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What is it with executives who feel above showing up to work? I worked at a company where the CEO worked 2 half days a week and the other execs were on cruise c
by seibelj 8y ago
What is it with executives who feel above showing up to work? I worked at a company where the CEO worked 2 half days a week and the other execs were on cruise control, then they got angry that all the employees weren’t killing it (“this is startup! Work like one!”). Hard to enforce that culture when no one is ever there.
- pjc50 8y ago> "Palihapitiya in February filed for divorce from his wife Brigette Lau, a partner with Social Capital and co-owner of its management company. Soon he began showing up less often to the office, ..." The disadvantage to not having a boundary between your personal life and work life, I suppose.
- smt88 8y agoWhat are the advantages? Seems like a terrible idea all around.
- YinglingLight 8y agoAn incredible amount of small businesses have female owners to due tax benefits. So husband-wife pairs are not uncommon.
- somebodythere 8y agoWhat are the tax benefits?
- dx87 8y agoI don't know about tax benefits, but I know it is pretty common around DC for a husband to have his wife be the legal owner of his business for contract bidding purposes. The govt has to award a certain amount of contracts per year to smaller groups, so making the wife the owner allows the business to legally be a "woman owned, small business", even though the wife has no actual role in the company.
- ryandrake 8y agoIt's also very common for these contractors to sub-contract all of their contracts to the big companies who actually do the work. So the government contracts to a one-man Veteran Alaskan Native owned "company", who has a pre-arranged agreement to sub all incoming work out to the actual contractor. The prime contractor's only job is to be the prime contractor and forward communication back and forth. He can do that from home without even going into an office. Sweet gig, and on the taxpayer's dime!
- conanbatt 8y agoTax benefits for female owners?
- fipple 8y agoSome husband and wife startups are both very successful financially and greatly enjoyable for the couple. Voicestream for example.
- wand3r 8y agoYCombo as another.
- cameronlpmoore 8y agoHouzz as well
- ksdale 8y agoDefinitely not a "startup" CEO, nor do we have employees yet, but my wife and I own a small business together and we really enjoy spending all of our time together. It's a giant advantage for us to be able to casually discuss business when we want, and for us to both have the same schedule around big launches or industry event type things. When we both had our own jobs, we felt like we hardly saw each other and like we had nothing in common. Now that we have kids, it's much easier to have the kids around while we're working because we can both do more or less as the kids need us. Obviously if we got divorced it would be a disaster, but that doesn't negate that these are currently very real advantages.
- llampx 8y agoIt's great... until it isn't. Then it's terrible.
- paulddraper 8y agoYou like your coworker, you have a shared interest with your spouse, you succeed together
- sbilstein 8y agoI'm a founder working with my fiance who is CEO. Advantages: Complete trust. We have a lot of experience with difficult conversations. We have complementary skills and personality traits. We have both bet our future on this company and thus are equally dedicated. We're also aligned on motivation to succeed. If you are willing to entangle your life with someone financially, romantically, and domestically, you may as well start a business with them :)
- paxys 8y agoIf you can make it work then all the $$ stays in the family
- pfarnsworth 8y agoTo be fair, if a CEO of a startup is sitting in her office 5 days a week, she's not doing her job properly. She should be out there finding funding or finding customers.
- seibelj 8y agoIt was beach house and yacht trips, considering we had zero customers (B2B).
- izacus 8y agoWhat does "out there" mean? Walking down the street in SF and giving out leaflets? I'm having a bit of trouble imagining how this out there looks like for most of those startup companies - especially considering how a lot of CEOs in larger companies work as long-distance communicators.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> What does "out there" mean? Asking your network for introductions, cold emailing, et cetera. If you can’t do this you shouldn’t be a start-up CEO.
- fastball 8y agoAll of which happens in your office...
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> All of which happens in your office Not necessarily. Particularly when it comes to early stage work, a lot of trust building must happen face to face. In any case, "out there" means being "out" in the awareness of the people on whose radars you want to be. (Versus twittering about in a corner unnoticed.)
- paulddraper 8y agoMeeting with clients and investors often but not always involves travel.
- segmondy 8y agoHow do you know the CEO was not working the other times they were out of the office?
- seibelj 8y agoHe wasn’t, mostly yachting and partying, very wealthy man. But the company was lighting VC dollars on fire. Someday I’ll write an expose of that place, such an odd culture. We had a burn of something like $2mil a month, 75 employees, and no product or customers to speak of.
- icedchai 8y agoSounds like a B2B startup I worked for in the late 90's. The CEO had "rockstar" qualities, raised a bunch of cash, over-hired, delegated everything... It didn't end well.
- ryandrake 8y agoNice if you're the one partying. Pretty sad for everyone else though. Life's not fair. Lots of talented people out there who could build a business and turn a profit, and instead the VC money always chases the smooth talking B-school bro's with Ivy League pedigree, and other big-network phonies.
- smileysteve 8y ago> delegated everything Did one thing correctly.
- madeuptempacct 8y agoWealthy family or self-made?
- vincentmarle 8y agoFacebook
- seibelj 8y ago
- jarsin 8y agoWe have replaced Lords with Executives in the modern world.
- jpttsn 8y agoLords stuck around until, if ever, violently deposed. Executives are accountable for producing something people will part with money to get.
- madeuptempacct 8y agoLords were responsible for defending the land and raising an army. Executives probably delegate way more than lords did.
- conanbatt 8y agoI am always flabbergasted on how Marxist-minded people find solace in feudalism.
- rglover 8y agoWe call those idiots.
- icedchai 8y agoThey're executives, dude. All the hard work has been delegated, so they just need to check in from the yacht once a week. /s
- vincentmarle 8y agoThe 4-Hour Workweek