13 ms·

CEO Shadow Program

415 points by romanzubenko 4y ago

hbcondo714 4y ago
Looks like a great program that will yield insight, especially being able to travel with the CEO. Anyone aware of other companies doing this or something similar?
- prteja11 4y ago
  Amazon.
- jason-phillips 4y ago
  > Anyone aware of other companies doing this or something similar? Samsung Austin Semiconductor used to have an "eat lunch with the president" program where groups of four or five from each department would each lunch with the president at least once a year. Obviously nowhere near as immersive as this program, but still having the opportunity to ask several off-the-cuff questions like, "Why did Samsung choose Austin?" definitely added value for me.
  - georgyo 4y ago
    I have been at several lunches with executives type events at different places. The groups are small so it makes more casual back and forth questions much easier, which is useful. From my perspective, the real value of the lunches was strictly building rapport across the company. At some places high level employees (doesn't necessarily have to be management) often feel unapproachable and they feel more abstract concepts than people. Having lunch with them re-enforces they are also people, people you may even get along with. Other companies I've been at only do Q&A sessions with large groups of employees, and this is still useful, but the format doesn't help the culture. The answers you get are often the company line, and you cannot dig deeper. The people answering the questions are still abstract identities that appear to tout that company line, with no real personality.
  - hackernewds 4y ago
    I know of a small-ish company where the exec was seeking to have lunch info sessions. But only with the women's group. It was shady to say the least
    - yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
      That does sound shady, but just to play DA here, there is a strong push in some areas for women to be “included” in leadership. It could be for that reason.
      - leaflets2 4y ago
        Makes me wonder, what was the age difference, ... And was it always only with the women's group? (I'd guess Not so big, and Yes?)
  - spaetzleesser 4y ago
    I habe been to several of similar lunches and every time it quickly turned into a long monologue by the executive.
    - leaflets2 4y ago
      What did he/she talk about? (For example, his her past life ... Sports? Politics? Work?)
      - spaetzleesser 4y ago
        The same stuff you can read in any company newsletter.
- swyx 4y ago
  andy jassy was famously a Bezos shadow before they landed on the idea for AWS (no idea how true this is just repeating what i heard)
- chaboud 4y ago
  We have TA's at Amazon for L12 (Jassy) and L11 (SVP). However, being a TA also involves active advising and commenting first on document reviews (a lot of executive communication at Amazon is via written documents and review meetings that begin with a doc read). Many of our executives were former TA's.
  - ranman 4y ago
    FWIW there's a lot of politics in this process. Existing talent in SEA is far more likely to get selected for these roles rather than offering global top talent a 2 year stint in SEA to see if it fits. The people that receive these TA positions are purposefully selected and groomed for future exec roles. The program does have a good track record of success but they made a few bad bets as well.
    - nixgeek 4y ago
      Elaine isn’t based in Seattle and got picked to be the UC TA (and she isn’t the only TA in the last few years to not be Seattle) so you’re not wrong, but “far more likely” seems a stretch.
  - Cederfjard 4y ago
    Stupid question here, what does TA spell out?
    - yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
      I believe it means Technical Assistant.
      - Cederfjard 4y ago
        Thanks! That was my first guess, but a quick search for amazon technical assistant wasn’t very helpful.
nickhalfasleep 4y ago
I keep thinking for fiduciary responsibility, CEO's and executives should wear a chest mounted camera like police. For shareholder value.
- deleted 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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- theboonies 4y ago
  This is the plot of the book “The Circle” but it was more expansive than just for CEOs
tibbar 4y ago
It’s surprising to me that a CEO can allow all of their meetings to be shadowed by a (relatively low-level) employee — surely there must be highly confidential information, performance feedback, sensitive legal matters, etc that can only be attended by specific executives?
- sytse 4y ago
  It is about 80% of my meetings that they can join, some are no shadows. And in quarter of the meetings they do join they are asked to leave towards the end so that there can be a short closed session. We also have extra confidentiality restrictions for the shadows.
  - swyx 4y ago
    you are one of my heroes, but i just have to say i cannot imagine how you aren’t absolutely exhausted after having to be so transparent 24/7 for like a decade. i’m a pretty transparent guy, but having to have my meetings streamed on youtube and someone shadowing me 80% of the time seeing me at my worst, i can’t imagine. hats off but also i would like your secret to eternal youth, internal consistency and unlimited energy.
    - perfmode 4y ago
      in my experience, it's not the transparency that is exhausting. it's the hiding of things. when i approach life with truthfulness and transparency, i feel light as a feather.
      - mattwad 4y ago
        As CEO, you get to decide if you have to hide things or not. And if you do, everyone underneath you will also hide things, and then everyone has to come to you for anything. I call this "hub and spoke" leadership. It's extremely tiring, but some people love the attention, or just don't know any better, or maybe just want the job security.
sheerun 4y ago
George Orwell's 1984 vibes Edit: So you're downvoting this comment? Some feedback? How is it not surveillance with extra steps?
- throwthere 4y ago
