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I know this is a common trope here, and yeah, plenty of MBA-type CEOs are trash. But speaking as a founder/CEO of a small company, the quality gap between an av
by bratao 2mo ago
I know this is a common trope here, and yeah, plenty of MBA-type CEOs are trash. But speaking as a founder/CEO of a small company, the quality gap between an average hire and top talent at the director level is night and day.
Proven talent comes with a massive price tag, but it's almost always worth it. The times I regretted going with the 2nd or 3rd place candidate because they were cheaper ended up setting us back by months.
The same logic applies to CEOs. Moving the needle for a massive company by even a few percent is worth billions. Just look at Lisa Su or Steve Jobs.
- safira_day 2mo ago[dead]
- liveoneggs 2mo agoGood employees are good and bad employees are bad? "proven talent"?
- zpeti 2mo agoUnfortunately this is not what 95% of HN wants to hear, even though its the truth. But you have my upvote.
- melenaboija 2mo agoThe post is a satire and when writing this I see it at #1 of the front page and the comment is #1 too. So I guess you are kinda wrong.
- SecretDreams 2mo agoI'd feel better hearing this type of sentiment from someone with less vested interest in this type of sentiment.
- mikert89 2mo agoNo I think for the last 10-15 years, ivy types could legitimately just raise series A type money, run a company like shit, but capital was a moat and so ended up as CEOs. This is actually how the world works
- bluGill 2mo agoYou are confusing CEO pay with CEO ability. There is plenty of examples of companies doing poorly until a new CEO comes in, and others of a company doing well until the CEO retires and a replacement comes in. Ivy types have a poor history of figuring out which is which in advance though.
- mikert89 2mo agono its not like that, these people get plopped into positions of power, and alot of time theres no good way to assess their performance
- bluGill 2mo agoThere are plenty of good ways to assess performance of CEO. However the important ones can only be run 10-20 years from now and so they are not helpful.
- mikert89 2mo agoRight it’s like venture investing c very hard to evaluate short term
- DangitBobby 2mo agoIs there? I don't see many control group companies working in absence of a CEO.
- kibwen 2mo agoThere's an equally valid hypothesis that a "good" CEO is just one that keeps their hands off the levers of power, doesn't rock the boat or fuck anything up, and quietly lets a good company perform; whereas a bad CEO is one who, due to ego and self-aggrandizement, can't help but impose themselves via meddling and prevent a good company from performing. By that measure, you might as well save yourself the executive compensation and potential for disaster by just not having a CEO at all, despite what the executive class would have you believe. The aristocracy of old also argued that their titles were earned and that society could not function without them.
- tgv 2mo agoThat's only if the company's revenue is in excess of 100B. There aren't many companies like that. Certainly not enough for an AI platform to monetize. But don't you fall in the same trap as they try to lure you with: expressing a CEO's value as revenue/profit optimization? With that kind of logic, you should pivot your business, whatever it is, to whatever is looking more profitable in the short term. It's short-sighted. And it misses the ethical and social aspect of the organization that forms the company.
- hibikir 2mo agoBut a lot of "proven" talent with a huge price tag is also no good, really achieved what they did elsewhere due to sheer luck/help from a product that couldn't go wrong, and will drag you into a hole with their comp. I have seen this over and over again: Big pedigree, top of the line personality, zero results. Everyone thinks they are hiring the star, not the fraudster, or just the lucky one. That's how we end up with overpaid execs.
- groundzeros2015 2mo ago> really achieved what they did elsewhere due to sheer luck/help This world view is not falsifiable. Regardless of success you can say it was luck. But I just don’t understand this. In my work we are constantly giving people chances to take on more responsibility, and often they don’t want to, or it doesn’t work out. Why would you expect that you could drop them in as CEO? Are CEOs always the cause of success or failure? No. Are they good at avoiding blame? Yes. Are they also extremely skilled and competent people? Yes.
