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The hardest people for founders to hire are so called C-level executives

• AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  I wonder if this is also true for founders, but by virtue of selection bias "good" founders hiring "bad" executives is more common than good executives joining bad founders (because good founders' companies last longer and hire more people than bad founders)
• deleted 4y ago
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• swyx 4y ago
  have now encountered two C-level execs who came from big names, were airdropped into our startup, and then proceeded to completely mangle the parts of the company they ran. always takes at least a year for people to realize (i didn't realize it myself for the first one until AFTER he was fired seemingly out of the blue, and then you start to pattern match the subsequent ones. my personal reflection is this is a horrendous waste but is part of the benefit of being an early employee at a startup, that you get to see other pple's costly mistakes while having a lower stake in the cost. I didn't know to trust my instincts then, because org chart = truth when you are new to the game). Shreyas Doshi calls this the Incompetent Leader (https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1339997380335128576 https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1339997380335128576), which i will quote below for the twitter allergic (it is a better framing than I can ever come up with): --- First-time founders, CEOs, and even employees should understand the playbook of the Incompetent Leader (IL). The IL is savvy & charismatic, and excels at 4 things: 1) Feign competence 2) Create confusion 3) Buy time 4) Fail up The IL playbook & what to do about it The IL’s most favorite move is simple: Buy Time The IL’s 2nd most favorite move is: Buy More Time. After doing this a few times, the IL’s masterstroke is: Fail Up. The IL will repeat this a few times over a 20-30 year career to reach “spectacular success” Here’s how it works: Once upon a time: IL joins a new company, with much fanfare from the CEO, who really wants this to work out. Remember, the IL is incapable of making a significant, singular impact. IL doesn’t want anyone to know this. So what does IL do? IL sets the playbook in motion. Step 1 - IL: “I don’t have the right people. Cannot execute without the right team.” CEO: “I guess that’s reasonable. Do what you have to.” Result: IL has just bought 6-9 months to go hire org leaders, managers, while hiding incompetence behind charisma & confidence. [after 6-9 months] Step 2 - IL: “Have a better team now. Look how well I’ve hired! But my org doesn’t have the right structure. Not aligned with new strategy, worried execution will suffer.” CEO: “Hmmm… fine, go ahead.” Result: IL has just bought 3 months to plan re-org, 3 more to let it settle [after 6-9 months] Step 3 - IL: “Okay, that reorg helped & my people are firing on all cylinders. But I don’t have enough cross-functional alignment. We need a company re-org/Need to bring those functions into my org/Need new cross-func leaders” CEO (pot committed): “Fine, let’s do X, Y, Z here” [after 6 more months] Step 4 - IL: “Some of my key people left because of frustration with all of this. I need to replenish the gaps. Btw, look at these amazing results last quarter!” CEO to IL: “OK let me think about it” CEO (thinking): Those results are due to market tailwinds & not THAT amazing [Privately, CEO makes a call to an executive search firm to begin finding a replacement for IL] [At the next CEO/IL 1:1] CEO: “It’s time to part ways” IL (after expressing some incredulity & outrage): “I understand. I want to do what's best for the company. Let’s work on a comms plan for my departure” [IL or CEO send an announcement to the company reflecting, thanking, looking onward/upward, etc] Step 5 - (most vital move for IL) IL (in interview with hot company Foobar): “Here’s everything I built at previous company. Company grew 70% in my 2 yrs there despite all the challenges I faced” CEO of Foobar: “When can you start?” [and THAT is how our IL fails up] THE END --- he continues with a "what you should do about it", which if you are still reading here at this point go give him a "superfollow" ($10/month for his product/executive thoughts, very worth it) https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1339997399909994496 https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1339997399909994496
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • mgh2 4y ago
    Someone who has never been an IC or has no technical background makes me doubt their competence.
    • deleted 4y ago
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    • mikeryan 4y ago
      For your CFO, CMO, COO, CHRO? Most early CXO hires are for the things that CEO's don't want to do but now have to be done. They want to hire someone who can take stuff completely off their plate and get it done. Identifying a poor CTO or CPO is pretty straightforward for technical founders. It's harder to identify whether your new CMO is shitty when they are crafting a marketing strategy from scratch.
    • vsareto 4y ago
      Someone else might think they're really good. That someone else might themselves be incompetent, but might also have people who think they're good. This gets less likely as the relationship graph grows, but I don't think people are good at judging competence without widely recognized and respected metrics. This is why getting friends and connections is a powerful strategy, because many fields are not interested in establishing fair gatekeeping. And for some very difficult roles, it's way easier to make friends than to be competent. This is made all the more difficult when competence is a quickly moving target. The positive referral is a rarely moving target though.
  • lmarcos 4y ago
    We had one of those at my previous company! I didn't realize until now.
    • swyx 4y ago
      i'm sorry for the damage caused but also pls do tell anonymized version of the pattern/behavior, i am very intent on never hiring one of these people
• nabla9 4y ago
  >“I divide my officers into four classes as follows: The clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. >Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.” – Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • ilamont 4y ago
    My grandfather used to say "there are two types of people in the world: lifters and leaners." I was skeptical when I first heard it. I still question the many special cases or situations that fall somewhere in between. That said, the longer I live and work, the more I see (or hear of) the leaners ... and their enablers.
    • groby_b 4y ago
      Indeed. And the worst part, leaning is contagious. At some point, good people start wondering why they should lift if everybody else is leaning. They either quit, or start coasting.
      • arminiusreturns 4y ago
        Nobody else is communicating or seems to give a shit, why should I? This is why bad leadership is so important to defend against. The degradation of productivity is viral.
