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Never understood people's infatuation with reading CEO biographies. I've read a few and never found anything in it that could relate to. May be I am not meant t

Never understood people's infatuation with reading CEO biographies. I've read a few and never found anything in it that could relate to. May be I am not meant to be one of those people. Even if I worked hard, got in at work at 5 am every day, I don't think I could go from being a lowely team lead to cto or CEO of a multi billion dollar corporation. I don't think it just works that way. I could be very wrong, but that's my experience.

jjoonathan 8y ago
Same appeal as any other type of cargo-culting: it's a lot easier to get up at 5am, shake hands firmly, and dress for success than it is to spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  > spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct. Or be born into money. No amount of self-help is going to tilt the scale towards that.
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    Bo Burnham on getting into showbiz: "Don't take advice from guys like me who've gotten very lucky. Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner saying 'Liquidize your assets! Buy Powerball tickets! It works!'" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-JgG0ECp2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-JgG0ECp2U)
    - UpshotKnothole 8y ago
      Ah Taylor Swift, she didn’t really win the lottery though, or if she did, she was able to start off buying a loooooot of tickets. Her father worked for Merril Lynch, from three generations of bank presidents. Her mother worked in finance. When she was 14 her father moved the family to Nashville and worked for Merril Lynch there, and invested in a record label called Big Machine to the tune of $120,000. This was the company that first signed her. She grew up rich, with the freedom to pursue her passion from the age of 10, when her mother would take her to karaoke contests. The ability to up stakes and move to Nashville, to have your father buy your way into a record label... well... it doesn’t overshadow her natural ability, but it helps to explain how she was able to leverage it so effectively.
      - phakding 8y ago
        You probably misunderstood the post you replied to.
      - tomnipotent 8y ago
        > She grew up rich Exactly - she won the lottery being born into a rich white family in the U.S.
        UpshotKnothole 8y ago
        She won more lotteries than that. She won the lottery of being born rich, white, and connected. And in a country like the US. She won the lottery of being beautiful, of having an excellent voice and musical talent, of having parents willing to use their money and power to further her career of choice. She won the lottery of not having any crippling mental illnesses or learning disabilities, of not being sexually assaulted, and more lotteries besides. But Bo Burnham’s quote really isn’t about that, he’s talking about getting lucky and having your career take off. The truth is that many many lotteries typically need to be won before you can even enter that lottery. My point was that Taylor Swift didn’t just “take a chance” on music, she used all of her existing wins to stack the deck in her favor. If you look at a lot of CEO’s the same is true of them, and it’s not just the luck of their career taking off, but the luck of ever being in a position to have that happen.
        icebraining 8y ago
        of not being sexually assaulted Nitpick, but this isn't actually true (see lawsuit she won), and we don't really have any way to know if it was true even before she became famous. I agree with your general point, though.
        PhasmaFelis 8y ago
        > But Bo Burnham’s quote really isn’t about that, he’s talking about getting lucky and having your career take off. I think it was about both. Later in the clip he says to Conan O'Brien "We're tall white guys, we overcame nothing to get here."
  - louprado 8y ago
    Nearly every self-help book mentions the importance of goal setting. It is important even for those with a pedigree and born into wealth (I recognize not every student in this study was born into wealth but the median Harvard family earns at least 3 times the national average). From https://sidsavara.com/why-3-of-harvard-mbas-make-ten-times-as-much-as-the-other-97-combined/ https://sidsavara.com/why-3-of-harvard-mbas-make-ten-times-a... “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” In 1979, interviewers asked new graduates from the Harvard’s MBA Program and found that : 84% had no specific goals at all 13% had goals but they were not committed to paper 3% had clear, written goals and plans to accomplish them In 1989, the interviewers again interviewed the graduates of that class. You can guess the results: The 13% of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all. Even more staggering – the three percent who had clear, written goals were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent put together. Edit: I had often heard of this study and just pasted the first reference I found. I would delete this post, if I could, as its credibility is questionable. Thanks femto.
    - femto 8y ago
      Myth, as referred to in an update to the link you provided: https://sidsavara.com/fact-or-fiction-the-truth-about-the-harvard-written-goal-study/ https://sidsavara.com/fact-or-fiction-the-truth-about-the-ha... Though it's claimed that the myth did prompt an actual study (not peer reviewed?) https://sidsavara.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/researchsummary2.pdf https://sidsavara.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/researchsum... Which claims to support a fuzzier notion that writing things down helps achieve a goal.
  - apatters 8y ago
    > spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct. > Or be born into money. No amount of self-help is going to tilt the scale towards that. While there are undoubtedly success stories which resemble both of these caricatures, I think they're in the minority. I can't say I'm hobnobbing with the Forbes billionaires list but I have personal relationships with many people who built successful businesses. Betting on a unique opportunity is often an amplifier, so is starting in a good place in terms of money/family. But what they all have in common is they focused religiously on the top line, they didn't fuck up the bottom line, and they worked very hard.
    - taurath 8y ago
      I’ll add - “they had the privilege of being able to focus their attention and not be harmed for it”.
      - white-flame 8y ago
        In betting on opportunity, often times they have everything riding on it. Where does the "harm" you talk about come from? Usually it's because there are other responsibilities you're engaged with. If you literally give everything else up to focus on one thing, these barbs aren't in your life. I'm talking forgoing rent to crash with family/friends, eating ramen, selling/getting rid of your things, live on credit cards, etc, and have a 24/7 focus that keeps you going. You'd be surprised how much that frees you from the immediate "harm" you describe, but you also have nothing to fall back on, because you pretty much have nothing else anymore than your pursuit, and can be amassing enormous debt (financial and otherwise). It's a huge amortized, pushed-forward harm in the hopes that the gamble pays off. For many, it doesn't.
        devdas 8y ago
        That sounds like a fairly large financial privilege to me. If you are working two jobs to just get enough food to survive, and your friends are in a similar situation, you don't have that opportunity or ability to take risks.
  - Aeolun 8y ago
    I’m sure if you are born just right, things will start looking up for you soon.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  " it's a lot easier to get up at 5am, shake hands firmly, and dress for success" Let's not be superfluous. Being a CEO is hard, even the 5 am rising and 'hand shaking' parts.
  - enraged_camel 8y ago
    >>Being a CEO is hard Not necessarily. It completely depends on the company and the industry.
    - sonnyblarney 8y ago
      Yeah, some are harder than others but I can't think of a CEO job that isn't hard. It's always fraught with political risk, changing times, etc. etc.. From the 'inside' we might think it looks easy, we get a paycheque, it's all hunky-dory ... but from that top spot it's almost always hard.
      - tomgp 8y ago
        How hard is it really though? If someone said to me: "you can either work in an Amazon warehouse (either shift 7.00am-5.30pm or 5.45pm-4.15am) or be the CEO of Amazon but you're going to get paid the same whichever you choose" I know which I'd do.
        larrywright 8y ago
        Whether a job is hard or not depends on more than just how many hours you work and the physical aspect. Which of those jobs is more stressful? CEO, hands down. The decisions you make as a warehouse worker don’t matter all that much - if you make a bad one, the impact of that decision won’t be felt far. If the CEO makes a bad decision, it could lead to his removal, the failure of the company, huge financial losses, people losing their jobs. Just because something isn’t physically demanding doesn’t mean it’s not demanding.
        tomgp 8y ago
throwaway82729 8y ago
I don't think it's helpful to copy what they do as CEO. I look for what they did in their lowest paying job and how they changed as they progressed in their careers. Of course, very few autobiographies cover this.
- PhilWright 8y ago
  Great point. Telling us how the CEO operates day to day now when they are the finished product is not helpful in understanding how they became that person. A step by step description of their career would be more useful. How did they get every promotion, how much was luck by being in the right place and how much from hard work and talent. What were the thinking and strategies they used along the way.
- ksdale 8y ago
  I think this is quite insightful. There was a post on here a while ago about William Faulkner being an absolutely atrocious postmaster when he was in college. Of course, a lot of artists tend to have a more meandering paths than a lot of CEOs, but his habits as a postmaster were probably just as important to his writing career as his later habits. This may be more applicable to artists, but my own take is that a lot of people would be surprised at how much a lot of really successful people looked like "losers" for a significant part of their early lives, due to them living in their own world and not working hard enough on anything they didn't care about because they spent all their time thinking about the one thing they really cared about.
- MetalGuru 8y ago
  Have you found any source for this kind of information. Sometimes I’ll look over the work histories of founders LinkedIn, but employment history is pretty superficial information.
  - bjelkeman-again 8y ago
    I think it is because it is fairly mundane. Hard work and a dose of good luck.
- 8y ago
jiveturkey 8y ago
Interesting perspective. Is it your belief that people read these as how-to or self-help books? I enjoy reading them the same way I enjoy learning from my co-worker's habits. I take what matters to me and throw away the rest. I'm always trying to improve how I do my current job. It's not enough to have an open mind about work habits / techniques, one has to actively seek out new information. Also it's usually an interesting look into someone else's life, at times even fascinating.
- phakding 8y ago
  > Interesting perspective. Is it your belief that people read these as how-to or self-help books? My friends and acquitances definitely read these books to glean some sort of inspiration/hidden jem that would start them on path to riches. My life has no parallel to lives of these people and there's nothing I could copy. It's my opinion that the odds of me being a CEO of a huge Corp are same as a person who is homeless for years going through college and getting a job making six figures.
- bendotero 8y ago