- KoolKat23 2mo agoYou can't drop everyone in that position but there is a significant number that still could do it. It is not 100% more like 50%/60% luck.
- groundzeros2015 2mo agoDoes execution, management, marketing and hiring not matter? The best product or opportunity wins and it’s just whose along for the ride?
- KoolKat23 2mo agoI hate this new cult of personality thing many are trying to cultivate. But to that point most of the time, poor performance is attributed to "the market" and strong performance is attributed to "leadership". There is some clear cognitive dissonance going on.
- hoppp 2mo agoSteve Jobs was a founder, not your average CEO hire. He built the company from scratch.
- jedberg 2mo agoSteve Jobs was hired as the CEO of Apple when the company was 20 years old. He was never CEO before that.
- matwood 2mo agoYes. I've heard some say that SJ being fired allowed him to go out and learn to move from founder to CEO. Only when he came back to Apple did he finally have the skills and maturity to be CEO.
- cmiles74 2mo agoIs Steve Jobs even a good example of "the type of person I want to hire as CEO"? I think he probably is not. He was a demonstrably bad CEO, so much so that the Apple board fired him. He then went on to get better at the job through running another two companies until, eventually, Apple purchased one of these companies (it was very much unsuccessful, BTW). Then he became CEO and the company and was, finally, phenomenally successful.
- Cthulhu_ 2mo agoThe question remains whether that was all him or a combination of Wozniak and Ive, on top of being at the right place(s) at the right time(s) (iMac, iPod, iPhone). Also he died 15 years ago, but Apple's success (measured in market cap at least) went up more than 10x since he died (from 300-400B to 3-4T), under Tim Cook. That's arguably from the groundwork and reputation the company laid down 15 years ago, but still - few companies manage to keep growing on stuff they did 15 years ago. Oil industry notwithstanding.
- matwood 2mo agoI don't think anyone has ever claimed Apple was all SJ. But Woz would have likely stayed at HP without the prodding by SJ. And since we're talking about CEOs, top-level personnel decisions are one of the biggest impacts a CEO can make. SJ promoted Ive to director of design, he also hired and eventually promoted Cook to COO.
- cyclopeanutopia 2mo ago"Top talent" - I'm curious, do you really believe this is a normal / proper / desirable way of talking about other people?
- ImHereToVote 2mo agoI'm not OP but I think it is both normal, proper, and desirable.
- groundzeros2015 2mo agoYes. Highly accountable and responsible people with deep knowledge are rare.
- andsoitis 2mo agoIt is logical that there are people who are great at what they do and others who are not. We’ve all worked with both and if you are in the business of finding talented people, how else would you talk about it?
- cyclopeanutopia 2mo ago"Talented people", not "talent".
- andsoitis 2mo agoThat’s a weird thing to be upset and reprimand us about. I suppose one can insist that people say “most talented people” but it seems so much more streamlined and to say “top talent”. I have never come across anyone who is bothered by this. FWIW I am way more bothered by the use of the word “resources” to refer to people. I think it is disgusting and offensive.
- cyclopeanutopia 2mo agoWell, then you just did. :)
- epolanski 2mo agoI respect your opinion, but behind winners imho there's 99% being in the right place at the right time. And people change and so do their motivation. I'm not saying top talent doesn't make the difference, I'm just saying that CVs and impressions aren't always completely related.
- aqme28 2mo agoI feel like you're suffering from some sort of confirmation bias. I've worked under a top talent CEO, and the company collapsed. He made some gambles and they just didn't work out. I am not convinced that a third-rate version of him would have done significantly worse.
- fragmede 2mo agoIs it just that the company collapsed? The third-rate version of him probably would have ended up in jail a-la SBF or Ms Holmes, with hopefully no one getting killed or maimed, or chemicals in a factory causing cancer across neighborhoods or poisoning wells or something. There are things worse than losing your job.
