8 ms·

CEOs 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/prospe

by andirk 2y ago

CEOs 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 ago
I 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 ago
  If 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 ago
    The "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.
- jarsin 2y ago
  I don't know about that. Everyone and their mom is Founder/CEO of some business now days. Almost everyone in my network that can't get a job is running a "company".
  - taylortrusty 2y ago
    That's not the same thing. Those aren't real companies. This is buying existing, profitable companies with real employees and customers.
- infiniteawning 2y ago
  IBM entered the personal computing market on the basis of non-proprietary duplication of existing tech - part of the reason for the company's success was its name. Nobody ever got fired for buying an IBM. Once the name is established, officers can remotely defy the FUD factor.
cm2012 2y ago
Meeting with current and prospective clients is not leisure, it's stressful as fuck even if it's over dinner.
- givemeethekeys 2y ago
  I'm sure it isn't so stressful that they're quitting in large numbers for less stressful roles.
- mulmen 2y ago
  Is it 39x more stressful than destroying your body on a factory floor so you can feed your kids?
  - nunez 2y ago
    When some of the meetings and decisions execs make affects the livelihood of huge groups of those people, I'd say "it can be sometimes"
  - cm2012 2y ago
    I've never been a CEO of a big company, but I've been the CEO of a company that did $5m a year in business. I've also worked for $6 an hour sweeping, busked on the subway, and been the lowest paid person at a few companies besides. The CEO role had by far the most stress, to the point it caused me debilitating health issues.
    - intelVISA 2y ago
      I don't speak from experience but I've heard rumors that jobs exist where you can be both low paid AND stressed.
    - mulmen 2y ago
      People who work in factories also suffer debilitating health issues.
  - swader999 2y ago
    I would take the physical job any day over the leadership type manager roles if pay was the same. Way less stress and conflict. I volunteered for a sports club for the last decade plus, was president for half that. Did amazing things, hired tens of coaches etc. I have way more fun now that I've passed the torch and just help out at events. I got PTSD and burnout one particularly bad season while prez.
fourseventy 2y ago
Everyone on this site is so anti-C-suite it's crazy. All the standard "big company CEO bad, me entry level employee good" talking points. You would think that a site based on entrepreneurship would have people on it that have more of an understanding of what running a business is actually like.
- defrost 2y ago
  There's running a business with under 50 employees, running a business with under 100, and then there's running a coorporation with several thousand and more employees. The FAANG (and other letter group) global mega corp survivors have one or two valid grievances.
  - asynchronous 2y ago
    This 100 times, especially because a large portion of HN is former FAANG. We’ve seen the secret sauce at the top, it’s not special.
    - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
      > We’ve seen the secret sauce at the top, it’s not special. I'm not at all saying all FAANG bosses are great, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone argue that all they do is "make a couple decisions a week and then play golf." Anyone that says that is just showing how clueless they are as to what goes in to running a large company.
- slibhb 2y ago
  HN is fairly ideologically diverse. There is a lot of the stuff you're complaining about but there's plenty of the opposite too. Where I work, the people higher than me (remote or not) work constantly, around the clock, to the point where I worry about their health. I also like going into the office 3 days a week. It's a nice space, I like the separation between work and home, and there's good food nearby. As long as I'm allowed to WFH a couple days a week and when I have an appointment or something.
seizethecheese 2y ago
If this were true, you’d never see CEOs retiring.
kelnos 2y ago
I think executive pay has gotten out of control as much as the next guy, but "CEOs only do a few hours of work per week, plus playing golf with clients" has to be the least informed take I've ever heard. And that's putting it the nice way.
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
These comical caricatures of CEOs "making a couple decisions a week intermixed with 'leisure activities '" bear no resemblance to any CEO/senior exec I've ever worked with. Yes, I can imagine in some odd situations (say family businesses) you might have "figurehead" CEOs, but every CEO I've ever worked with put in a huge number of hours. I think there is plenty to honestly debate regarding CEO compensation, especially when it comes to egregious wealth inequality, but this idea that CEOs are just a bunch of lazy schmoozers sounds like an r/antiwork fever dream to me.
6bb32646d83d 2y ago
I work for a medium (~$10B) public company and when I check the CEOs calendar he's booked 12 hours a day, and it's a lot of hard staff meeting with complex outcome. Not sure where this idea that CEOs don't work come from
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  You, too, can have a busy calendar! https://github.com/zylai/ical-fake-meetings-generator https://github.com/zylai/ical-fake-meetings-generator
nunez 2y ago
This might be hard to believe, but yet another steak dinner at the expense of time with your family/house/hobbies/whatever gets old fast for some, and some of those key decisions can affect the livelihoods of hundreds of people as well as your company's value, if publicly traded.
jandrewrogers 2y ago
I’ve worked closely with the CEOs of a few big companies. People see a few moments of glamor and think that is the job but the vast majority of what they do is an astonishingly shitty and thankless job. You have to be a certain kind of masochist to do what is required in that role day after day. You are also never off the clock, so they never really get a proper break to recharge and prevent burnout. No one with any sense would do that job for a normal paycheck and perks, it isn’t worth it. The reality is that few people have the mental and psychological constitution required to do the job of CEO at any decent sized company. You don’t need to look further than startups to empirically know that most people, even when self-selecting, can’t do the job of CEO even when playing the easy mode of a small company.
- helloplanets 2y ago
  Yep, a lot of black and white takes. And I'm not a CEO. A big portion of the job is just being able to not crumble apart, over a long period of time. Another metric: How prone are you to making a horrible decision when under extreme stress, instead of an average one? The depths at which the worst case scenarios can bottom out are deep. However, when the downside does not materialize, all that is left is an average decision. And average decisions are easy to critique in hindsight, for the CEOs themselves, as well as for most other people. In that sense, programming is similar: When you steer clear of horrible code, consinstently and over a long period of time, the plain looking stuff that comes out the other end can look like a given to somebody who hasn't been through enough code filled with bad decisions to appreciate their absence.
- mingusrude 2y ago
  I did a period of two years as the CEO of a smallish tech-company (~ 100 employees, turnover of 15M€) and it was stressful as hell even if we were doing OK financially. The big thing is that you're the last defender, everything difficult or uncomfortable task ends with you having to pick it up, for everyone it's a choice to pass it on to the next level but for you it isn't. This combined with the monthly "grades" in terms of commercial result which was new to me coming from a tech background was tough. In the end I chose to go back to tech but it's not something that I want undone, it was a learning experience and these days I'm a lot more careful to let things slip through to the next layer.