    • contingencies 4y ago
      Nice one. Added to https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup
  • 4y ago
• throwaway38475 4y ago
  I work for a YC company called Coinbase and it is absolutely terrible here because of the C level execs. They are terrible at their jobs and from the inside, the org seems to be falling apart. I've noticed that since the layoffs there is no motivation anywhere. People are hardly on slack and it takes forever to get anything done. I hate blind but it's a constant complaint that no one is working anymore. Seems like Brian was fooled into hiring all these leaders that don't understand people or the space but have great credentials. As for Brian himself, he is the most uninspiring leader I have ever worked under. He is a platitude robot saying nothing more than 'Crypto will lead to economic freedom' and 'now is the time to build'. Before the crypto crash it seems like the only motivator was money, now that that is gone the company is slowly spiraling and no one cares. Mostly because the execs don't care, the CFO and CPO both cashed out all of their shares during IPO. If they don't believe how can we lowly engineers. A blind comment that really resonated with me and the few others I've shared with: https://imgur.com/a/jrA3oCL https://imgur.com/a/jrA3oCL Another thing, if Brian reads this he will probably go on another twitter rant rather than actually address the company.
  • yomkippur 4y ago
    at this point I wouldn't be surprised if some of them are cooperating with the feds
  • throwaway_4ever 4y ago
    > He is a platitude robot saying nothing more than 'Crypto will lead to economic freedom' and 'now is the time to build'. Before the crypto crash it seems like the only motivator was money Yes, that's what it's always been about with coinbase. That's why they sold their equity on a traditional finance platform for USD $ and why Brian bought a $130m mansion. 10 years later what has crypto accomplished besides grifting people out of their savings through 3% commissions and scams? Do you know how useful Google, or like any other company, was after 10 years?
  • throwfh80h82 4y ago
    How else could Coinbase have ended up? It's a company for people to speculate on digital tokens. There's no grand mission to the thing, his rhetoric has always struck me as hollow and self-serving. "Create more economic freedom" lol. I have an account, the app didn't even show you your return till fairly recently. Coinbase will die, even if crypto survives. But he's already taken out his millions.
• 79rsgang 4y ago
  Seen it all from start ups to public. It's not every C-Level but when one does join it doesn't take long for everyone to know know they've clearly failed their way to the top. It's striking how one will be hired to a non-traditional C-level title for a department they have no experience in and run it into the ground. I've even witnessed department leads beg not to hire one from the start and be fully ignored. I guess the fact they've been at the top for so long makes them untouchable? What's outstanding is how often it happens and how both hiring and keeping them around never makes a lick of business sense. Even once exposed as incompetent, founders will dig their heals in and find any excuse to not bear responsibility of their bad hiring decision. They eventually leave on good terms and continue the cycle elsewhere.
  • bad_asks 4y ago
    Lol Bob Smith (CEO of Blue Origin) is the pinnacle example of this.
  • ushakov 4y ago
    that’s what happens when you hire people not based on their talent but on nepotism
    • DethNinja 4y ago
      But does hiring for merit really makes sense at C level? Ideally a C level executive should have deep connections with government/large companies. This is how entire capitalism functions at the moment. Connections make you money, not merit. Even if you hire the best CEO there is, without connections there is no possible way to make money. How do you think people get good contracts for their companies?
      • Quarrelsome 4y ago
        > But does hiring for merit really makes sense at C level? Aren't these the people running the company? So, yes?
      • celdon25 4y ago
• kache_ 4y ago
  Mishires kill The safest thing to do is not hire anyone The second safest thing to do is hire your homies Unfortunately for companies aspiring to become megacorps, hiring your homies doesn't scale
  • etothepii 4y ago
    Unless you network like it's 1999.
• immigrantheart 4y ago
  Grifters. Influencers.
• datalopers 4y ago
  Hey let’s not forget the founders who hire a buddy or two and give them C-level titles when they’re woefully unqualified for that role and proceed forever drag the company down.
  • ushakov 4y ago
    nepotism at its best
    • account-5 4y ago
      Isn't that cronyism? I thought nepotism was family based, like trump's appointments.
      • mathgeek 4y ago
        Nepotism is the favoring of friends and relatives, especially with jobs. Cronyism is, specifically, putting friends and family in positions of power.
      • mejutoco 4y ago
        TIL. It looks like Nepotism has a stronger family connotation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronyism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronyism
  • hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    That happens, but I don't think that's really relevant to pg's tweet. I mean, if a founder is willing to hire a buddy and deliberately overtitle them, that's easily the fault of the founder and, for better or for worse, shouldn't be a mystery if things go south. That's very different from what pg is referring to, where, even through all the best of intentions and due diligence of a founder, a shitty C level is hired because they excel at bullshitting.
  • etothepii 4y ago
    It depends on the stage of the company. Hiring a buddy early in the company's life might make total sense, especially if willing to work for primarily sweat equity compensation. An early joiner will get a grandiose title.
• doctor_eval 4y ago
  Yeah, this 100% triggered me. If I’m not careful, I’ll spend the rest of my morning feeling really angry. Again.
• kodah 4y ago
  Are there actual examples of high-ranking engineers transitioning into tech company C-Suites? Maybe these kinds of roles shouldn't be careers, but something you do for a period of time.
  • 0xB31B1B 4y ago
    it happens with CTOs. At many companies, CTO is less of a management role and more of "the leader of all of the principal engineers and source of innovation for the company". VPE reports to CTO and does the administrative side of things, CTO sets technical vision. Most other c suite type roles are generally bucketed into sales, marketing, operations, and if you are particularly unlucky: product, "Information", and human resources.