  I think you're missing what this program actually is in a big way, but it's hard to know where you're coming from exactly because that post is pretty terse-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_shadow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_shadow
- noirbot 4y ago
  Because the point of it decidedly isn't sinister? Having someone watching you and learning from you shouldn't be creepy, it should be exactly what people in a high-pressure job should be trying to foster. Just because someone is watching you doesn't mean they're surveilling you. When I mentor coworkers by letting them watch me do a task, it's not chilling me or oppressing me. People are downing you because you're making a rather absurd conflation between "they aren't working in total secrecy" and "now it's an oppressive police state"
- marcinzm 4y ago
  >So you're downvoting this comment? You made a snide comment without enough content in it to fuel a decent discussion. If you want a discussion then it's on you to initiate it properly.
jzig 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  > Edit: if you are going to downvote, at least don’t be a coward and provide feedback I know downvotes can be frustrating, but please don't give in to the temptation to add things like that last bit. It's against the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) because, as they say, it never does any good and makes for boring reading. It also just attracts more downvotes.
  - jzig 4y ago
    Agreed. Thank you, just frustrating. I will remove “coward” ;)
  - skissane 4y ago
    Have you ever thought about a rule, that you can only downvote a comment if it has at least one reply (by anybody, not necessarily the downvoter)? That would discourage the demoralising situation where someone gets downvoted but is left guessing why. Of course, there will be some comments which do not merit a reply (non-substantive contributions or blatant trolling) - but, those comments should be flagged anyway. Maybe count flags as downvotes (if they aren’t already), so you could still downvote reply-less comments by flagging them.
    - jzig 4y ago
      That’s a great idea! Or something like it.
    - pvg 4y ago
      That would discourage the demoralising situation where someone gets downvoted but is left guessing why. It encourages replying to bad comments which is already a bigger problem than the sting of an unexpounded-upon downvote. 'No receipts required for downvotes' makes HN better.
ben_jones 4y ago
We talk about leading by example but this is actual leadership by example.
quartz 4y ago
The "What it's like" posts are really cool. Especially enjoyed this account[1] from a content writer who shadowed the CEO during a half-day meeting with a major investor and got to see the impact of their work in a context they never expected: > Next we met with Vinod, Bruce, and investment partners Brian Byun and Sven Strohband for a company brief and brainstorm session. Sid began with an update on the financials, and detailed our massive growth and expansion both in terms of people and product. There were no slides presented. Instead, Sid used our website as a visual aid. Nearly every question or discussion point was first addressed with a Google search to pull up the appropriate GitLab web page to reference. [...] > I’ve been working at GitLab for two and a half years as a content writer on our marketing team and at times have been extremely frustrated with our marketing website—the content on it, how it’s organized, what we’re presenting, etc. It doesn’t look or operate in a way I’m familiar with so my instinct was to not trust it. But nothing we do at GitLab is “normal,” and witnessing our CEO use the website as a single source of public truth to inform our investors is just one example of what it means to be a transparent company. [1] https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/04/08/khosla-ventures-gitlab-meeting/ https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/04/08/khosla-ventures-git...
- Swizec 4y ago
  And if the CEO needed to use Google to find every page, maybe the navigation needs some work
  - reidjs 4y ago
    Disagree, it makes sense for the nav on gitlab to be code/repo focused. It makes sense for these articles to be more easily found through Google IMO
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    I don’t think that necessarily follows.
  - gonzo41 4y ago
    Be index-able should be a motto of every website on the net.
jdmarble 4y ago
I was surprised by the volume of the handbook material that applies to the role of CEO shadow. To me it implied a high level of formality and expectation of rigid adherence. Then I found this: > CEO shadows label the handbook MRs they create with the ceo-shadow label. It's a point of competition between CEO shadows to try to best the previous shadows' number of merge requests. I am no longer surprised by the length of this section of the handbook.
- lbotos 4y ago
  As a shadow, you would contribute anywhere, not just on the CEO Shadow process. I see them often on slack updating various random pages: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/-/merge_requests?scope=all&state=merged&label_name[]=ceo-shadow https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/-/merge_request...
stonlyb 4y ago
CEO shadow as a service would be a great startup.
- hackernewds 4y ago
  Who is the customer? Why would CEOs sign up? How to prevent abuse (glucose guardian seeking)?
jgalt212 4y ago
Pretty much how Jamie Dimon and Andy Jassy got their starts.
targetinglewood 4y ago
Does gitlab have any hidden pages on the handbook? That is accessible to select few?
- sytse 4y ago
  Yes, there is an internal handbook for things that can’t be public. Also see our confidentiality level classification https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/confidentiality-levels/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/confidential...
  - targetinglewood 4y ago
    This is awesome! I love the way you have done this. Plus amazingly transparent.
drc500free 4y ago
