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CEOs are running companies from afar even as workers return to office
- 486sx33 2y agoI mean, I do go to the Orlando office 4 days out of the 14 that my family and I stay at a 5 star resort .. ok maybe 3 and a half days with the 3rd afternoon spend at twin peaks
- 486sx33 2y agoAnd while we’re on the topic, does anyone appreciate how difficult it is to get my 4 bed 2 bath 3200 sf accommodation for 14 consecutive nights with less than 3 months notice? And when you get there the service has really declined. In 2013 the maids would load the dirty dishes from anywhere around the unit into the dishwasher and run it for me every single day as well as a full cleaning. Now they never even load the dishwasher for me anymore and sometimes don’t even wash the balcony floor everyday!
- pimpampum 2y agoWhat does a CEO do anyway?
- ebcode 2y agoChiefly, they execute -- usually in an office.
- xyst 2y agoRules for thee. None for me.
- bearjaws 2y agoAnyone surprised by this? I remember my first programming job it was FREQUENT that the execs would fly to other offices ~12+ weeks a year. Of course our office was in Orlando so every exec would also magically have their family flown in as well to go to Disney World. 5 jobs later, its been the same at any company that isn't a startup. Execs have never been in the office, they have "offsite" meetings.
- zooq_ai 2y ago[flagged]
- itake 2y agoThe way I have started looking at it is CEOs/founders won the lottery. They control the keys, but they share a tiny fraction of the gold with the employees. I come to this conclusion, b/c I think its extremely rare that the 'best' person to be the executive on day0 is rarely the 'best' person to be an executive in every stage of a company's lifecycle. but the executives can cling on, b/c they have low accountability (especially when they are the board). Is it easy to win the lottery? No. Once you win the lottery, is life easier? Yes.
- fsckboy 2y agoif it's not equally easy for all people to win, not a lottery.
- kolbe 2y agoChipotle's stock dropped 10% and Starbucks's rose 25% when the CEO switched from one to the other this past week. If this guy is just a meritless lottery winner, then you can make a lot of money betting against the market and the extremely large group of heavily motivated and intelligent investors who think otherwise.
- saagarjha 2y agoAh yes, the "if you're truly right clearly you would be rich using that information to trade" argument. Would you be willing to consider that the market is not always smart or a good measure of how we should value things?
- kolbe 2y agoWould you be willing to consider that some half baked theory about why CEOs are the manifestation of luck is actually just an unhealthy way of coping with failures?
- adamtaylor_13 2y agoRules for thee, but not for me. Alas, how could we? We specialize in strategy. Not possible in a seat.
- singular_atomic 2y agoRules for thee but not for me
- cratermoon 2y agoGotta wonder how much of the compensation and investment portfolios of those CEOs is in commercial real estate.
- barbazoo 2y agoUnlikely that’s what drives peoples’ decisions on a grand scale.
- neverartful 2y agoDo as I say, not as I do!
- drx 2y agoAnother advantage startups have over big companies.
- karaterobot 2y agoI think it's more important for CEOs to be located in the same city as the company HQ than it is for any randomly selected employee to be. When VIPs visit the company, they expect the CEO to be present, not on Zoom. Plus, there used to be this thing where leadership had a more than tenuous connection to the legacy and culture of the businesses they ran, and even to the cities their companies were a part of. That's harder to pass off if you can't be bothered to go there. Imagine hearing a CEO say something like "I care about Company X" but they're saying it from a thousand miles away, over a Zoom call, while all their employees are on site and hating being there. That says something about work today.
- ceejayoz 2y agoThey'll be there when the VIPs are. > Both executives have agreed to commute frequently for their role. Starbucks will allow Niccol to use its corporate plane, and Victoria’s Secret will cover Super’s travel expenses. They'll probably be ferrying the VIPs on said jet, making a brief appearance, then golf and a fancy dinner.
- ljm 2y ago‘Commuting’ on a private plane or with all expenses paid. That is not commuting.
- codebje 2y agoGuaranteed the time spent doing that is considered work.
- ohthatsnotright 2y agoThey checked their email, after all.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- neilv 2y agoNon-paywall: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/ceos-are-running-companies-from-afar-even-as-workers-return-to-office/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/ceos-are-running-compa...
- seizethecheese 2y agoThis is engagement bait unless it has stats. What proportion of days are CEOs working remotely, what proportion are professional staff? As someone who has done shift work before, it seems to me that the real dividing line is between professionals and non-progressional, not CEOs vs professionals.