  • Bayart 4y ago
    Pat Gelsinger, recently. But he's been an executive for a long time already. Carmack is a part-time CTO these days.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • uncassacnu 4y ago
    I’m just past the year Mark in being a CTO after a career as an engineer / architect. I won’t claim to be an amazing exec, but I still don’t understand how anyone could succeed in this role without having significant engineering experience. I approach this as “my turn” at playing the executive role - because I finally said to myself that there has to be someone who can code in the exec team of my next job. I intend for this to be my one and only time in a role like this - to do it well just requires more time and energy to sustain it for decades.
    • ryanbrunner 4y ago
      I've seen extremely sales / marketing oriented CTOs that worked well despite having not much / very outdated tech skills. It usually works pretty well when you have a lot of enterprise sales, and the CTO is often there to help get through procurement, relay technical requirements from sales calls, bizdevvy stuff re: integrations / platform, etc. Every time I've seen that pattern work though, it's been paired with a very effective VP Eng, and quite a lot of autonomy on teams owing to the lack of a technical vision, or at least a technical vision that can be directly implemented (i.e. the CTO might have vague directional goals, but there's a lot of legwork required to turn that into something real).
• daniel-cussen 4y ago
  Internal promotion.
• hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  Henrique De Castro's hiring and firing at Yahoo is one of my best examples of this. But $60 million for a year and change of work sure is a great way to fail! https://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-coo-henrique-de-castro-2012-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-coo-henrique-de-castro...
• sys_64738 4y ago
  Usually C-level execs is all about connections or where they went to university. They are not smarter than folk in the trenches.
  • anonymousDan 4y ago
    Maybe that is the way to hire good ones. Exclude all candidates who went to a 'brand' university.
    • Spooky23 4y ago
      They do that in government. You just get different cliques. You hire executives for different reasons. Sometimes loyalty or incompetence to a degree is valuable as the person isn’t a threat. Other times people are hired to drive a particular agenda and can be relied upon to do that because they are too dumb to do otherwise. And sometimes they are sacrificial lambs.
    • doctor_eval 4y ago
      You can hit the jackpot by hiring a CxO from a brand university who has both the connections and the skill set. Unfortunately you can’t discover the strength of either until you’re in quite deep. That’s the risk.
  • swyx 4y ago
    as a fellow skeptic, this oversteps. your mistake is that smart = value. connections do have value, as does experience and other leadership qualities than domain expertise. your criticisms will be stronger if you recognize this.
    • doctor_eval 4y ago
      Yes - this is the problem. I worked at a company that was relatively successful because of the connections the CEO brought to the table. Objectively, the company would have been far less stressful to work at - and more profitable - if we had a better leader, but it wouldn’t have existed without his connections.
• beambot 4y ago
  Spoke to the founder / CEO of a wildly successful now-public (former startup) company about his exec-level hires. He confided that 1/3 of executives were net positive (i.e. should retain), 1/3 were net neutral (i.e. should be fired) and 1/3 were net negative (i.e. separate ASAP!). Gentleman also indicated that his peers on similar trajectories were even less successful at exec hiring. So there's a point of anecdata for you: "Good" at exec hiring might just be a 33% success rate. YMMV.
  • leaflets2 4y ago
    Sounds as if he did not fire the 33+33% ? The board or the investors wouldn't have liked that? (Or why not)
    • devmunchies 4y ago
      usually there are lawyers involved when hiring a c-suite and there are negotiations and contingencies. if you fire a c-suite you might have to send them off with a lot of cash and/or legal fees. it might even cause a little stir in the public image and hurt the stock or investor perception. It might be cheaper or less of a headache to just work around them. one of the better scenarios is to have a candid, open conversation about their offramp and give them a couple quarters to find a good spot somewhere else and then they "resign".
  • creaghpatr 4y ago
    As long as you can identify which are which quickly and action then 33% hit rate can stack your roster pretty quick. Hiring takes time though, in most cases.
    • etempleton 4y ago
      Hiring takes time and not having people in roles can be worse than a mediocre performer and sometimes worse than a bad performer who generally gets the job done.
    • etempleton 4y ago
• somishere 4y ago
  No doubt. Any number of c-levels I have worked with are prolific climbers whose numero uno skill is Network. Lords of LinkedIn. The kind of people who will say and do literally anything to keep their fingernails dug deep. Their actions appear to align with the needs of a company, so most are tolerated if not celebrated.
• lifeisstillgood 4y ago
  Can we turn it around and ask what we actually want from a (good) C-level. Cos I suspect it's not what most of us imagine. At some point what we want from C-level is putting in place (bespoke) systems that achieve the "strategic" goals - Is the monthly churn growing? Are you not able to get high touch sales to take off? Is the European product not ready? All of those are the sort of "strategic" things people tend to hire CxOs for - but any good analyst can get you 80% of the way to identifying the problems, and then you have to pick a solution. At that point you are hiring someone for a very specific job with a clear roadmap. Maybe you can hire internally ? Edit: on the other hand this article (from the frontpage) is an excellent example of hiring for a job, even though the person doing it is not going to be building the ditches etc. Walt hired for experience and focus on the job he wanted done. And as that job was going to have to be a negotiation with all the other agents building the park, he needed a high level advocate for the job (minimalmmosquitoes) he wanted From this I suggest that hiring a CxO is hiring a person to act as advocate for the outcome you are hiring them for - very similar to politics https://mousetrack.co.uk/blog/mosquitoes-at-disney-why-do-you-almost-never-see-them/ https://mousetrack.co.uk/blog/mosquitoes-at-disney-why-do-yo...