I was fortunate enough to spend about 18 months as staff assistant to my CEO, including access to their email and basically all meetings. This was a PE-backed roll-up that was in the midst of acquiring several smaller companies, and then pursuing an exit. The experience really opened my eyes about the requirements for the job. The amount of code-switching required to communicate well with ownership, the other C-levels, employees, customers, and potential acquirers could make my head swim. The breadth and depth of technical, financial, and human expertise necessary to verify all the parts of the business and smell out where issues might be hiding. All of that before even getting to (in this case) integrating several businesses into a whole, identifying up-and-coming leaders, and keeping the employees happy; let alone actually having a strategy, getting buy-in, and implementing it. And then spending most evenings networking with the elite class that you need to know to have access to capital. You can never have a bad day. Ever. This was for an org that was comfortably under 1000 employees, all located in the US, where none of the VPs were the kind of political operators you get in meatier companies. I walked away thinking that there can't be even 100k people in the country with the ability to do even a non-laughable job as the CEO of a 500ish employee company. Not even do a good job, just do a job that doesn't look like one of those 80s child-parent-bodyswap movies where the kid tries to work in an office. I still think CEO pay is out of control, but I understand better why boards end up paying what they do. Any weakness in any of these skills is an existential threat, and you don't know for sure what will hit you this year.
- Aperocky 4y ago
  > weakness in any of these skills is an existential threat Feigned/false strength might be much more disastrous. I can think of a few household name companies whose CEO was widely lauded during the time, but might have fared better had a tree trunk was there instead.
  - jdkee 4y ago
    Jack Welch comes to mind. "The New York Times business columnist James B. Stewart wrote in 2017, “Hardly anyone considers Mr. Welch a management role model anymore, and the conglomerate model he championed at G.E. — that with strict discipline, you could successfully manage any business as long as your market share was first or second — has been thoroughly discredited, at least in the United States.” The financial crisis of 2008 delivered a blow to G.E.’s fortunes. In the years before the crisis, the company had built sprawling lending operations that helped drive its growth. But the finance businesses became a crippling liability when, during the crisis, credit markets froze and borrowers struggled to pay back their loans. G.E., like many large banks, tapped emergency government loans to help it get through the upheaval. In the years following the crisis, G.E. sold off most of its lending businesses, but other problems emerged, some of which were in its large power unit. G.E.’s stock price now trades roughly 80 percent below the high it hit in 2000. The company has significantly lower revenue than it did that year. Last year, G.E. reported a loss of $5.4 billion." See https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/business/jack-welch-died.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/business/jack-welch-died....
zmmmmm 4y ago
I'm constantly in awe of Gitlab's radical transparency approach. I have no idea if this is actually a good idea (surely every competitor of Gitlab has a huge amount of assymetrical information about Gitlab that Gitlab does not have in return) - but I am fascinated by it and truly grateful for them for daring to go out on a limb and do this experiment. My fingers are crossed that this brings them amazing success as I wish all companies worked this way.
- swyx 4y ago
  well, if you drown your competitors with more information per day than they can consume per day, do they really have any information :)
- vasco 4y ago
  If you're sprinting in a race, the fact that the others can see how you run makes no difference. Most people worry too much about looking to the side, and if the others are looking at you, rather than with the running speed. Gitlab seems to be focused on running.
  - leaflets2 4y ago
    Good point. Still, can matter some years later, when new runners have joined the races and are now using the best of your ideas plus some of their own that you don't know about?
- perlgeek 4y ago
  I've come across so many cases where information wasn't properly shared within a company (much because information was only disseminated on a need-to-know basis or some vague fear of leaking information), and that hurt the company in some way or another. Usually useless work done that needed rework, employee frustration, decisions not being made because of missing information. I could well imagine that avoiding this one pitfall raises productivity enough to make up for any potential advantage that competitors have.
yalogin 4y ago
This is great! I would love to shadow the CEO like this and understand what they do and how they do it. However I fail to understand how this gives the CEO nay feedback about their own job as mentioned in the post.
- leaflets2 4y ago
  I interpreted that as the shadow and CEO spoke with each other sometimes, and the CEO asked for the shadow's thoughts (it would be odd if they didn't talk with each other?). And a bit from the shadow updating the online docs, but maybe that's not for the CEO.
sharmin123 4y ago
monkpit 4y ago
This is so cringey. Instructions on how/where/when to pet the cat.
- Cederfjard 4y ago
  It’s a small part of the document. What’s wrong with a little levity? Not everything has to be super serious all the time, even for a corporation.
urthor 4y ago
GitLab is a company I've always felt hasn't quite found product market fit. However, its "open source internal practices" model is the gold plated standard for a 21st Business. If you're any kind of manager of anything, do this. See: http://blog.idonethis.com/managers-write/ http://blog.idonethis.com/managers-write/ for more.
- rrdharan 4y ago