- lazyasciiart 2y agoHow do you define "professional"? I would expect doctors to be in that group, but they're mostly still pretty tied to a seat. The really highly paid ones like surgeons especially so.
- seizethecheese 2y agoThat’s the exception that proves the rule. I think people know what I mean here…
- throw10920 2y ago> This is engagement bait unless it has stats This is correct, and unfortunately describes a nontrivial fraction of articles submitted to HN from traditional media outlets. Use that flag button!
- seizethecheese 2y agoDone.
- bamboozled 2y agoNothing new here at all.
- uhtred 2y ago[flagged]
- oaththrowaway 2y ago[flagged]
- nine_k 2y agoIndeed, has France flourished past 1793, see how much Napoleon has achieved! Oh wait...
- brigadier132 2y agoWhy is this psychotic rhetoric acceptable? edit: and it always seems to be from keyboard warriors.
- throw10920 2y agoIt's partially because articles like this draw a large number of zero-effort comments like "rules for thee and not for me" (which already appears five times here), which makes it easier for the psychopaths to feel comfortable enough to comment. I always take a run through these comment threads and flag every one of these that I see, as they clearly break the HN guidelines. If other people start to do that too, then violent comments like the above will also become less common.
- djbusby 2y agoWhere is my AI CEO?
- broknbottle 2y agoYou mean we could save $32 million a year just by replacing this one guy with AI?
- djbusby 2y agoI do. CEOs are just picking lanes. Lanes defined by their crew. (The Captain doesn't determine the answer, they pick the answer from options provided by the crew). And AI can factor in much more than any human. So...feed the workers data into the AI CEO. I'm building on lots of Adam Smith ideas - let the worker pick the optimum path.
- chmod775 2y agoSure, especially in leadership you will often find sociopaths, but there's plenty of people leading by example as well. The company I'm working at comes to mind, where every level of the hierarchy, including leadership, is on a an employment contract that pays a regular salary, allows WFH/remote, and has just regular paid vacation days. Despite everyone having the option of being fully remote, it is the leadership who is generally in the office, while I'm typing this from another country. They have to be in our home country - where we make most of our sales - while I'm free to travel the other side of the globe. I haven't heard a peep of complaint. Almost all of my previous employers have been some variation of the above for the past 10 years. If instead I chased the highest paying jobs without thinking about quality of life, becoming a small cog in some behemoth of a company that doesn't care if I wear down, then that'd be on me. If you're in tech, nobody forces you to work for a company that may pay you 200k/year, but asks you to work and commute 60 hours a week. There's plenty of other choices once you realize that beyond a certain point, salary matters much less than everything else for your quality of life.
- harimau777 2y agoHow do you find those other companies? I'm in the middle of a job hunt now and all I'm seeing are the $200K+ jobs and jobs that don't pay enough to live comfortably (e.g. $50-60K in NYC).
- chmod775 2y agoI'm not sure I'm able to help since I'm not from the US. My current job pays 90k when converted to USD, but my employer is based in Germany. Most employees live all over Europe, and nobody is forced to live in any particular expensive city we have an office at. You probably should be able to negotiate a better wage in those 60k jobs based on experience.
- pradmatic 2y agoWhen I worked at Veeva Systems (VEEV) my team sat right between Peter Gassner’s office and the SVP for our product org. PG was on-site at least 75% of the time from what I could tell. It was great to see, especially as a fresh grad.
- andirk 2y agoCEOs of medium/large companies are the face of the company which means making a couple key decisions per week (a few work hours) and meeting with current/prospective clients (leisure activities). Coupled with making far more $ than the rest of the employees, I suspect they're both bored at the office and feel downgraded to a regular employee. Thus, out-of-office with nothing to show. But if the company is _coincidentally_ doing great, then the CEO gets credit. If it's tanking, the CEO leaves for another CEO position because the main prerequisite of being a CEO is having been a CEO, regardless of performance.
- bdw5204 2y agoI honestly wonder if the secret to quality of life is just to save up money and buy a profitable small or medium sized business mostly financed against the business. If you want to grow it, you can. Otherwise, you can get relatively passive income out of it and experience as a CEO that allows you to apply to other CEO jobs if it fails.
- nradov 2y ago"Passive". Ha ha. Most of those businesses will fall apart within a few years if the owner isn't constantly on top of things.