by andirk 2y ago

bdw5204 2y ago

I 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 ago
If 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 ago
  The "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.
jarsin 2y ago
I don't know about that. Everyone and their mom is Founder/CEO of some business now days. Almost everyone in my network that can't get a job is running a "company".
- taylortrusty 2y ago
  That's not the same thing. Those aren't real companies. This is buying existing, profitable companies with real employees and customers.
infiniteawning 2y ago
IBM entered the personal computing market on the basis of non-proprietary duplication of existing tech - part of the reason for the company's success was its name. Nobody ever got fired for buying an IBM. Once the name is established, officers can remotely defy the FUD factor.

cm2012 2y ago

Meeting with current and prospective clients is not leisure, it's stressful as fuck even if it's over dinner.

givemeethekeys 2y ago
I'm sure it isn't so stressful that they're quitting in large numbers for less stressful roles.
mulmen 2y ago
Is it 39x more stressful than destroying your body on a factory floor so you can feed your kids?
- nunez 2y ago
  When some of the meetings and decisions execs make affects the livelihood of huge groups of those people, I'd say "it can be sometimes"
- cm2012 2y ago
  I've never been a CEO of a big company, but I've been the CEO of a company that did $5m a year in business. I've also worked for $6 an hour sweeping, busked on the subway, and been the lowest paid person at a few companies besides. The CEO role had by far the most stress, to the point it caused me debilitating health issues.
  - intelVISA 2y ago
    I don't speak from experience but I've heard rumors that jobs exist where you can be both low paid AND stressed.
  - mulmen 2y ago
    People who work in factories also suffer debilitating health issues.
- swader999 2y ago
  I would take the physical job any day over the leadership type manager roles if pay was the same. Way less stress and conflict. I volunteered for a sports club for the last decade plus, was president for half that. Did amazing things, hired tens of coaches etc. I have way more fun now that I've passed the torch and just help out at events. I got PTSD and burnout one particularly bad season while prez.

fourseventy 2y ago

Everyone on this site is so anti-C-suite it's crazy. All the standard "big company CEO bad, me entry level employee good" talking points. You would think that a site based on entrepreneurship would have people on it that have more of an understanding of what running a business is actually like.