  Wouldn’t we need to see it done, at a company that has found product market fit, before we can decide that it is clearly “the gold plated standard for a 21st (century) business”?
- hbcondo714 4y ago
  As a recent publicly traded company, I would read their annual report[1] as Gitlab describes their product fit well, even stating their product "is available to any company, regardless of the size, scope, and complexity" and their CEO saying in their earnings release[1] they "are seeing continued strong momentum for customers adopting our DevOps platform, as revenue increased 69% year-over-year" [1] https://last10k.com/sec-filings/gtlb https://last10k.com/sec-filings/gtlb
  - urthor 4y ago
    Oh, my view is given the size of the opportunity they are underachieving. In terms of the actually forming a business product market fit, they definitely have. However, they're seen as a cut price second supplier to GitHub Enterprise + Atlassian. Not an ideal situation. In terms of "maybe we should become more user friendly instead of going all in on enterprise features," not so much. And that's important.
    - tasuki 4y ago
      > However, they're seen as a cut price second supplier to GitHub Enterprise + Atlassian. Citation needed? Perhaps you see them that way, I don't... Atlassian is seen as a true nightmare.
- 4y ago
voydik 4y ago
Looks like this was from March 2021
m00n 4y ago
If you are interested in this kind of role, it is usually called Executive Assistant in the corporate world. Had the fortune to support my CEO and attend e.g. all board meetings (because I did the minutes). This is at a >10$ bn revenue established company. Very rewarding, but experience depends very much on the style of your boss.
basileafe 4y ago
Couple of years ago the idea of CEO Shadowing was mentioned on Kernal. https://kern.al/idea/shadow-a-ceo-lessons-courses-programs https://kern.al/idea/shadow-a-ceo-lessons-courses-programs Since then no one picked it up, not sure why. But I'm interested and want to make a real living application for CEO and who want to be CEO Shadow. Is it worth it?
skatanski 4y ago
I’d recommend anyone who finds this interesting to give a listen to Matt Mullenweg’s Distributed podcast episode with gitlab’s CEO. An abridged version of various different initiatives, which make gitlab different: https://distributed.blog/2021/05/20/episode-27-leading-with-values-sid-sijbrandij-joins-matt-mullenweg-to-talk-about-gitlab-transparency-and-growing-a-distributed-company/amp/ https://distributed.blog/2021/05/20/episode-27-leading-with-...
brainzap 4y ago
This makes me think of the book Working backwards, shadow of bezos
ThinkBeat 4y ago
I think the reverse would be equally as informative if not more. (Which has been the subject of a tv show) CEO shadows an employee all day. Get a feel for how the peons live. Understand why it is so hard to get things done in the company.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  A CEO taking a day out of their schedule to shadow "an employee" makes for viewer counts on TV, but it can't give them any insight they can personally action on, and it can't give them the several different perspectives they need to properly action on without doing _lots_ of shadowing of various employees in various positions: so this is why there's a management and feedback structure. If there are things the CEO should learn, they should be able to rely on their executive team to bring that up. If you're not a CEO, you can learn a lot from shadowing your CEO, without impacting the viability of your company. But if you're the CEO, all you can learn is "how something seems to work at a level you are not supposed to have control over." Unless your company has an incredibly flat org, without a board that the CEO is accountable to, and where the CEO is actually makes direct hiring, product, etc decisions, realistically having the CEO shadow employees means that they're not being the CEO. The larger the org, the more people they'd need to shadow to get meaningful insight, and the more the board will go "we need you to be the CEO of this multi-hundred-million dollar company, so if you want insights: you should already have a team in place for that."
  - ThinkBeat 4y ago
    It has been the case with most companies I have consulted with, as a management consultant that this is rarely the case. The CEO and his favorite executives and VPs salesmen live inside their own little bubble with little real knowledge of the problems and challenges that the company is facing internally. This is why I made good money. It is easy to see this when management sends out decrees on how to improve performance or throughput .. etc that does not contain any mention of, nor solutions to the problems that is keeping the performance / throughput /(or whatever fitting metrics are for the company) I might have a bias in that I have mostly worked with companies that hired us to help them. It is possible that the pool I have been exposed to is different than the majority but I do not think so. I know of companies that are run in a more sane way but they are usually smaller, at least in number of employees and thus leadership is more aware of how things work.
jononomo 4y ago
My first impression of this idea is that it is fantastic, and maybe the US government should pass a regulation requiring this of all companies.
AtNightWeCode 4y ago
Gitlab sums up the problems with GIT and the culture around GIT. Do things as complicated as possible. Gitlab mainly solves all the problems it created. I think this role is good though. We have similar staff that been included in all the things and they got up to speed fast.
basileafe 4y ago
I really like this idea and want to see if it is possible to come t live as an online service where CEO finds the right CEO shadow. Couple of years ago the idea of CEO Shadowing was mentioned on Kernal. https://kern.al/idea/shadow-a-ceo-lessons-courses-programs https://kern.al/idea/shadow-a-ceo-lessons-courses-programs Since then no one picked it up, not sure why. But I'm interested and want to make a real living application for CEO and who want to be CEO Shadow. Is it worth it?