  • cozos 4y ago
    This is sort of the discussion I wanted to hear from this thread. What separates a a product manager paired with a data analyst from say, a CEO or CPO (product)? Surely the PM and DS are better armed to make decisions with data and talking to users, etc.
    • refurb 4y ago
      In big orgs it’s making decisions based on the totality of the business, not if we should spend $X on ads to grow revenue 50%. If any company is being honest with itself, there are more good ideas than time or money. A good CEO sets a course for the company, and most importantly gets everyone on board then relentlessly squashes distractions and basically clears the way for everyone to actually do their job. CEOs need business sense, but as you said, the people who know the details report to the CEO. At the heart of it, the CEO is a salesperson and people manager.
• mattzito 4y ago
  I think there’s all kinds of problems that intersect to create the problems we see with these hires: - founders, especially first time founders, often have middling experience hiring for any role, and zero experience hiring execs. - the absolute best execs often have no shortage of offers, and hence it can be quite hard to identify and attract these people - founders often don’t want to pay what the really good execs are worth. Not that I’m even “really good”, but there’s a number of startups where I’ve been recruited because things are a disaster, can’t figure out how to scale the business, etc etc, and then after speaking with everyone they turn around and offer half a percent of the company, and act like they’re being generous. - founders want to hire someone who’s the right person for the long haul, because of all of the above pains - except that those people often are accustomed to two stages ahead of where the company is now and may not be prepared for what’s required right now And then, sure, there are the people who have failed up enough, or gotten lucky enough to win the startup lottery, and then coasted from there. But look at it this other way - 50% of engineers are in the bottom half in skill and talent. It’s just that you do your best to optimize for the upper half, and since you’re hiring lots of them, you trust in the numbers to pay off for you. When you are hiring one, and just one, head of sales - the margin of error is really thin.
  • ospray 4y ago
    Sounds like a strong argument for delaying hiring exces till your larger. Unless they have contacts you need to tap.
    • tomrod 4y ago
      I interpreted it as "execs are investments. Tread accordingly."
  • cgio 4y ago
    I guess you comment as an exec but this comment does not help make the case. Without being an engineer myself, I would be very frustrated with the last paragraph. It uses a statistically true fact to make a meaningless argument (how is optimising for top 50% different to e.g. optimising for bottom 50%?). Furthermore it demonstrates a view of a team of engineers as a bag of individual contributors. In a team, skill and talent are only one factor in optimising team dynamics. You don’t trust in numbers, you trust in dynamics and collaboration and in people growing within your organisation. I recently hired a PhD and a bored junior admin whose most exciting piece of work was scripting his boring work away at the same day. Also to your core intended argument, you hire an engineer in a couple of interviews, an exec would go through an extensive round of meetings and interviews and therefore you would optimise the process across different dimensions. The margin of error should be pretty similar, given fundamentally organisations have an underlying risk appetite even if it is implicit. The issue is that execs have more experience manipulating your perception of risk and therefore you should go with your eyes open, because this is part of the skillset you are probably looking for anyway.
• jordanpg 4y ago
  Another aspect of this that I observed more than once is the fawning reverence that the managerial class and other middlemen seemed to have towards the c-suite. I remember the excitement surrounding the arrival of new execs, including details about their house and fancy cars. There seems to be a belief that if you've made it to SVP or better, your talent and intelligence goes without saying. My interactions with these folks were limited, but without exception, I was far from impressed with any of them.
• rurp 4y ago
  It blows my mind the degree to which 1. C-level execs are given massive compensation, with the justification that a good one is well worth the price. AND 2. There's no good objective way to measure C-level performance. That alone should make people deeply suspicious about these compensation packages. On top of that, the best person for a given CXO job often just so happens to be a golfing buddy and/or have outside business dealings with half the board. I'm not surprised by ambitous execs grabbing what they can, it's what they do after all, but I am pretty disturbed by how many people outside of those elite cliques will carry water for them and pretend like the C-level hiring market is some sort of efficient meritocracy.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • jonbischke 4y ago
    One measure of a high-quality C-level performer is the quality of their teams. The best C-level people can bring in very high-quality managers and individual contributors underneath them. Below average C-level people really struggle on this front. Also, for some C-level roles there are good and objective ways to measure performance. For example, for a Chief Revenue Officer you have (obviously) revenue. There are a ton of confounding variables of course but in general CROs who consistently out-perform plan are better than those who consistently under-perform plan.
    • rxhernandez 4y ago
      I've definitely seen CEOs with enormous amounts of success (in the companies they led previously) bring in dogshit teams to their current company. I've also seen dogshit CEOs bring in amazing people.
  • koolba 4y ago
    It’s game theory and asymmetric information at its finest. Throw in a healthy dose of survivorship bias, a pinch of appeal to authority, and you get a perfect recipe for astronomical out of whack compensation packages.
  • 4y ago
• namecheapTA 4y ago
  Ive always wondered why executives get such generous compensation packages. Are most people unwilling to take these roles at "pretty damn good" incentives packages, so companies are forced to give "crazy lucrative" incentive packages? Are there really VPs that would pass up a CEO position if it didn't come with a 25 million golden parachute clause? If it was only 5 million, they walk?
• daenz 4y ago
  A lot of anger in the comments here. Not exactly sure who it's directed at: the existence of connected people? The founder who makes the bad hiring decision? The fact that their compensation is so high? All of the above? Unless you're advocating for capped compensation or removing autonomy in who a founder is allowed to hire, if you're angry, it's probably a form of jealousy. It's somewhat natural to feel jealous at people who don't "work hard enough" (by your standards) and yet reap larger rewards than you. Or who have seemingly casual lives (by your standards), yet get more opportunities. It's also easy to pretend that jealousy is actually selfless outrage and claim offense against everyone else (for whom your outrage represents). But the same could likely be said about you, if you talked to the right people. Where I used to live, "Go home, tech bro" was common graffiti to see. I knew a woman in the beauty industry whose partner was in the tech industry. She resented how much money that he made because, her words, "she worked harder than he did." As if her idea of work was how value should be calculated.