  They are often sold as self-improvement books. I picked up a "wise quotes from CEOs" book thinking it'd have some gems as well. Just made realize that most of the people writing and saying these things were grossly out of touch with the people they direct.
- ericdykstra 8y ago
  Biographies can be interesting, but books that extrapolate directives from case studies of winners are totally useless. If 8 of the top 10 CEOs do x, you can be sure it will be reported in that kind of book, even if 999 of the bottom 1000 failed business leaders do the same thing. There are tons of these books, and the only lesson they teach is how often people fall for the trap of survivorship bias.
  - i_made_a_booboo 8y ago
    bingo
jessaustin 8y ago
Never understood people's infatuation with reading CEO biographies. We can't assume that book sales perfectly represent public interest in the books sold. Anytime someone who is very well-compensated in fields other than writing has an inexplicably successful book, we have to wonder how many of those books ever touched a reader's hands. Publishers just want to sell books; they don't care if lots of them are sold to a CEO-author as some sort of vanity project.
matwood 8y ago
Why do you think that you couldn't become the CTO? Serious question. What qualities are you lacking?
- phakding 8y ago
  Well I don't even know what a cto does. I have been in many meetings with them, but besides making high level decisions and asking for status, I don't know what they do. Besides I was born in poverty and needed lot of efforts to be able to socialize with people born upper middle class. I can only imagine what else I need to learn to socialize within upper echelons. I can't explain it to you fully. Thanks for asking though, I never thought through this before.
  - pandapower2 8y ago
    >I don't know what they do. In my experience all C level executives do a very good job of seeming like they know what they are doing. That seems to be a huge part of the job. Seeming like you know what you are doing, seeming like you know what is going to happen in the future (despite that being fundamentally unknowable) and being vaguely intimidating. Beyond that they select from the set of possible projects that could be undertaken ie create a new product, overhaul some existing system, lay off a bunch of people etc etc. Having made that selection from the options put in front of them their reputation improves if the project goes well (or at least looks like it did). Their reputation takes a hit if the project goes badly. They may have little or nothing to do with the project execution upon which their career rides. It seems like a bizarre job in that regard. Decide on a high level course of action then wait 6+ months to see if you will be considered a genius or an idiot. During that time your involvement is limited to periodically listening to status updates while looking stern.
    - dasil003 8y ago
      C-suite is about setting the vision and aligning teams and departments. It’s anything but choosing from presented choices and waiting months on end for results; to the contrary it is constant evaluation and communication to steer the ship as well as possible. You are right that projecting confidence is important, but that’s not the main job by a long shot.
internet555 8y ago
It seems like such a dull choice of reading material. I could read about poetry, a math book, a biography of someone at the level of an actual historical figure, a great religious work, or even just the news. But instead I’m going to read about some guy who sold database software or ran a printing company.
manigandham 8y ago
You're focused on the actions rather than the results. Common mistake. People become leaders by creating and commanding change that positively affects the company. Land a major deal or create a new product line that doubles revenue? You're getting to the top. Working harder than the others is part of this process, and sometimes that means you come in at 5am, but it's not a requirement nor is it something that anyone in that position actually focuses on as more than just a means to an end.
- a_imho 8y ago
  Land a major deal or create a new product line that doubles revenue? You're getting to the top. From my experience this does not happen at all. Not to underclass developers at least.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    At all? I don't know what you mean by "underclass" developers but it is common to see many devs who spearhead projects get higher titles and progress faster. There are many such examples just in SV companies. Part of it is making sure contributions are measured and noticed. People can't act on what they don't know.
    - theshadowknows 8y ago
      I started out at my company building HTML emails. I started seeing places things could get better. Better code base so I built it. More sophisticated tooling and build chain so I built it. Problems with the Econ site so I helped find and fix them. Possible places to integrate and become more efficient so I helped build them. 3 years in, 3 raises (I’ve more than doubled my starting salary) and 3 promotions now I’m a Systems Architect. I recently presented to the owner of our parent company and (feel at least) that I’m valued and make real contributions. I work on big projects and am seen as a leader. So it can happen.
      - lukeholder 8y ago
yashap 8y ago
Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography was a very well written, engaging bio about a deeply flawed but very interesting man. There’s no need to have delusions about becoming a CEO while reading it, it’s just an entertaining book.
113 8y ago
People get to the top by being manipulative and making themselves look good. I would imagine similar traits lead to writing a biography that sells well.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  Absolute rubbish.
lostlogin 8y ago
> Never understood people's infatuation with reading CEO biographies. There’s always the biographies of sports people to try I can’t make it though the cover text.
mmjaa 8y ago
There are CEO's who haven't written a book. Maybe you're like those guys.

