5 ms·

What is a chief of staff in a tech company?

by yalogin 9y ago

tptacek 9y ago
My understanding: a masculine term for "executive assistant". Or: a technical secretary. Personal project manager.
- vm 9y ago
  This article from First Round Capital outlines the modern tech company approach: http://firstround.com/review/why-you-need-two-chiefs-in-the-executive-office/ http://firstround.com/review/why-you-need-two-chiefs-in-the-... Tl;dr - CoS stands in for the CEO in meetings, fills her in on what's going on across the organization (or outside of it), and overall leverages her time. It's beyond someone who just does scheduling but short of being COO, which entails direct reports and accountability.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    I guess. That squares with Pooja Ashok's resume, too.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  As in the classic British "secretary" when it was a job for men named Hilary or Dana
WisNorCan 9y ago
The role varies widely. Typically, there is a lot of administrative work required to manage the cadence of an exec team: Examples - collecting tracking metrics ahead of meeting, tracking action items for completion, preparing materials for customer briefings, etc. A chief of staff helps the CEO get higher output by letting them focus on the decisions and not the process.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
greydata 9y ago
Person who manages budgets, day-to-day, organizational specific priorities, tracking higher level objectives, etc. Its basically a high level Program/Project Manager with a horizontal responsibility.
beambot 9y ago
http://firstround.com/review/why-you-need-two-chiefs-in-the-executive-office/ http://firstround.com/review/why-you-need-two-chiefs-in-the-...
bertil 9y ago
At my previous company, where raising money and making sense of accounting was a non-trivial, the Chief of Staff was (like the CEO and the CFO) a former investment banker for +10 years. He definitely felt like the #2 of the company (ex-aequo with CTO & CFO) and not an executive assistant. In practice, he was in charge of internal communication with non CxO people and the CEO, and a lot of things that the CEO had to do that wasn’t direction external relations (typically press): preparing financial documents, coordinating teams with legal, team morale, etc.

What is a chief of staff in a tech company?

tptacek 9y ago

My understanding: a masculine term for "executive assistant". Or: a technical secretary. Personal project manager.

vm 9y ago
This article from First Round Capital outlines the modern tech company approach: http://firstround.com/review/why-you-need-two-chiefs-in-the-executive-office/ http://firstround.com/review/why-you-need-two-chiefs-in-the-... Tl;dr - CoS stands in for the CEO in meetings, fills her in on what's going on across the organization (or outside of it), and overall leverages her time. It's beyond someone who just does scheduling but short of being COO, which entails direct reports and accountability.
- tptacek 9y ago
  I guess. That squares with Pooja Ashok's resume, too.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
fjsolwmv 9y ago
As in the classic British "secretary" when it was a job for men named Hilary or Dana

WisNorCan 9y ago

The role varies widely. Typically, there is a lot of administrative work required to manage the cadence of an exec team: Examples - collecting tracking metrics ahead of meeting, tracking action items for completion, preparing materials for customer briefings, etc. A chief of staff helps the CEO get higher output by letting them focus on the decisions and not the process.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

greydata 9y ago

Person who manages budgets, day-to-day, organizational specific priorities, tracking higher level objectives, etc. Its basically a high level Program/Project Manager with a horizontal responsibility.

beambot 9y ago

http://firstround.com/review/why-you-need-two-chiefs-in-the-executive-office/ http://firstround.com/review/why-you-need-two-chiefs-in-the-...

bertil 9y ago

At my previous company, where raising money and making sense of accounting was a non-trivial, the Chief of Staff was (like the CEO and the CFO) a former investment banker for +10 years. He definitely felt like the #2 of the company (ex-aequo with CTO & CFO) and not an executive assistant. In practice, he was in charge of internal communication with non CxO people and the CEO, and a lot of things that the CEO had to do that wasn’t direction external relations (typically press): preparing financial documents, coordinating teams with legal, team morale, etc.