, the way we evaluate one's performance has not changed, right? Then, why can't we enforce the same expectation of engineers and teams? We break down a project into milestones, and we hold teams accountable to delivering the milestones on time and on budget.…

You let "hold teams accountable" do a lot of lifting.

I think whats happening is that non-technical leaders can't assess why projects aren't being delivered. No engineer is going to say "sorry I wasn't really working that hard, thats why we missed". Instead there will be some rationale as to why the project couldn't ship on time - not enough resources, incomplete spec, tech debt, whatever. Non-technical leaders want to be able to remove one variable from the equation - the cause being the team didn't put in the effort. With return to office, they can see with their own eyes if people are putting in the "time".

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

#200

Post by intelVISA »

cm2012 wrote: post #150
mulmen wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it 39x more stressful than destroying your body on a factory floor so you can feed your kids?

I've never been a CEO of a big company, but I've been the CEO of a company that did $5m a year in business. I've also worked for $6 an hour sweeping, busked on the subway, and been the lowest paid person at a few companies besides. The CEO role had by far the most stress, to the point it caused me debilitating health issues.

I don't speak from experience but I've heard rumors that jobs exist where you can be both low paid AND stressed.
Post reply on HN