- w4 2y agoIf you're serious about it, there is an entire cottage industry dedicated to precisely this (especially popular amongst new MBAs): https://hbr.org/2017/02/you-should-consider-buying-a-small-business-but-when https://hbr.org/2017/02/you-should-consider-buying-a-small-b...
- bdw5204 2y agoThe "saving up money" part is the bottleneck for me right now because of the state of the tech job market but I was originally planning to save up money and launch a self-funded startup once I had enough runway. After discovering the "buy an already profitable business" route though, I have been thinking about it. I know I don't want to spend the rest of my life constantly competing in the interview Olympics for the privilege of writing code to make somebody else rich.
- davidmurphy 2y agoWorkers should not return to the office. WFH or remote work should be permanent for all -- CEOs and low level staffers.
- fourseventy 2y ago[flagged]
- asynchronous 2y agoLet’s face it, the office job class of workers has been stuck in almost the same work routine as 80+ years ago when we used typewriters. And EVEN THEN we still had teleworking as a concept. We’re long overdue for a legitimate overhaul of what work looks like for the typical office. Not saying jobs that require in person presence shouldn’t be compensated for that- just that we need to look at it seriously.
- saagarjha 2y agoI see no reason why the "privileged laptop class" cannot have their quality of life improved still further. We don't stop at trying to help the "privileged potable-water-having class" or the "privileged sheltered class". If it's not hurting anyone else, why call it out?
- Cyphase 2y agoAll lives matter, what about hungry kids with cancer, First World problems, etc.
- icehawk 2y agoSomething wrong with them getting out of the way of people who actually need to go somewhere to do their jobs? A office worker having to drive somewhere to look at a screen they can have at home, shouldn't be an impediment to a nurse that has a real job that requires them to be where they work.
- seoulmetro 2y agoLaptop class? You mean like the fresh outdoors class (labourers)? There's no hat benefit indoors.. Let's not let them wear hats outdoors as they already enjoy an extremely high quality of life. This is all I hear.
- high_pathetic 2y agoSo what? CEOs also get paid more. Where is this crying coming from? Create a company, become a CEO, do whatever you want.
- harimau777 2y agoMost people don't have the capital to create a company and become a CEO.
- fourseventy 2y agoYou can create a software company with 0 capital. Stop making excuses.
- mempko 2y agoLike, not even with a computer?
- Alupis 2y agoYet somehow it's the ones with computers, earning significantly above average income, writing and reading this now. You can start a company on a library computer...
- BobbyTables2 2y agoStarting a company is easy. Just a few short forms and a small fee… Developing and selling a product (at a profit) that someone actually buys — not so easy.
- Alupis 2y agoYet in this thread the ones who do actually make something people want to buy are villainized because they aren't giving it all away to employees (who are compensated for their time and expertise along the way).
- rtpg 2y agoA recurring theme in so many startups I've seen inside is how the CEO in particular is extremely aloof with regards to presence. Sometimes that translates to aloofness for staff, but what more often happens is that when the CEO _does_ come in they expect other people to be there. So long as the alignment is good they don't care, but when it's not aligned, they just assume nobody is ever around and get real pissy about people showing up on time. Fortunately the "good" ones are able to disassociate how much of that emotion is just them being lonely vs how much of it is actual synergy-seeking or whatever. The worst cases are people who get real tyranical, on top of just like... outright not showing up to do the actual day-to-day work that they are blockers on. A proper theory of the mind can often be quite absent. My really glib take on this phenomenom is that a not-insignificant chunk of decision making for HR stuff is "make the CEO fill the tip-top of their Maslovian pyramind". And to a lesser extent other executives who have decided that their job is their life. Very annoying to listen to post-facto RTO arguments when you can feel the loneliness as the driving factor. Make a fun space, and make people's work schedules be loose enough to where they can actually relax in the space, and some people will show up! Or at the very least, give the CEO a fun side project to work on or something.
- RangerScience 2y ago> A proper theory of the mind can often be quite absent. +1 spicy! > Make a fun space, and make people's work schedules be loose enough to where they can actually relax in the space, and some people will show up! I've tried to tell this to a couple of places that wanted me to work in a office. The conversations didn't go anywhere - perhaps because of your prior quote? :)
- threatofrain 2y agoIMO theory of mind fails at scale and distance due to the sheer diversity of humanity and disconnection from local signals. No human can accomplish this, which is why we need population-level studies.