- frr149 2mo agoThe same thing is true in software engineering: an AI model is equivalent to an average programer (average with a huge standard deviation). Averigua is better than half, but still way behind the top performers
- giancarlostoro 2mo agoI would like to replace a few CIOs or CTOs at some companies, software quality has been down the drain since before AI. It's just terrible. Stock market pricing driven development is a detriment on software quality. I was never a "fanboy" of Jeff Bezos, but I do admire when people do or take the correct approach, I say that to preface that I admire that early on he would tell investors that he's only to be considered as a long term investment, which I wish the stock market had some way to protect these sorts of stocks from the whims of people who quickly crash the value of a company on speculation or other meaningless metrics when you're heavily investing in R&D and have one bad quarter, maybe two, but your third quarter will yield results, but oh no, you have to fire people to make the market happy, so your efforts are ruined.
- thelastgallon 2mo ago> Proven talent comes with a massive price tag, but it's almost always worth it. Tall guy with good hair, smooth talker, in the same socio-economic circles, buddies with the board/investors, social drinker for networking, knows a lot about costly hobbies and 'interesting' experiences (pilot license, restores classic cars, has exotic car collection, golf) .....
- afavour 2mo agoI think there are parallels here to software development. When starting a brand new project it’s better to have a lot of human involvement to make sure the AI is creating a foundation that actually matches requirements, both spoken and unspoken. But once the project reaches maturity it’s more realistic to imagine an AI working on top of that concrete layer. So goes management. Bootstrapping a new company? Needs human involvement. A company just ticking along? I’m less convinced. Or to be more specific, as a developer who is told my work is obsolete by CEOs, I’m interested to know why they don’t apply the same logic inwards.
- adamtaylor_13 2mo agoIs a company ever really just "ticking along" though? Seems to me like you're always sliding one way or the other, largely due to leadership at the top.
- afavour 2mo agoSame goes for software development projects. I think the point of the satire is “why does it apply to X but not you?”
- andsoitis 2mo ago> A company just ticking along? Environment around you changes all the time which means if a company wants to stay around it needs to be able to adapt at any moment.
- blueTiger33 2mo agoSteve jobs said the same thing. however, we need to define great talent. imo they are laser focused people who also love helping others. unfortunately, have seen too much arrogance in corporate, and have always asked what if that person has been a humble guy?
- bonoboTP 2mo agoWhat matters is their connections to powerful people. That's what you buy.
- palata 2mo ago> speaking as a founder/CEO [...] Proven talent comes with a massive price tag, but it's almost always worth it. I see no bias here /s.
- randusername 2mo agoGenuine questions from the ground floor: How do you spot the quality candidates in those top roles? It seems like forecasting success is exponentially harder when the skills are so qualitative and contextual. And I have not yet witnessed an organization that is comfortable with the risk of promoting an internal "nobody" relative to someone with plausible credentials or from outside. If you're stuck with MBA-type CEOs, how do you fix them or mitigate their damage from above?
- croes 2mo ago> How do you spot the quality candidates in those top roles? Those with the higher price tag are better /s
- palata 2mo ago> Just look at Lisa Su or Steve Jobs. It has a name, it's called "survivorship bias".
- afavour 2mo agoThe site is satire… I don’t think it’s a serious pitch for “replace your CEO with AI”, it’s “hey, CEOs, if you disagree with this, why don’t you apply the same logic to all the parts of your business and all the employees you’ve confidently stated will be replaced by AI?”
- pickleglitch 2mo agoIf the past decade has taught me anything, it's that today's satire is tomorrow's reality.
- throw-qqqqq 2mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
- iamleppert 2mo agoMonths? Most terrible founders and CEOs I've worked for set the company back years, and most of the time significantly damaged it to the point of no return for everyone involved. The worst ones are the arrogant, low-skill and/or low-effort bunch. They destroy the soul of the company, drive away customers, talent and loot whatever value is left in the company and take for themselves.
- croes 2mo ago> Proven talent comes with a massive price tag, but it's almost always worth it. How often is the only proof the price tag from their previous position?