415 points by romanzubenko 4y ago

Looks like a great program that will yield insight, especially being able to travel with the CEO. Anyone aware of other companies doing this or something similar?

prteja11 4y ago
Amazon.
jason-phillips 4y ago
> Anyone aware of other companies doing this or something similar? Samsung Austin Semiconductor used to have an "eat lunch with the president" program where groups of four or five from each department would each lunch with the president at least once a year. Obviously nowhere near as immersive as this program, but still having the opportunity to ask several off-the-cuff questions like, "Why did Samsung choose Austin?" definitely added value for me.
- georgyo 4y ago
  I have been at several lunches with executives type events at different places. The groups are small so it makes more casual back and forth questions much easier, which is useful. From my perspective, the real value of the lunches was strictly building rapport across the company. At some places high level employees (doesn't necessarily have to be management) often feel unapproachable and they feel more abstract concepts than people. Having lunch with them re-enforces they are also people, people you may even get along with. Other companies I've been at only do Q&A sessions with large groups of employees, and this is still useful, but the format doesn't help the culture. The answers you get are often the company line, and you cannot dig deeper. The people answering the questions are still abstract identities that appear to tout that company line, with no real personality.
- hackernewds 4y ago
  I know of a small-ish company where the exec was seeking to have lunch info sessions. But only with the women's group. It was shady to say the least
  - yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
    That does sound shady, but just to play DA here, there is a strong push in some areas for women to be “included” in leadership. It could be for that reason.
    - leaflets2 4y ago
      Makes me wonder, what was the age difference, ... And was it always only with the women's group? (I'd guess Not so big, and Yes?)
- spaetzleesser 4y ago
  I habe been to several of similar lunches and every time it quickly turned into a long monologue by the executive.
  - leaflets2 4y ago
    What did he/she talk about? (For example, his her past life ... Sports? Politics? Work?)
    - spaetzleesser 4y ago
      The same stuff you can read in any company newsletter.
swyx 4y ago
andy jassy was famously a Bezos shadow before they landed on the idea for AWS (no idea how true this is just repeating what i heard)
chaboud 4y ago
We have TA's at Amazon for L12 (Jassy) and L11 (SVP). However, being a TA also involves active advising and commenting first on document reviews (a lot of executive communication at Amazon is via written documents and review meetings that begin with a doc read). Many of our executives were former TA's.
- ranman 4y ago
  FWIW there's a lot of politics in this process. Existing talent in SEA is far more likely to get selected for these roles rather than offering global top talent a 2 year stint in SEA to see if it fits. The people that receive these TA positions are purposefully selected and groomed for future exec roles. The program does have a good track record of success but they made a few bad bets as well.
  - nixgeek 4y ago
    Elaine isn’t based in Seattle and got picked to be the UC TA (and she isn’t the only TA in the last few years to not be Seattle) so you’re not wrong, but “far more likely” seems a stretch.
- Cederfjard 4y ago
  Stupid question here, what does TA spell out?
  - yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
    I believe it means Technical Assistant.
    - Cederfjard 4y ago
      Thanks! That was my first guess, but a quick search for amazon technical assistant wasn’t very helpful.

nickhalfasleep 4y ago

I keep thinking for fiduciary responsibility, CEO's and executives should wear a chest mounted camera like police. For shareholder value.

deleted 4y ago
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theboonies 4y ago
This is the plot of the book “The Circle” but it was more expansive than just for CEOs

tibbar 4y ago

It’s surprising to me that a CEO can allow all of their meetings to be shadowed by a (relatively low-level) employee — surely there must be highly confidential information, performance feedback, sensitive legal matters, etc that can only be attended by specific executives?

sytse 4y ago
It is about 80% of my meetings that they can join, some are no shadows. And in quarter of the meetings they do join they are asked to leave towards the end so that there can be a short closed session. We also have extra confidentiality restrictions for the shadows.
- swyx 4y ago
  you are one of my heroes, but i just have to say i cannot imagine how you aren’t absolutely exhausted after having to be so transparent 24/7 for like a decade. i’m a pretty transparent guy, but having to have my meetings streamed on youtube and someone shadowing me 80% of the time seeing me at my worst, i can’t imagine. hats off but also i would like your secret to eternal youth, internal consistency and unlimited energy.
  - perfmode 4y ago
    in my experience, it's not the transparency that is exhausting. it's the hiding of things. when i approach life with truthfulness and transparency, i feel light as a feather.
    - mattwad 4y ago
      As CEO, you get to decide if you have to hide things or not. And if you do, everyone underneath you will also hide things, and then everyone has to come to you for anything. I call this "hub and spoke" leadership. It's extremely tiring, but some people love the attention, or just don't know any better, or maybe just want the job security.

sheerun 4y ago

George Orwell's 1984 vibes Edit: So you're downvoting this comment? Some feedback? How is it not surveillance with extra steps?