  • greatpostman 4y ago
    No it’s just years of watching some average guy make millions for literally nothing
    • daenz 4y ago
      How is this not jealousy?
      • spaetzleesser 4y ago
        If being angry at incompetent people being paid too much is jealousy I have no problems with it.
      • dilyevsky 4y ago
        Jealously would imply wanting to be that guy? By that definition I for one would be jealous of a Mega Millions winner (although I probably shouldn't be) but would not be jealous of a good-for-nothing exec who accomplished nothing other than collecting huge paycheck while letting a bunch of people down who all put their trust in them.
• kriro 4y ago
  Takeovers and special circumstances aside, "promote, don't hire externally" should be way more common and the prefered approach (imo). I think there's a three question protocol that should work reasonably well. Q1: Do we actually need this CxO role? Q2: Who will report to this CxO? Q3: Why can't we promote from the pool from the answer to Q2 instead of hireing externally?
  • lumost 4y ago
    Anecdotally, I've observed that man CxO roles are created at the behest of the board or to acquire prestige for some purpose. It would not surprise me that it's easy to find highly successful people who will trade Prestige for money and WLB after a certain point in their career. Promoting internally won't buy your firm more prestige/credibility.
    • leaflets2 4y ago
      WLB = work life balance, right
  • _8j50 4y ago
    I must disagree. What I have seen is what you are saying enables bad internal culture, decision making and technical habits to become more ingrained into the very soul of the company. I see well meaning senior technical people disregard my advice on technical matters because that's just not how things are done there ever, some things are so far out of the box they can't even conceive of it as a possibility. Manager after manager telling you the same answer because that's what whoever they ask about tells them because everyone at that dept/company is 15+yr tenured. If you want to keep things as they are but maybe slightly better or to make different internal people happy you promote from within. If you want fresh thinking and new directions you gotta hire from the outside. I can't emphasize this enough. The only analogy that comes to mind is eskimos that have to traverse a desert but only want other eskimos in their team.
    • buscoquadnary 4y ago
      If we are going to go to extremes to illustrate the disadvantages then let me point out what happens with the opposite. When you choose to hire outside for every single leadership position especially senior ones you send the message to the people that their effort and sacrifice is not appreciated and you don't trust and that they won't be growing with the company. The people who built the company then get disaffected and leave, eventually no one is committed and things go to hell because there is no loyalty or personal interest.
• e10jc 4y ago
  As an employer, I have seen low-performing employees resign because they found a senior/management/VP-level title elsewhere, and I think “well, good for you, I suppose”… I imagine people like this just fail their way up, learning enough jargon along the way to impress the next employer.
• FpUser 4y ago
  I dealt enough with C-Level (was one myself some 20+ years ago). They come in all kind of shapes. One was very entertaining. Whenever I try to schedule something with him he would look into his book and start reciting - in 3 days I am of to Hawaii for vacation, in 5 days I am driving my kid to XYZ championship, in 7 days I am driving my other kid to art classes, I am off to my pilot's classes etc. etc. I just prayed - please, please do not tell me that you've scheduled sex tomorrow at 3PM. I've had enough details of you private life to last me lifetime and when the fuck do you actually work?
• ryanbrunner 4y ago
  I've worked with multiple people like this that have disastrously crashed and burned, and to a one without exception, they're always at some new company with the same title. Absolutely nothing seems to stick to them.
  • majormajor 4y ago
    This is not so unusual compared to other jobs - I've worked with crappy engineer coworkers who went on to bigger and better jobs. Always a fun day when your peer who you thought was slowing the team down announces they're leaving for Google, say! Most people fail sideways at worst, vs flunking out of the ability to tackle a role again ever in the future. If the assumption is that other people would be better at these roles and the hiring is broken (this is PG's assumption, as far as I can tell from the tweet), how would we better identify those people who'd do better? (Personally, I think we're under-estimating the amount of it that's caused by "it's fucking hard.")
• recursivedoubts 4y ago
  I saw this first hand: company hired a "killer CEO" from a non-tech firm based on the boards insistence, he brought along his CFO. A year in, the company almost died and had to raise an emergency round. The CEO took off w/ a huge amount of equity and, meanwhile, the CFO had completely screwed the books up. All very funny. In retrospect.
• throwfh80h82 4y ago
  I worked for a large, late stage, Softbank backed company. They brought in some C-suite execs while I was there. A CTO paid several million annually with large, public company experience. They were totally clueless, and the engineering org was almost revolting within 6 months, trying to stage a coup to the CEO. No technical experience, no leadership, installing cronies, speaking in opaque platitudes. I'm not angry about it, though they did oversee us being on the cusp of a promising IPO to a pretty bad outcome that cost me a lot of money, but I'll say that any illusion that you have to be competent to be a C-suite exec, and any imposter syndrome I ever had, went out the window after that. Ironically it increased my personal confidence, if these idiots can do it I certainly can. I think the old saying "nobody gets fired for buying IBM" kinda applies to some execs maybe, like nobody gets fired for hiring some stellar resume exec with lots of experience, but they may get fired for taking a chance on an upstart.
  • draw_down 4y ago
  • voz_ 4y ago
    Uber?
  • AceJohnny2 4y ago
    Were we at the same company? I joke. I probably wouldn't have called us "large", but otherwise your story matches my experience word-for-word, which says something about the industry...