defrost 2y ago
There's running a business with under 50 employees, running a business with under 100, and then there's running a coorporation with several thousand and more employees. The FAANG (and other letter group) global mega corp survivors have one or two valid grievances.
- asynchronous 2y ago
  This 100 times, especially because a large portion of HN is former FAANG. We’ve seen the secret sauce at the top, it’s not special.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    > We’ve seen the secret sauce at the top, it’s not special. I'm not at all saying all FAANG bosses are great, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone argue that all they do is "make a couple decisions a week and then play golf." Anyone that says that is just showing how clueless they are as to what goes in to running a large company.
slibhb 2y ago
HN is fairly ideologically diverse. There is a lot of the stuff you're complaining about but there's plenty of the opposite too. Where I work, the people higher than me (remote or not) work constantly, around the clock, to the point where I worry about their health. I also like going into the office 3 days a week. It's a nice space, I like the separation between work and home, and there's good food nearby. As long as I'm allowed to WFH a couple days a week and when I have an appointment or something.

seizethecheese 2y ago

If this were true, you’d never see CEOs retiring.

kelnos 2y ago

I think executive pay has gotten out of control as much as the next guy, but "CEOs only do a few hours of work per week, plus playing golf with clients" has to be the least informed take I've ever heard. And that's putting it the nice way.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

These comical caricatures of CEOs "making a couple decisions a week intermixed with 'leisure activities '" bear no resemblance to any CEO/senior exec I've ever worked with. Yes, I can imagine in some odd situations (say family businesses) you might have "figurehead" CEOs, but every CEO I've ever worked with put in a huge number of hours. I think there is plenty to honestly debate regarding CEO compensation, especially when it comes to egregious wealth inequality, but this idea that CEOs are just a bunch of lazy schmoozers sounds like an r/antiwork fever dream to me.

6bb32646d83d 2y ago

I work for a medium (~$10B) public company and when I check the CEOs calendar he's booked 12 hours a day, and it's a lot of hard staff meeting with complex outcome. Not sure where this idea that CEOs don't work come from

ceejayoz 2y ago
You, too, can have a busy calendar! https://github.com/zylai/ical-fake-meetings-generator https://github.com/zylai/ical-fake-meetings-generator

nunez 2y ago

This might be hard to believe, but yet another steak dinner at the expense of time with your family/house/hobbies/whatever gets old fast for some, and some of those key decisions can affect the livelihoods of hundreds of people as well as your company's value, if publicly traded.

jandrewrogers 2y ago

I’ve worked closely with the CEOs of a few big companies. People see a few moments of glamor and think that is the job but the vast majority of what they do is an astonishingly shitty and thankless job. You have to be a certain kind of masochist to do what is required in that role day after day. You are also never off the clock, so they never really get a proper break to recharge and prevent burnout. No one with any sense would do that job for a normal paycheck and perks, it isn’t worth it. The reality is that few people have the mental and psychological constitution required to do the job of CEO at any decent sized company. You don’t need to look further than startups to empirically know that most people, even when self-selecting, can’t do the job of CEO even when playing the easy mode of a small company.

helloplanets 2y ago
Yep, a lot of black and white takes. And I'm not a CEO. A big portion of the job is just being able to not crumble apart, over a long period of time. Another metric: How prone are you to making a horrible decision when under extreme stress, instead of an average one? The depths at which the worst case scenarios can bottom out are deep. However, when the downside does not materialize, all that is left is an average decision. And average decisions are easy to critique in hindsight, for the CEOs themselves, as well as for most other people. In that sense, programming is similar: When you steer clear of horrible code, consinstently and over a long period of time, the plain looking stuff that comes out the other end can look like a given to somebody who hasn't been through enough code filled with bad decisions to appreciate their absence.
mingusrude 2y ago
I did a period of two years as the CEO of a smallish tech-company (~ 100 employees, turnover of 15M€) and it was stressful as hell even if we were doing OK financially. The big thing is that you're the last defender, everything difficult or uncomfortable task ends with you having to pick it up, for everyone it's a choice to pass it on to the next level but for you it isn't. This combined with the monthly "grades" in terms of commercial result which was new to me coming from a tech background was tough. In the end I chose to go back to tech but it's not something that I want undone, it was a learning experience and these days I'm a lot more careful to let things slip through to the next layer.