throwthere 4y ago
I think you're missing what this program actually is in a big way, but it's hard to know where you're coming from exactly because that post is pretty terse-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_shadow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_shadow
noirbot 4y ago
Because the point of it decidedly isn't sinister? Having someone watching you and learning from you shouldn't be creepy, it should be exactly what people in a high-pressure job should be trying to foster. Just because someone is watching you doesn't mean they're surveilling you. When I mentor coworkers by letting them watch me do a task, it's not chilling me or oppressing me. People are downing you because you're making a rather absurd conflation between "they aren't working in total secrecy" and "now it's an oppressive police state"
marcinzm 4y ago
>So you're downvoting this comment? You made a snide comment without enough content in it to fuel a decent discussion. If you want a discussion then it's on you to initiate it properly.

jzig 4y ago

dang 4y ago
> Edit: if you are going to downvote, at least don’t be a coward and provide feedback I know downvotes can be frustrating, but please don't give in to the temptation to add things like that last bit. It's against the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) because, as they say, it never does any good and makes for boring reading. It also just attracts more downvotes.
- jzig 4y ago
  Agreed. Thank you, just frustrating. I will remove “coward” ;)
- skissane 4y ago
  Have you ever thought about a rule, that you can only downvote a comment if it has at least one reply (by anybody, not necessarily the downvoter)? That would discourage the demoralising situation where someone gets downvoted but is left guessing why. Of course, there will be some comments which do not merit a reply (non-substantive contributions or blatant trolling) - but, those comments should be flagged anyway. Maybe count flags as downvotes (if they aren’t already), so you could still downvote reply-less comments by flagging them.
  - jzig 4y ago
    That’s a great idea! Or something like it.
  - pvg 4y ago
    That would discourage the demoralising situation where someone gets downvoted but is left guessing why. It encourages replying to bad comments which is already a bigger problem than the sting of an unexpounded-upon downvote. 'No receipts required for downvotes' makes HN better.

ben_jones 4y ago

We talk about leading by example but this is actual leadership by example.

quartz 4y ago

The "What it's like" posts are really cool. Especially enjoyed this account[1] from a content writer who shadowed the CEO during a half-day meeting with a major investor and got to see the impact of their work in a context they never expected: > Next we met with Vinod, Bruce, and investment partners Brian Byun and Sven Strohband for a company brief and brainstorm session. Sid began with an update on the financials, and detailed our massive growth and expansion both in terms of people and product. There were no slides presented. Instead, Sid used our website as a visual aid. Nearly every question or discussion point was first addressed with a Google search to pull up the appropriate GitLab web page to reference. [...] > I’ve been working at GitLab for two and a half years as a content writer on our marketing team and at times have been extremely frustrated with our marketing website—the content on it, how it’s organized, what we’re presenting, etc. It doesn’t look or operate in a way I’m familiar with so my instinct was to not trust it. But nothing we do at GitLab is “normal,” and witnessing our CEO use the website as a single source of public truth to inform our investors is just one example of what it means to be a transparent company. [1] https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/04/08/khosla-ventures-gitlab-meeting/ https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/04/08/khosla-ventures-git...

Swizec 4y ago
And if the CEO needed to use Google to find every page, maybe the navigation needs some work
- reidjs 4y ago
  Disagree, it makes sense for the nav on gitlab to be code/repo focused. It makes sense for these articles to be more easily found through Google IMO
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  I don’t think that necessarily follows.
- gonzo41 4y ago
  Be index-able should be a motto of every website on the net.

jdmarble 4y ago

I was surprised by the volume of the handbook material that applies to the role of CEO shadow. To me it implied a high level of formality and expectation of rigid adherence. Then I found this: > CEO shadows label the handbook MRs they create with the ceo-shadow label. It's a point of competition between CEO shadows to try to best the previous shadows' number of merge requests. I am no longer surprised by the length of this section of the handbook.

lbotos 4y ago
As a shadow, you would contribute anywhere, not just on the CEO Shadow process. I see them often on slack updating various random pages: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/-/merge_requests?scope=all&state=merged&label_name[]=ceo-shadow https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/-/merge_request...

stonlyb 4y ago

CEO shadow as a service would be a great startup.

hackernewds 4y ago
Who is the customer? Why would CEOs sign up? How to prevent abuse (glucose guardian seeking)?

jgalt212 4y ago

Pretty much how Jamie Dimon and Andy Jassy got their starts.

targetinglewood 4y ago

Does gitlab have any hidden pages on the handbook? That is accessible to select few?

sytse 4y ago
Yes, there is an internal handbook for things that can’t be public. Also see our confidentiality level classification https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/confidentiality-levels/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/confidential...
- targetinglewood 4y ago
  This is awesome! I love the way you have done this. Plus amazingly transparent.