  • throwaway7653 4y ago
    Pretty sure I was your coworker. The interesting thing about that company is how badly it failed at filling executive roles with promotions from within OR experienced hands. Fundamentally, the CTO failed because in their previous success, they built it from the ground-up. They had zero experience trying to take over a large org, came in like a bull in a china shop, and worst of all, made a lot of very costly, morale-destroying mistakes. But see also the Chief Product Officer who left in disgrace or the quasi-COO who also left in disgrace. They were both promoted from within well past their level of proven competence. The common thread? The CEO who made all of those decisions. Executive hiring requires a CEO with the ability to reflect on their personal shortcomings and those of the team. And then, they need the ability to attract and evaluate candidates. And even if they do that successfully, they need the ability to meld a group of these execs into a highly functional team. Our CEO only had the ability to hire people he saw as junior versions of himself.
• a-dub 4y ago
  what does a CTO do at a company of decent size? do they actually have a hand in day to day technical decisions, setting technical tone or otherwise impact the technical environment or are they mostly doing abstract management? is it a role that is good for people who aim to have extensive impact in creating a technical culture or is it mostly people management and exec stuff but at a high level?
  • bennyelv 4y ago
    Define decent size? I’m CTO a a ~450 person company, but the the tech team is more like ~60. My job is to set the technical tone about how we’re building software for the engineering teams, to determine our technology strategy from the business strategy set by the CEO, sometimes to just be a technology handy man for the rest of the company. I stay quite close to what my teams are doing, and I call out hopefully helpful direction from the sidelines to make sure that they’re all pulling in the right direction and don’t get pushed off course by other stakeholders.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• hluska 4y ago
  This is a tough topic, in the same way that it’s hard for non-technical founders to make their first technical hire. How do you hire a CFO if you don’t even know what a CFO does day to day? Your board will likely be of help, but it’s ultimately your decision and you will earn the lumps from a bad decision. I’d argue that it’s very hard to hire C-level executives outside of your core competency. Not that it’s inherently hard to hire at the C-level, but because it’s very hard to hire for skills you don’t have, can’t understand and can’t select for.
• creaghpatr 4y ago
  Would love to hear examples of companies bringing on an expensive CXO that transformed and empowered their teams to success. How high must the upside be here given the failure rate?
  • bennyelv 4y ago
    Same for CTOs. Reason, I am one and this comment thread is a very depressing read. Surely someone must have examples of when a C-level leader actually made things better?
    • origin_path 4y ago
      Eric Schmidt?
• llaolleh 4y ago
  Part of why it is so difficult is that these C-level executives have mastered the art of sounding good with minimal set of accomplishments. Sometimes I listen to these presentations and it feels like a solid story and presentation, but there is nothing behind their rodeo when you sit back and dig deeper. A fucking mirage. It's not the person who does excellent work that gets promoted or climb up the corporate ladder, but the person who knows how to sell their work, as sad as this is.
  • kristianov 4y ago
    Work is a type of performance art. Bosses pay to see you suffer. And if you do not act like you are suffering enough, more work will be added to your desk for proper amount of suffering.
    • brianf0 4y ago
      Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. I wholeheartedly agree.
      • leaflets2 4y ago
        I didn't downvote but I think sometimes work is just plain fun, sometimes been looking forward to go to work. And nice coworkers, was looking forward to see. Not so much suffering here :-) (Sometimes boring++ too of course, especially once at a big corp)
    • throwawaysleep 4y ago
      Seriously. I do nothing in one of my jobs. But I make a lot of noise to the point that managers think I am overworked.
    • manmal 4y ago
      I’ve experienced that it suffices to give constant updates on things I’ve shipped and where I’m stuck. In meetings, I regularly give a short show and tell of what I’ve built. So far, that has worked out well. Using a display of suffering as virtue signal sounds not like a recipe for an uplifting workplace.
• trelane 4y ago
  I still don't understand what executives are actually for.
• turzmo 4y ago
• rexreed 4y ago
  So-Called C-level Executives do So-Called C-level work, which doesn't relate to anything in reality that founders are used to. A lot of C-level hires is about looking the part and talking the talk, but not actually doing much work. The most egregious and useless C-level hires are usually CIOs, CMOs, CDOs, CTOs, and often COOs. The CFO sometimes carries their own weight, especially in going-public or already-public companies. The sad part is that it's usually the investors that demand the C-levels, and often when a new CEO is brought in by the investors, they bring their C-level friends. Look at the chaos caused by all those new hires (and culture) at companies like DataRobot. A perfect example of why C-levels are hard to hire by the founders, and usually is the "new team" brought in.
  • xarope 4y ago
    As a CIO/CTO, I am very hands-on, but I don't feel offended by this statement; I do agree that there are many companies where the CIO/CTO are often vendor management, and more administrative than technical. I'm not sure I agree about COOs though. My experience with COOs is that they typically have the pulse of the company and are actually quite close to the ground.
  • thr0waway04253 4y ago
    Didn't even mention "Chief Customer Officers". We hired a CCO out of a friendly F500 with absolutely no experience. The unscalable support costs alone have him as a top contender for why we're at risk of running the whole company into the ground. Conveniently, everything in the org is the problem except him.
    • rexreed 4y ago
      There are so many nonsense C-levels. I agree on CCO. I've seen "Chief Innovation Officers" "Chief AI Officers" and more and I couldn't tell you what they are actually accomplishing, and why there needs to be a separate C-level from the CIO, CTO, etc. It seems like it's about padding at the top and getting the friends of the CEO in levels of management.
      • 4y ago
• faangiq 4y ago
  Once you are hiring such people, you want fakers. Edit: actually, they believe their own bs!