jjoonathan 8y ago

Same appeal as any other type of cargo-culting: it's a lot easier to get up at 5am, shake hands firmly, and dress for success than it is to spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
> spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct. Or be born into money. No amount of self-help is going to tilt the scale towards that.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  Bo Burnham on getting into showbiz: "Don't take advice from guys like me who've gotten very lucky. Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner saying 'Liquidize your assets! Buy Powerball tickets! It works!'" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-JgG0ECp2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-JgG0ECp2U)
  - UpshotKnothole 8y ago
    Ah Taylor Swift, she didn’t really win the lottery though, or if she did, she was able to start off buying a loooooot of tickets. Her father worked for Merril Lynch, from three generations of bank presidents. Her mother worked in finance. When she was 14 her father moved the family to Nashville and worked for Merril Lynch there, and invested in a record label called Big Machine to the tune of $120,000. This was the company that first signed her. She grew up rich, with the freedom to pursue her passion from the age of 10, when her mother would take her to karaoke contests. The ability to up stakes and move to Nashville, to have your father buy your way into a record label... well... it doesn’t overshadow her natural ability, but it helps to explain how she was able to leverage it so effectively.
    - phakding 8y ago
      You probably misunderstood the post you replied to.
    - tomnipotent 8y ago
      > She grew up rich Exactly - she won the lottery being born into a rich white family in the U.S.
      - UpshotKnothole 8y ago
        She won more lotteries than that. She won the lottery of being born rich, white, and connected. And in a country like the US. She won the lottery of being beautiful, of having an excellent voice and musical talent, of having parents willing to use their money and power to further her career of choice. She won the lottery of not having any crippling mental illnesses or learning disabilities, of not being sexually assaulted, and more lotteries besides. But Bo Burnham’s quote really isn’t about that, he’s talking about getting lucky and having your career take off. The truth is that many many lotteries typically need to be won before you can even enter that lottery. My point was that Taylor Swift didn’t just “take a chance” on music, she used all of her existing wins to stack the deck in her favor. If you look at a lot of CEO’s the same is true of them, and it’s not just the luck of their career taking off, but the luck of ever being in a position to have that happen.
        icebraining 8y ago
        of not being sexually assaulted Nitpick, but this isn't actually true (see lawsuit she won), and we don't really have any way to know if it was true even before she became famous. I agree with your general point, though.
        PhasmaFelis 8y ago
        > But Bo Burnham’s quote really isn’t about that, he’s talking about getting lucky and having your career take off. I think it was about both. Later in the clip he says to Conan O'Brien "We're tall white guys, we overcame nothing to get here."
- louprado 8y ago
  Nearly every self-help book mentions the importance of goal setting. It is important even for those with a pedigree and born into wealth (I recognize not every student in this study was born into wealth but the median Harvard family earns at least 3 times the national average). From https://sidsavara.com/why-3-of-harvard-mbas-make-ten-times-as-much-as-the-other-97-combined/ https://sidsavara.com/why-3-of-harvard-mbas-make-ten-times-a... “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” In 1979, interviewers asked new graduates from the Harvard’s MBA Program and found that : 84% had no specific goals at all 13% had goals but they were not committed to paper 3% had clear, written goals and plans to accomplish them In 1989, the interviewers again interviewed the graduates of that class. You can guess the results: The 13% of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all. Even more staggering – the three percent who had clear, written goals were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent put together. Edit: I had often heard of this study and just pasted the first reference I found. I would delete this post, if I could, as its credibility is questionable. Thanks femto.