- theendisney4 2y agoI found the solution one time but it is hard to reproduce: I make an angry face and shout from up close "It is important that people enjoy working here. Do you understand?" Then I laugh at my own joke.
- broknbottle 2y agoRules for thee but not for me!
- confidantlake 2y agoRTO has always been about social hierarchy, not economics.
- missedthecue 2y agoThis isn't an article about WFH. It's an article about long commutes to the office -- in the case of the Starbucks CEO, about 1000 miles.
- confidantlake 2y agoMy comment did not mention WFH. What are you on about?
- missedthecue 2y agoRTO implies WFH. What are you returning from if not remote work?
- sltkr 2y agoQuod licet Iovi non licet bovi.
- sltkr 2y agohttps://archive.is/dwCFL https://archive.is/dwCFL
- linotype 2y agoUntil people start leaving (and not joining) these companies en masse that have poor and hypocritical leadership, none of this will change.
- asynchronous 2y agoWe had a choice for about half a second, and then the tech industry collapsed and all of our leverage went away again. Makes the tech union concept more attractive.
- disgruntledphd2 2y ago> We had a choice for about half a second, and then the tech industry collapsed and all of our leverage went away again. Makes the tech union concept more attractive. To be fair, there was a bunch of people saying that the 10's were the best time to unionize, precisely because tech employees did have leverage.
- nitwit005 2y agoPeople don't always have a choice. The remote only jobs appear to be getting more applicants, so workers are "voting with their feet".
- 29athrowaway 2y agoBeing in an office is a exclusive lock that prevents you from having multiple remote jobs. Other than that is serves no useful purpose. And what the "face to face conversations" narrative really means is: 1) I don't want to put things in writing, 2) I want to tell if you are lying. RTO sucks
- 23B1 2y agoHere's a pro tip to CEOs and wannabe CEOs; get a fucking executive coach and work on not being a bubble-dwelling turd. I swear to god American business has its head up its own ass, from the VPs to the ELT, and it's the easiest thing in the world to have some goddamn self awareness and empathy.
- pm90 2y ago+1. The entitlement and elitism is out of control. No Dave you’re not Steve Jobs 2.0 sit the fuck down and listen to our customers please!
- ewoodrich 2y agoWhat bothers me personally when I read quotes from CEOs describing how often they work in the office or how productive they are is the lack of perspective that their "day in the office" is vastly different for them compared to the rank and file. A CEO has much more autonomy to set their daily schedule as they see fit, which one day might be showing up at 6am if they're in that grind mindset, and the next day might be showing up at 11am after a tee time and casual breakfast with colleagues or friends. They may have a schedule full of internal meetings but can choose to skip whichever they feel like isn't a good use of time at their own discretion. They don't ask permission from their supervisor or get passive aggressive texts asking if they're planning to come in if they don't show up by 9:30AM. Psychologically speaking having that much freedom to direct one's own schedule fundamentally changes one's relationship with work. Obviously they have their own non-negotiable obligations so it isn't completely in their control but the typical office worker at most companies is rarely entrusted to manage their own schedule to that degree even if they're keeping up with their tasks and a high performer. It doesn't bother me that the nature of the CEO job is much different than a lowly software dev but instead it's the lack of awareness or deliberate dishonesty that I find grating in the RTO debate.
- nunez 2y agoMakes sense to me if the execs who do this are in the air all of the time.
- Animats 2y agoSo the new Starbucks CEO gets $150 million up front. That's about $4,000 per retail outlet, which is probably not too bad. If anybody sees him in a Starbucks retail location, post that to social media. Let's see if he gets out much to check on things.
- disqard 2y agoI misread the title as "CEOs are ruining companies from afar...", and found myself agreeing. I sense that, CEOs are often ignorant of day-to-day (and even month-to-month) realities of what's going on in their own company (probably unavoidable at large corps). Basically, they have an "astronaut's eye view", so their decisions/strategy are essentially just them operating while untethered to Reality, just going off of intuition. Sometimes, that guides them well, and they do a good job of "running things". Other times, they're just "ruining things" When they do the former, the public valorizes them, and when they fail... well, they get to try again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- hintymad 2y agoWhat I don't understand is why tech companies don't believe that they can enforce a high-performance culture without return-to-office. With or without remote work, the way we evaluate one's performance has not changed, right? Then, why can't we enforce the same expectation of engineers and teams? We break down a project into milestones, and we hold teams accountable to delivering the milestones on time and on budget. The process is orthogonal to return-to-office vs WFH. If a company can't enforce the same standard just because its teams work remotely, would it say a lot about the incompetency of the company's leadership?
