4 ms·

But does he provide x200 more value than you? Think of it this way, if there was two hundred of you all working together, would he still be adding more value t

by Drakim 8y ago

But does he provide x200 more value than you? Think of it this way, if there was two hundred of you all working together, would he still be adding more value than you?

artificial 8y ago
Why not work on starting a company instead of working for people you consider unfair?
- organsnyder 8y ago
  Many of us have families to support, and can't afford to take the risk (especially with the poor social safety nets in the United States).
  - artificial 8y ago
    Would you contribute money to other people so they can take risks? If so, maybe consider becoming a backer to a company.
mi100hael 8y ago
Most likely, yes. The CEO is the public face of the company. (S)He attracts both investors & customers either through direct hands-on interactions or by providing stability and confidence. Put it this way: - Would you feel comfortable investing your money with a company run by 200 engineers? - Would you feel comfortable entering into a contract or purchasing agreement with a company run by 200 engineers?
- jimbofisher1 8y ago
  https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ Its totally not because the 1% has captured all the value created by increased productivity over the past 50 years. Definitely not.
013a 8y ago
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. A thousand times Yes. At least in a healthy company. What exactly do you think separates companies like Oracle and Microsoft? Oracle has hundreds of very talented engineers. But their position in the market is stagnating. This is hard for HN types to accept, but Engineers are not the people in software companies producing value. No individual person is producing value. Its a combination of the leadership who can lay down a plan toward something that produces value, and the line workers who can actually produce it. Both are necessary. Here's the difference: If you need to replace an engineer, go for it. Who cares. There are millions of us. We're code-monkeys. If you need to replace a CEO, you better be careful. Github couldn't even find a good CEO, so they sold out. If you're not careful, you might get a Larry Ellison or a Marissa Meyer instead of a Satya Nadella or a Tim Cook. Successfully leading companies legitimately requires personality characteristics that are present in less than 1% of the population. I would guarantee that if we dissected the brains of enough C-suite people from successful companies, we'd see some sort of genetic or brain matter similarities, probably something resembling sociopathism.
- chaseha 8y ago
  Well said. I think the reason it's easy to feel that people at the C-Suite don't produce value is the "leadership" qualities that matter are very hard to define, and success or failure often doesn't make itself clear until months or years down the road. As a lower-level employee, sometimes you think that the company would be successful without a leader, or even is successful in spite of poor leadership - while that may sometimes be true, much of what happens at that level is hard to understand unless you've been there
- pascalxus 8y ago
  i think we over-attribute the success's of companies based on the talent of both their CEO and their employees. Here are some examples: I've worked in the gaming industry at big company for 5 years. I've seen a ton of games fail and few succeed. I was on the most successful game team that made hundreds of millions of dollars. And, I don't believe our team was more talented than all the other teams. We simply had the right market timing with exactly the right game, inexorably leading to an enormous success. Within this company many other teams built clones, executed just as well if not better and yet, none of those games received the success as the first one with the right timing.

by Drakim 8y ago

But does he provide x200 more value than you? Think of it this way, if there was two hundred of you all working together, would he still be adding more value than you?

artificial 8y ago

Why not work on starting a company instead of working for people you consider unfair?

organsnyder 8y ago
Many of us have families to support, and can't afford to take the risk (especially with the poor social safety nets in the United States).
- artificial 8y ago
  Would you contribute money to other people so they can take risks? If so, maybe consider becoming a backer to a company.

mi100hael 8y ago

Most likely, yes. The CEO is the public face of the company. (S)He attracts both investors & customers either through direct hands-on interactions or by providing stability and confidence. Put it this way: - Would you feel comfortable investing your money with a company run by 200 engineers? - Would you feel comfortable entering into a contract or purchasing agreement with a company run by 200 engineers?

jimbofisher1 8y ago
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ Its totally not because the 1% has captured all the value created by increased productivity over the past 50 years. Definitely not.

013a 8y ago

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. A thousand times Yes. At least in a healthy company. What exactly do you think separates companies like Oracle and Microsoft? Oracle has hundreds of very talented engineers. But their position in the market is stagnating. This is hard for HN types to accept, but Engineers are not the people in software companies producing value. No individual person is producing value. Its a combination of the leadership who can lay down a plan toward something that produces value, and the line workers who can actually produce it. Both are necessary. Here's the difference: If you need to replace an engineer, go for it. Who cares. There are millions of us. We're code-monkeys. If you need to replace a CEO, you better be careful. Github couldn't even find a good CEO, so they sold out. If you're not careful, you might get a Larry Ellison or a Marissa Meyer instead of a Satya Nadella or a Tim Cook. Successfully leading companies legitimately requires personality characteristics that are present in less than 1% of the population. I would guarantee that if we dissected the brains of enough C-suite people from successful companies, we'd see some sort of genetic or brain matter similarities, probably something resembling sociopathism.

chaseha 8y ago
Well said. I think the reason it's easy to feel that people at the C-Suite don't produce value is the "leadership" qualities that matter are very hard to define, and success or failure often doesn't make itself clear until months or years down the road. As a lower-level employee, sometimes you think that the company would be successful without a leader, or even is successful in spite of poor leadership - while that may sometimes be true, much of what happens at that level is hard to understand unless you've been there
pascalxus 8y ago
i think we over-attribute the success's of companies based on the talent of both their CEO and their employees. Here are some examples: I've worked in the gaming industry at big company for 5 years. I've seen a ton of games fail and few succeed. I was on the most successful game team that made hundreds of millions of dollars. And, I don't believe our team was more talented than all the other teams. We simply had the right market timing with exactly the right game, inexorably leading to an enormous success. Within this company many other teams built clones, executed just as well if not better and yet, none of those games received the success as the first one with the right timing.