  - femto 8y ago
    Myth, as referred to in an update to the link you provided: https://sidsavara.com/fact-or-fiction-the-truth-about-the-harvard-written-goal-study/ https://sidsavara.com/fact-or-fiction-the-truth-about-the-ha... Though it's claimed that the myth did prompt an actual study (not peer reviewed?) https://sidsavara.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/researchsummary2.pdf https://sidsavara.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/researchsum... Which claims to support a fuzzier notion that writing things down helps achieve a goal.
- apatters 8y ago
  > spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct. > Or be born into money. No amount of self-help is going to tilt the scale towards that. While there are undoubtedly success stories which resemble both of these caricatures, I think they're in the minority. I can't say I'm hobnobbing with the Forbes billionaires list but I have personal relationships with many people who built successful businesses. Betting on a unique opportunity is often an amplifier, so is starting in a good place in terms of money/family. But what they all have in common is they focused religiously on the top line, they didn't fuck up the bottom line, and they worked very hard.
  - taurath 8y ago
    I’ll add - “they had the privilege of being able to focus their attention and not be harmed for it”.
    - white-flame 8y ago
      In betting on opportunity, often times they have everything riding on it. Where does the "harm" you talk about come from? Usually it's because there are other responsibilities you're engaged with. If you literally give everything else up to focus on one thing, these barbs aren't in your life. I'm talking forgoing rent to crash with family/friends, eating ramen, selling/getting rid of your things, live on credit cards, etc, and have a 24/7 focus that keeps you going. You'd be surprised how much that frees you from the immediate "harm" you describe, but you also have nothing to fall back on, because you pretty much have nothing else anymore than your pursuit, and can be amassing enormous debt (financial and otherwise). It's a huge amortized, pushed-forward harm in the hopes that the gamble pays off. For many, it doesn't.
      - devdas 8y ago
        That sounds like a fairly large financial privilege to me. If you are working two jobs to just get enough food to survive, and your friends are in a similar situation, you don't have that opportunity or ability to take risks.
- Aeolun 8y ago
  I’m sure if you are born just right, things will start looking up for you soon.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
" it's a lot easier to get up at 5am, shake hands firmly, and dress for success" Let's not be superfluous. Being a CEO is hard, even the 5 am rising and 'hand shaking' parts.
- enraged_camel 8y ago
  >>Being a CEO is hard Not necessarily. It completely depends on the company and the industry.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    Yeah, some are harder than others but I can't think of a CEO job that isn't hard. It's always fraught with political risk, changing times, etc. etc.. From the 'inside' we might think it looks easy, we get a paycheque, it's all hunky-dory ... but from that top spot it's almost always hard.
    - tomgp 8y ago
      How hard is it really though? If someone said to me: "you can either work in an Amazon warehouse (either shift 7.00am-5.30pm or 5.45pm-4.15am) or be the CEO of Amazon but you're going to get paid the same whichever you choose" I know which I'd do.
      - larrywright 8y ago
        Whether a job is hard or not depends on more than just how many hours you work and the physical aspect. Which of those jobs is more stressful? CEO, hands down. The decisions you make as a warehouse worker don’t matter all that much - if you make a bad one, the impact of that decision won’t be felt far. If the CEO makes a bad decision, it could lead to his removal, the failure of the company, huge financial losses, people losing their jobs. Just because something isn’t physically demanding doesn’t mean it’s not demanding.
        tomgp 8y ago

