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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

#71

Post by fourseventy »

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…

Everyone on this site is so anti-C-suite it's crazy. All the standard "big company CEO bad, me entry level employee good" talking points. You would think that a site based on entrepreneurship would have people on it that have more of an understanding of what running a business is actually like.

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

#72

Post by Aloha »

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…

We just send out an email when the boss is in town and ask folks to come in, and enough people do to make the office seem full - and that works, we will even fly people in sometimes.

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

#73

Post by zooq_ai »

bearjaws wrote: post #2

Anyone surprised by this? I remember my first programming job it was FREQUENT that the execs would fly to other offices ~12+ weeks a year. Of course our office was in Orlando so every exec would also magically have their family flown in as well to go to Disney World. 5 jobs later, its been the same at any company that isn't a startup. Execs have never been in the office, they have "offsite" meetings.

[flagged]

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

#74

Post by CommieBobDole »

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…

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.

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

#76

Post by kelnos »

soulofmischief wrote: post #45
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see why you should be able to do anything about this legally as an employee. As a shareholder you have more of a claim.

An ethically aligned company goes to reasonable lengths to allow employees to become shareholders.

Never at a level that would influence company direction, though, even if all the employees banded together.

Which just sounds like a union, anyway. So why not just unionize instead...

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

#77

Post by jarsin »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #60
jarsin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One company I worked for expanded to an Europe office that consisted of just 1 employee. A coworker tried to get the office address, but could never get a straight answer. When layoffs came around the COO was so out of touch at that point he literally complained about having to fly his family back from Europe.

Wait, can you explain this? I don't understand it at all.

Executives used a Europe Office, that was really just one employee with no actual physical office, as an excuse to take europe vacations with their families, and expense it to the company.

A few executives were over there when they got word that mass layoffs needed to happen and were called back to HQ in the states. The COO complained in the office that these layoffs ruined his families Europe trip. Confirming what we all suspected.

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

#78

Post by defrost »

fourseventy wrote: post #71
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…

Everyone on this site is so anti-C-suite it's crazy. All the standard "big company CEO bad, me entry level employee good" talking points. You would think that a site based on entrepreneurship would have people on it that have more of an understanding of what running a business is actually like.

There's running a business with under 50 employees, running a business with under 100, and then there's running a coorporation with several thousand and more employees.

The FAANG (and other letter group) global mega corp survivors have one or two valid grievances.

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

#79

Post by bdw5204 »

w4 wrote: post #52
bdw5204 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly wonder if the secret to quality of life is just to save up money and buy a profitable small or medium sized business mostly financed against the business. If you want to grow it, you can. Otherwise, you can get relatively passive income out of it and experience as a CEO that allows you to apply to other CEO jobs if it fails.

If you're serious about it, there is an entire cottage industry dedicated to precisely this (especially popular amongst new MBAs): https://hbr.org/2017/02/you-should-consider-buying-a-small-b...

The "saving up money" part is the bottleneck for me right now because of the state of the tech job market but I was originally planning to save up money and launch a self-funded startup once I had enough runway. After discovering the "buy an already profitable business" route though, I have been thinking about it. I know I don't want to spend the rest of my life constantly competing in the interview Olympics for the privilege of writing code to make somebody else rich.

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

#80

Post by seizethecheese »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #69
seizethecheese wrote: post #17

This is engagement bait unless it has stats. What proportion of days are CEOs working remotely, what proportion are professional staff? As someone who has done shift work before, it seems to me that the real dividing line is between professionals and non-progressional, not CEOs vs professionals.

How do you define "professional"? I would expect doctors to be in that group, but they're mostly still pretty tied to a seat. The really highly paid ones like surgeons especially so.

That’s the exception that proves the rule. I think people know what I mean here…
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