drc500free 4y ago

I was fortunate enough to spend about 18 months as staff assistant to my CEO, including access to their email and basically all meetings. This was a PE-backed roll-up that was in the midst of acquiring several smaller companies, and then pursuing an exit. The experience really opened my eyes about the requirements for the job. The amount of code-switching required to communicate well with ownership, the other C-levels, employees, customers, and potential acquirers could make my head swim. The breadth and depth of technical, financial, and human expertise necessary to verify all the parts of the business and smell out where issues might be hiding. All of that before even getting to (in this case) integrating several businesses into a whole, identifying up-and-coming leaders, and keeping the employees happy; let alone actually having a strategy, getting buy-in, and implementing it. And then spending most evenings networking with the elite class that you need to know to have access to capital. You can never have a bad day. Ever. This was for an org that was comfortably under 1000 employees, all located in the US, where none of the VPs were the kind of political operators you get in meatier companies. I walked away thinking that there can't be even 100k people in the country with the ability to do even a non-laughable job as the CEO of a 500ish employee company. Not even do a good job, just do a job that doesn't look like one of those 80s child-parent-bodyswap movies where the kid tries to work in an office. I still think CEO pay is out of control, but I understand better why boards end up paying what they do. Any weakness in any of these skills is an existential threat, and you don't know for sure what will hit you this year.

Aperocky 4y ago
> weakness in any of these skills is an existential threat Feigned/false strength might be much more disastrous. I can think of a few household name companies whose CEO was widely lauded during the time, but might have fared better had a tree trunk was there instead.
- jdkee 4y ago
  Jack Welch comes to mind. "The New York Times business columnist James B. Stewart wrote in 2017, “Hardly anyone considers Mr. Welch a management role model anymore, and the conglomerate model he championed at G.E. — that with strict discipline, you could successfully manage any business as long as your market share was first or second — has been thoroughly discredited, at least in the United States.” The financial crisis of 2008 delivered a blow to G.E.’s fortunes. In the years before the crisis, the company had built sprawling lending operations that helped drive its growth. But the finance businesses became a crippling liability when, during the crisis, credit markets froze and borrowers struggled to pay back their loans. G.E., like many large banks, tapped emergency government loans to help it get through the upheaval. In the years following the crisis, G.E. sold off most of its lending businesses, but other problems emerged, some of which were in its large power unit. G.E.’s stock price now trades roughly 80 percent below the high it hit in 2000. The company has significantly lower revenue than it did that year. Last year, G.E. reported a loss of $5.4 billion." See https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/business/jack-welch-died.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/business/jack-welch-died....

zmmmmm 4y ago

I'm constantly in awe of Gitlab's radical transparency approach. I have no idea if this is actually a good idea (surely every competitor of Gitlab has a huge amount of assymetrical information about Gitlab that Gitlab does not have in return) - but I am fascinated by it and truly grateful for them for daring to go out on a limb and do this experiment. My fingers are crossed that this brings them amazing success as I wish all companies worked this way.

swyx 4y ago
well, if you drown your competitors with more information per day than they can consume per day, do they really have any information :)
vasco 4y ago
If you're sprinting in a race, the fact that the others can see how you run makes no difference. Most people worry too much about looking to the side, and if the others are looking at you, rather than with the running speed. Gitlab seems to be focused on running.
- leaflets2 4y ago
  Good point. Still, can matter some years later, when new runners have joined the races and are now using the best of your ideas plus some of their own that you don't know about?
perlgeek 4y ago
I've come across so many cases where information wasn't properly shared within a company (much because information was only disseminated on a need-to-know basis or some vague fear of leaking information), and that hurt the company in some way or another. Usually useless work done that needed rework, employee frustration, decisions not being made because of missing information. I could well imagine that avoiding this one pitfall raises productivity enough to make up for any potential advantage that competitors have.

yalogin 4y ago

This is great! I would love to shadow the CEO like this and understand what they do and how they do it. However I fail to understand how this gives the CEO nay feedback about their own job as mentioned in the post.

leaflets2 4y ago
I interpreted that as the shadow and CEO spoke with each other sometimes, and the CEO asked for the shadow's thoughts (it would be odd if they didn't talk with each other?). And a bit from the shadow updating the online docs, but maybe that's not for the CEO.

sharmin123 4y ago

monkpit 4y ago

This is so cringey. Instructions on how/where/when to pet the cat.