throwaway82729 8y ago

I don't think it's helpful to copy what they do as CEO. I look for what they did in their lowest paying job and how they changed as they progressed in their careers. Of course, very few autobiographies cover this.

PhilWright 8y ago
Great point. Telling us how the CEO operates day to day now when they are the finished product is not helpful in understanding how they became that person. A step by step description of their career would be more useful. How did they get every promotion, how much was luck by being in the right place and how much from hard work and talent. What were the thinking and strategies they used along the way.
ksdale 8y ago
I think this is quite insightful. There was a post on here a while ago about William Faulkner being an absolutely atrocious postmaster when he was in college. Of course, a lot of artists tend to have a more meandering paths than a lot of CEOs, but his habits as a postmaster were probably just as important to his writing career as his later habits. This may be more applicable to artists, but my own take is that a lot of people would be surprised at how much a lot of really successful people looked like "losers" for a significant part of their early lives, due to them living in their own world and not working hard enough on anything they didn't care about because they spent all their time thinking about the one thing they really cared about.
MetalGuru 8y ago
Have you found any source for this kind of information. Sometimes I’ll look over the work histories of founders LinkedIn, but employment history is pretty superficial information.
- bjelkeman-again 8y ago
  I think it is because it is fairly mundane. Hard work and a dose of good luck.
8y ago

jiveturkey 8y ago

Interesting perspective. Is it your belief that people read these as how-to or self-help books? I enjoy reading them the same way I enjoy learning from my co-worker's habits. I take what matters to me and throw away the rest. I'm always trying to improve how I do my current job. It's not enough to have an open mind about work habits / techniques, one has to actively seek out new information. Also it's usually an interesting look into someone else's life, at times even fascinating.

phakding 8y ago
> Interesting perspective. Is it your belief that people read these as how-to or self-help books? My friends and acquitances definitely read these books to glean some sort of inspiration/hidden jem that would start them on path to riches. My life has no parallel to lives of these people and there's nothing I could copy. It's my opinion that the odds of me being a CEO of a huge Corp are same as a person who is homeless for years going through college and getting a job making six figures.
bendotero 8y ago
They are often sold as self-improvement books. I picked up a "wise quotes from CEOs" book thinking it'd have some gems as well. Just made realize that most of the people writing and saying these things were grossly out of touch with the people they direct.
ericdykstra 8y ago
Biographies can be interesting, but books that extrapolate directives from case studies of winners are totally useless. If 8 of the top 10 CEOs do x, you can be sure it will be reported in that kind of book, even if 999 of the bottom 1000 failed business leaders do the same thing. There are tons of these books, and the only lesson they teach is how often people fall for the trap of survivorship bias.
- i_made_a_booboo 8y ago
  bingo

jessaustin 8y ago

Never understood people's infatuation with reading CEO biographies. We can't assume that book sales perfectly represent public interest in the books sold. Anytime someone who is very well-compensated in fields other than writing has an inexplicably successful book, we have to wonder how many of those books ever touched a reader's hands. Publishers just want to sell books; they don't care if lots of them are sold to a CEO-author as some sort of vanity project.