• cm2012 4y ago
  I'm a marketing consultant that's worked with dozens of well funded startups at various stages and can attest that CMOs are useless or worse 90% of the time.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• notananthem 4y ago
  Having met some truly great axe-persons in the C suite over the years I toy with the idea of making it my retirement plan, as in taking ambitious but ingloriously unpopular roles crafting and executing M&A in hard tech. Former MBA profs I've worked with in school do consulting on this for these execs and its fascinating but not sure where I'd cut my teeth outside of seeking mentorship with folks engaging in those and not just regular M&A. I'm not trying to be the faker tho
• softwaredoug 4y ago
  We have a societal bias that some good/bad leader takes over and they then gain all the credit/blame. This is histories “great man” theory[1]. It seems in contrast to the “blame” free culture espoused by many in tech where we look at the full system and not place credit/blame on one person. This bias cuts both ways. We seek out miracle worker C-level execs and simultaneously blame them when it all goes to hell. We don’t see the full ecosystem people operate in, which is typically more complicated than one leader. We overvalue the “strong man” style “leaders” and undervalue selfless, humble leadership that focuses on creating a healthy ecosystem where people don’t spend all their energies jockeying for credit or to avoid blame. Sadly the selfless leaders don’t sell themselves as well as the egotistical sociopaths 1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory
• shmde 4y ago
  Might be a dumb question, but do C-level execs fake it till they make it ? By make it I mean actually get good at the job they get hired for. I know this is a stupid question but it happens quite a lot in tech where a person gets hired not knowing everything out of box but they learn and navigate through it to become successfull Software Engineer.
• davesque 4y ago
  Isn't part of the problem actually that we're hiring at all for these kinds of positions? Why isn't it possible to invest in the people who already showed up and demonstrated motivation to get things done? The cynical (but maybe also realistic?) part of me wants to say that we hire for these roles to satisfy the class of people who feel entitled to occupy them. That is, we have this big educational apparatus churning out MBAs and so we better have some place to put them. I'm not convinced that the old stories of climbing up through the ranks somehow originated in a world that worked really any differently than the world we live in today. We've just built up a lot of momentum moving in the direction of bad business culture. But there's no real reason we can't begin moving back in the right direction right away!
  • danybittel 4y ago
    Because Executives are (besides other things) the voice of the client in a company. Engineers typically have a very bad understanding of the clients they are made to serve. Of course that doesn't make them bad engineers.
    • davesque 4y ago
      I wasn't really talking about the engineering/management divide. I was more talking about the culture of management as a profession and how misguided it's become. It's just like Paul G said. You have this whole class of workers who often act as though it's mostly their job to develop and market a personal brand. And the people left in their wake ask themselves dumb questions like, "How come that person who knew nothing about our business but looked good on paper couldn't end up walking the walk?"
  • PeterisP 4y ago
    Because you need specific skills and experience, not only motivation? When you need an accountant, you don't invest in a motivated office assistant to learn accounting, you hire someone who already spent the years to do it properly, since there are many steps between a random person and an accountant and most likely none of your current employees are "almost-accountants" who are ready to take the next step. And when you need a CFO, you don't invest in a motivated accountant to learn how to do that, you hire someone who has already spent the years to do it properly, since there are many steps between an accountant and a CFO and most likely none of your current employees are "almost-CFOs" who are ready to take the next step. Startup founders hiring random "good people" without competence at the appropriate scale as their CxOs is a good way to disaster.
• closedloop129 4y ago
  There is a video of Steve Jobs promoting an accountant or such to C-level and she tells how she grew into the job. Why is it necessary to hire external C-levels? What do they bring to the table? Why not promote leaders from within? If you stumble upon an exceptional person who could improve the company it's still possible to hire them.
  • zeruch 4y ago
    "What do they bring to the table? Why not promote leaders from within?" Both carry risks: the former can cataclysmically change internal culture and make a cascade of errors rapidly (usually during the idiotic 'empire building' phase many start from), the latter can sometimes be pushed up on questionable grounds and do much the same (e.g. worked for a firm where the CRO left abruptly after 18 months and because executive search was so expensive and lengthy, opted to promote the head of a region to CRO, who proved to be at best a mediocre sales leader in terms of actual revenue, but proved perpetually toxic to everything they touched. An almost cartoonishly corpulent and caustic incompetent from central casting. When he was regional lead he was problematic but contained, but when promoted turned into a total 'Enfant terrible')
    • solarmist 4y ago
      If he was already problematic then why the would you give him more power? This sounds like they got what anyone should’ve expected. Anyone is not better than no one.
      • zeruch 4y ago
        I never got a distinctly good answer on that, but the rubric was that the number one pick was not willing to relocate to corporate HQ and was content performing quite well in their lane (a rare case of astute self-awareness, but he was ultimately ousted by the new CRO because he only saw him as competition), and the number two choice was already in range and as I said, previously contained...maybe they thought he'd "grow into the role"?
  • TrackerFF 4y ago
• indus 4y ago
  I don’t think many startups become great at hiring, hence it becomes difficult to not say no to people who are great at selling. The reasons are obvious: 1. Early days of startup, when building a founding team —— you build a team based on who you know. 2. When growing the startup, it hires from the existing network such as founder’s school, church, country, etc 3. When it is rapidly scaling it hires from competition, or proven pedigrees such as Faangs, DrAb, etc. What gets missed in the above is the hardwork of hiring—-Advertising on boards, screening resumes, interviewing 1000s, etc. …and it is already late in muscle building when it comes to getting the right C-level.