Cederfjard 4y ago
It’s a small part of the document. What’s wrong with a little levity? Not everything has to be super serious all the time, even for a corporation.

urthor 4y ago

GitLab is a company I've always felt hasn't quite found product market fit. However, its "open source internal practices" model is the gold plated standard for a 21st Business. If you're any kind of manager of anything, do this. See: http://blog.idonethis.com/managers-write/ http://blog.idonethis.com/managers-write/ for more.

rrdharan 4y ago
Wouldn’t we need to see it done, at a company that has found product market fit, before we can decide that it is clearly “the gold plated standard for a 21st (century) business”?
hbcondo714 4y ago
As a recent publicly traded company, I would read their annual report[1] as Gitlab describes their product fit well, even stating their product "is available to any company, regardless of the size, scope, and complexity" and their CEO saying in their earnings release[1] they "are seeing continued strong momentum for customers adopting our DevOps platform, as revenue increased 69% year-over-year" [1] https://last10k.com/sec-filings/gtlb https://last10k.com/sec-filings/gtlb
- urthor 4y ago
  Oh, my view is given the size of the opportunity they are underachieving. In terms of the actually forming a business product market fit, they definitely have. However, they're seen as a cut price second supplier to GitHub Enterprise + Atlassian. Not an ideal situation. In terms of "maybe we should become more user friendly instead of going all in on enterprise features," not so much. And that's important.
  - tasuki 4y ago
    > However, they're seen as a cut price second supplier to GitHub Enterprise + Atlassian. Citation needed? Perhaps you see them that way, I don't... Atlassian is seen as a true nightmare.
4y ago

voydik 4y ago

Looks like this was from March 2021

m00n 4y ago

If you are interested in this kind of role, it is usually called Executive Assistant in the corporate world. Had the fortune to support my CEO and attend e.g. all board meetings (because I did the minutes). This is at a >10$ bn revenue established company. Very rewarding, but experience depends very much on the style of your boss.

basileafe 4y ago

Couple of years ago the idea of CEO Shadowing was mentioned on Kernal. https://kern.al/idea/shadow-a-ceo-lessons-courses-programs https://kern.al/idea/shadow-a-ceo-lessons-courses-programs Since then no one picked it up, not sure why. But I'm interested and want to make a real living application for CEO and who want to be CEO Shadow. Is it worth it?

skatanski 4y ago

I’d recommend anyone who finds this interesting to give a listen to Matt Mullenweg’s Distributed podcast episode with gitlab’s CEO. An abridged version of various different initiatives, which make gitlab different: https://distributed.blog/2021/05/20/episode-27-leading-with-values-sid-sijbrandij-joins-matt-mullenweg-to-talk-about-gitlab-transparency-and-growing-a-distributed-company/amp/ https://distributed.blog/2021/05/20/episode-27-leading-with-...

brainzap 4y ago

This makes me think of the book Working backwards, shadow of bezos

ThinkBeat 4y ago

I think the reverse would be equally as informative if not more. (Which has been the subject of a tv show) CEO shadows an employee all day. Get a feel for how the peons live. Understand why it is so hard to get things done in the company.

TheRealPomax 4y ago
A CEO taking a day out of their schedule to shadow "an employee" makes for viewer counts on TV, but it can't give them any insight they can personally action on, and it can't give them the several different perspectives they need to properly action on without doing _lots_ of shadowing of various employees in various positions: so this is why there's a management and feedback structure. If there are things the CEO should learn, they should be able to rely on their executive team to bring that up. If you're not a CEO, you can learn a lot from shadowing your CEO, without impacting the viability of your company. But if you're the CEO, all you can learn is "how something seems to work at a level you are not supposed to have control over." Unless your company has an incredibly flat org, without a board that the CEO is accountable to, and where the CEO is actually makes direct hiring, product, etc decisions, realistically having the CEO shadow employees means that they're not being the CEO. The larger the org, the more people they'd need to shadow to get meaningful insight, and the more the board will go "we need you to be the CEO of this multi-hundred-million dollar company, so if you want insights: you should already have a team in place for that."
- ThinkBeat 4y ago
  It has been the case with most companies I have consulted with, as a management consultant that this is rarely the case. The CEO and his favorite executives and VPs salesmen live inside their own little bubble with little real knowledge of the problems and challenges that the company is facing internally. This is why I made good money. It is easy to see this when management sends out decrees on how to improve performance or throughput .. etc that does not contain any mention of, nor solutions to the problems that is keeping the performance / throughput /(or whatever fitting metrics are for the company) I might have a bias in that I have mostly worked with companies that hired us to help them. It is possible that the pool I have been exposed to is different than the majority but I do not think so. I know of companies that are run in a more sane way but they are usually smaller, at least in number of employees and thus leadership is more aware of how things work.

jononomo 4y ago

My first impression of this idea is that it is fantastic, and maybe the US government should pass a regulation requiring this of all companies.

AtNightWeCode 4y ago

Gitlab sums up the problems with GIT and the culture around GIT. Do things as complicated as possible. Gitlab mainly solves all the problems it created. I think this role is good though. We have similar staff that been included in all the things and they got up to speed fast.

basileafe 4y ago

I really like this idea and want to see if it is possible to come t live as an online service where CEO finds the right CEO shadow. Couple of years ago the idea of CEO Shadowing was mentioned on Kernal. https://kern.al/idea/shadow-a-ceo-lessons-courses-programs https://kern.al/idea/shadow-a-ceo-lessons-courses-programs Since then no one picked it up, not sure why. But I'm interested and want to make a real living application for CEO and who want to be CEO Shadow. Is it worth it?