matwood 8y ago

Why do you think that you couldn't become the CTO? Serious question. What qualities are you lacking?

phakding 8y ago
Well I don't even know what a cto does. I have been in many meetings with them, but besides making high level decisions and asking for status, I don't know what they do. Besides I was born in poverty and needed lot of efforts to be able to socialize with people born upper middle class. I can only imagine what else I need to learn to socialize within upper echelons. I can't explain it to you fully. Thanks for asking though, I never thought through this before.
- pandapower2 8y ago
  >I don't know what they do. In my experience all C level executives do a very good job of seeming like they know what they are doing. That seems to be a huge part of the job. Seeming like you know what you are doing, seeming like you know what is going to happen in the future (despite that being fundamentally unknowable) and being vaguely intimidating. Beyond that they select from the set of possible projects that could be undertaken ie create a new product, overhaul some existing system, lay off a bunch of people etc etc. Having made that selection from the options put in front of them their reputation improves if the project goes well (or at least looks like it did). Their reputation takes a hit if the project goes badly. They may have little or nothing to do with the project execution upon which their career rides. It seems like a bizarre job in that regard. Decide on a high level course of action then wait 6+ months to see if you will be considered a genius or an idiot. During that time your involvement is limited to periodically listening to status updates while looking stern.
  - dasil003 8y ago
    C-suite is about setting the vision and aligning teams and departments. It’s anything but choosing from presented choices and waiting months on end for results; to the contrary it is constant evaluation and communication to steer the ship as well as possible. You are right that projecting confidence is important, but that’s not the main job by a long shot.

internet555 8y ago

It seems like such a dull choice of reading material. I could read about poetry, a math book, a biography of someone at the level of an actual historical figure, a great religious work, or even just the news. But instead I’m going to read about some guy who sold database software or ran a printing company.

manigandham 8y ago

You're focused on the actions rather than the results. Common mistake. People become leaders by creating and commanding change that positively affects the company. Land a major deal or create a new product line that doubles revenue? You're getting to the top. Working harder than the others is part of this process, and sometimes that means you come in at 5am, but it's not a requirement nor is it something that anyone in that position actually focuses on as more than just a means to an end.

a_imho 8y ago
Land a major deal or create a new product line that doubles revenue? You're getting to the top. From my experience this does not happen at all. Not to underclass developers at least.
- manigandham 8y ago
  At all? I don't know what you mean by "underclass" developers but it is common to see many devs who spearhead projects get higher titles and progress faster. There are many such examples just in SV companies. Part of it is making sure contributions are measured and noticed. People can't act on what they don't know.
  - theshadowknows 8y ago
    I started out at my company building HTML emails. I started seeing places things could get better. Better code base so I built it. More sophisticated tooling and build chain so I built it. Problems with the Econ site so I helped find and fix them. Possible places to integrate and become more efficient so I helped build them. 3 years in, 3 raises (I’ve more than doubled my starting salary) and 3 promotions now I’m a Systems Architect. I recently presented to the owner of our parent company and (feel at least) that I’m valued and make real contributions. I work on big projects and am seen as a leader. So it can happen.
    - lukeholder 8y ago

yashap 8y ago

Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography was a very well written, engaging bio about a deeply flawed but very interesting man. There’s no need to have delusions about becoming a CEO while reading it, it’s just an entertaining book.

113 8y ago

People get to the top by being manipulative and making themselves look good. I would imagine similar traits lead to writing a biography that sells well.

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
Absolute rubbish.

lostlogin 8y ago

> Never understood people's infatuation with reading CEO biographies. There’s always the biographies of sports people to try I can’t make it though the cover text.

mmjaa 8y ago

There are CEO's who haven't written a book. Maybe you're like those guys.