- alooPotato 2y agoYou let "hold teams accountable" do a lot of lifting. I think whats happening is that non-technical leaders can't assess why projects aren't being delivered. No engineer is going to say "sorry I wasn't really working that hard, thats why we missed". Instead there will be some rationale as to why the project couldn't ship on time - not enough resources, incomplete spec, tech debt, whatever. Non-technical leaders want to be able to remove one variable from the equation - the cause being the team didn't put in the effort. With return to office, they can see with their own eyes if people are putting in the "time".
- hintymad 2y ago> I think whats happening is that non-technical leaders can't assess why projects aren't being delivered Which says a lot about the leadership. :-)
- alooPotato 2y agoWhat exactly?
- bart_spoon 2y agoTheir job is to manage their teams and initiatives. If they are unable to determine why an initiative fails or how their teams are performing, it means they are incapable of doing their job.
- 5350-uiop-1130 2y agolaying off 10,000 people is hard work you definitely dont want to be in the same building as the people you're laying off
- sumedh 2y agoMake those employees wfh on that day and then lay them off.
- thewileyone 2y agoMost CEOs that I've worked under do most of their work outside of the office. That's why they have COOs to run the day-to-day stuff.
- bitwize 2y agoExpecting CEOs to live by the same rules and expectations as the line workers is like expecting generals to live by the same rules and expectations as privates. It's just stupid. It will lose you the war in the military; what do you think it will do to a business?
- nubinetwork 2y agoRules for thee but not for me... Now if you'll excuse me, you interrupted my golf game. /s
- Struyck363 2y ago[dead]
- hnarn 2y agoMany large corporations are just structured on modern feudalism with minor changes. They have a privileged nobility, an internal belief system (with attached clergy to match), and by definition a large majority "working the land". If you're talking about a small company, to some extent this makes sense. I mean, if Alice or Bob starts a company, they're risking more than you are; of course they get to decide. When you're talking about a multi-national corporation with an employee count similar to that of a medium sized city in Europe, I'd argue that logic breaks down, because most people in positions of power are just men-at-arms brought in by the bureaucracy. The CEOs are no longer the "founders", they're just exotic strangers from far-off lands that happen to know other CEOs and marry other CEOs. They dress differently, they talk differently, they act differently, and finally, just like the nobility, they often have personal agendas that may or may not align with the interest of the "company" (I'm referring here to the employees, not the shareholders). There's a quote I really like said by a frenchman (can't remember the name, so sources are welcome) that goes something like: "You cannot manifest the republic in society as long as monarchy reigns in the factory". And sure, I realize for many readers this is just commie gobbledygook, but I'd encourage everyone to at least think about the area inbetween extremes, and alternate ways we could structure "work", because the older I get the more absurd this culture becomes, which is weird because I was kind of expecting my political skepticism to start wearing off with age.
- highfrequency 2y agoDisagree strongly. Modern work dynamics are vastly better than feudalism. You are focused on the hierarchical structure within (some) companies but the key feature of modern capitalism is the fierce competition between companies. There is now a highly competitive labor market; employees have extreme flexibility to move to a new employer at the drop of a hat or start a competing business if they believe that any other company would possibly treat them better. It is the intense competition between companies (for the same customers, the same employees) that puts constant pressure on companies to develop better products, treat employees well and pay them well. The main problem with feudalism was that nobles had family titles to the land, and serfs were effectively their property. Therefore competitive pressure to treat people well was entirely absent, and peasants were completely exploited. There is really no analogy to modern companies that compete with each other to shower perks on their employees.
- physicsguy 2y agoMy previous companies CEO was barely in but decided to link bonuses to office attendance 3 days a week, and made his secretary secretly take a register of when people were in the office or not.
- game_the0ry 2y agoStunning how out of touch CEOs are with their own employees. If there is one thing that would significantly improve the quality of living of all employees, it would be remote work. The fact that leadership wont give that (which costs nothing) I believe demonstrates some personality characteristic that is arguably sociopathic, and I do not throw that word around lightly. If employees had a say in who gets to be leadership - which is how most of nature works - then CEOs would be be acting drastically different.