• dimitar 4y ago
  I think part of the reason it is so hard with C-level executives is that they are not under the same scrutiny and control as a person as the rest of the employees. Everything else stems from this: the corruption, incompetence, abuse of other employees. Serious red flags about C-level executives: * Refuses to follow rules set by Security and Compliance. * Pulls people from existing projects without talking to their managers or require work to be done without logging a ticket or whatever the process is * Hires a lot of people that report only to the executive and are unaccountable to the rest of the organization; doesn't use any of the established hiring practices in the company. * Ignores people they didn't hire and the deals they've made with their managers * Mechanically imports practices and processes from another organization * Uses arguments from authority to justify their decisions * Behaves inappropriately in a workplace environment, including abuse and harassment All of this is hard to define, but the point is the same standards apply to everyone. I know that as an organization grows bigger getting organizational work done becomes that much harder, but it is the executive's job to foster a good culture not bypass it or worse have habitual rule-breaking to hide more serious offenses, incompetence or abuse. If I were a founder that needs to hire C-level execs I would also hire secretaries for them to ensure paper trails were left and processes were followed; I would want to make sure the secretaries record and ensure: * who they are meeting and that there are MoM of the important meetings, the execs can work flexibly but they need to record their calendar. They also need to get help scheduling internal and external meetings they are required to attend * all their requests are filed correctly * help them with preparing reports * file all documentation as per guidance by Security and Compliance * immediately tell me if anything inappropriate is happening All of these things are typically done for regular employees by their team-leads and managers. If C-level people feel like the bureaucracy is too much they need to reduce it for everyone, not just themselves. You don't need to give each C-level exec a personal secretary - a team of two (so they can also take vacations and sick leaves) is enough for the whole C-team.
  • simonebrunozzi 4y ago
    This is a really great list, and matches most of my "corporate" experience. I would add one simple caveat, though. It's usually difficult to observe and measure all the listed items, unless you have been working with such executive for a long period of time. The hard part is to figure this out in months, not years. Edit: or possibly, to figure it out before actually hiring the fraud.
• jacquesm 4y ago
  That's because you shouldn't hire them but you should grow them internally. Outside hires for executive positions are usually a great way to de-stabilize your company, early hires tend to be loyal to the founders and if you then hire some 'suit' to sit between them and you you risk them breaking off. So the solution to this problem is to ensure that your early hires are all top notch with the potential to eventually build out to become your C-suite, and to treat them as generously as you can when it comes to equity. And if you're really smart you stick to that mantra: hire quality over quantity, it will allow you to push back the typical organizational struggles until you've achieved an order of magnitude or more in revenues (assuming product market fit).
  • ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > ensure that your early hires are all top notch with the potential to eventually build out to become your C-suite Are we talking about developer early hires, or sales, or whom? The skills and character required to be a succesfull developer are totally different than whats needed for C level. Thr training required to get there is a lot. Finding the right people and keeping them is hard enough. But all means try to grow them internally and probide training, but as a 'solution' it is not realistic.
    • Aeolun 4y ago
      > The skills and character required to be a succesfull developer are totally different than whats needed for C level. The skills required to be a Lead and/or Principal developer seem to overlap quite a bit with those that an executive needs. I’m sure there must be some, but I certainly haven’t noticed any extra skills in the executives I’ve met except a larger willingness to compromise and do things that are globally suboptimal (e.g. bad for the company in the long run, but good in the short one).
      • ido 4y ago
        Is it possible you didn't actually have that much insight into what they do day to day? I'm currently running a small company (<10 people) and I was working as a developer (including lead) for about 15 years before that & the skills required are indeed quite different. There's a lot more planning and decision making, the impact of your decisions are much greater, a lot more uncertainty and your people skills are a lot more important.
• intothemild 4y ago
  This happened to us. We had a terrific health app, very simple idea, be better at finding what's wrong with you than google is. Simple right. Well we hired a new CEO, he stacked the board, changed it to a chatbot, and pushed out the founders, and labeled himself the founder. The guy didn't know what he was doing, he lied to us and we paid the price.
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
  They are also the hardest ones to fire.
• rixrax 4y ago
  This. And situation is even worse when as a [foreign] startup(ish) company you enter a new territory / region / country. At least once you realise that your chances of getting deadbeat execs that can't get hired by any reasonable company are disproportionally high, you can start approaching the hiring more realistically. And post hiring, implement appropriate monitoring regime to avoid irreversible damage these new execs can cause. Why I am asserting above? Because when you're a new business (at least for locale X) with little or no name recognition and often unable to pay very, very handsomely, why would any reasonable person risk their career and jump into some odd ball company whose name alone makes your pals at the golf club grin. My personal experience has been that the only way this has worked consistently (for B2B businesses) has been to send some of the core team member or a founder to a new location; then grow your customer base there, generate name recognition, and then ideally get a hint from your customer that someone might be considering change of jobs at their other supplier (potentially in similar vertical), and then approach that person. And once things observably run 'normally' and there is accountability, rinse and repeat at a next locale. As a side note, this is where I feel VCs with their networks of 'vetted' execs could potentially help. But haven't really seen it happening in practise either (because the VCs have always been from old locale, not from the new).
• pneumatic1 4y ago
  I think it’s funny when half the employees at tiny startups have C-level titles. At other companies I worked at before I got into tech, you’d just be a project manager or accountant. But in tech your the COO or CFO. I’m not sure if it’s instagramifcation/peacocking and this is common in all industries now or if it’s tech culture where every start up is just the next unicorn-in-waiting. I wonder about titling conventions at smaller Mittelstand companies or other places where they are content to just work and make money.
• fsckboy 4y ago
  a better title-ization for this tweet is "C-level executives are the best fakers"