- baggachipz 2mo ago> speaking as a founder/CEO > massive price tag, but it's almost always worth it The "Obama putting a medal around Obama's neck" meme seems appropriate here.
- Trasmatta 2mo agoExactly my reaction. Of course a CEO is going to write a post saying "CEOs are expensive but worth it". At least they admitted to it, I guess!
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoArs had an interesting story, yesterday: https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/07/on-the-run-for-20-years-most-wanted-fugitive-caught-hiding-as-a-biotech-exec/ https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/07/on-the-run-for-20-yea... Looks like this guy was considered "proven," by his company. So much, so, that they didn't even bother checking his basic bona fides. Wouldn’t surprise me, if he was actually pretty good at his job. I think a lot of the "proof" at this level, is Mastery of the Bro-Fu. If you can speak the right language, wear the right watch, and drive the right car, the key to the executive washroom is tossed to you, without a second thought.
- DrScientist 2mo agoGood leadership makes a huge difference - whether that be big or small. I've seen it myself - in particular it's amazing much of a difference good leadership can make at a huge company. However at the same time it can also be true that some leaders are either poor or make no difference - but as long as they don't have to react to external change ( or only do so as part of a herd ) they can coast quite happily for years while 'earning' huge rewards. Leadership is only really tested when the right course is a different one from either the past or your peers.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- blitzar 2mo agoBut speaking as top talent, the quality gap between an average hire and me is night and day. I'm worth it.
- thenatureboy 2mo agoWhoa there buddy, you are highlighting that true talent, like beauty, actually does exist. This kind of thinking is not tolerable on Hacker News.
- stego-tech 2mo agoSee, this is something I’ve had to reconcile: founders aren’t CEOs, and CEOs aren’t founders. I remain unconvinced a CEO is needed in any real, modern capacity. A large enough company has a PR person (who can do the interviews and sell the messaging), an Ops person (who translates Board guidance into actionable work for specific teams and vice versa), a slew of specialty technical people, and a Board who generally sets the course for the firm. The CEO claims to do all of those, but increasingly - especially in large or mature firms - they’re just public celebrities hoovering up revenue and making connections with other CEOs. It’s a multi-million dollar fleecing of corporate resources to support one dude’s luxury lifestyle. They’re not steering the business so much as making sure we scratch the backs of their buddies to make gameable KPIs look good to the Board, and in that context they’re easily tossed aside.
- 999900000999 2mo agoCEOs are also Fall Guys. A fall guy is the person who takes the blame when the whole thing falls apart. I’ve worked with exceptional CEOs at start ups. A startup CEO has to be a good sales person. They need to be able to make that final pitch to sell the company. Then everyone ideally cashes out and we’re all rich without the need to ever work again. It’s probably not going to happen, but I often dream of getting rich and in my retirement running a game studio in a low cost of living country. I want to literally code right alongside my employees and pay them fair wages even if we make no money. Good basic games. A strict no DLC policy and full open source( if possible) 5 years after release.
- ravenstine 2mo ago> CEOs are also Fall Guys. A fall guy is the person who takes the blame when the whole thing falls apart. Do you have an example of this? The usual criticism of CEOs is based on the exact opposite; that we are the fall guys, and that CEOs usually profit (and are rarely punished for) their own failed decisions. Looking back at all the companies I've worked for, I can't think of one time a CEO actually suffered blowback for serious mistakes. The closest would be Steve Jobs having been let go from Apple, but that was in 1985 and he wasn't even the CEO back then.
- bluecheese452 2mo agoProven talent like Carly Fiorina, Gerald Levin, and Ken Lay?
- hdndjsbbs 2mo agoThe problem is anyone can point to examples of good CEOs and bad CEOs. John Sculley and Rory Read also got paid a ton of money. It's not clear what you need to know a priori to actually pick a good CEO.
- renegade-otter 2mo agoLike others have said - many people at the top are so successful because they ended up at the right place and right time, and their approach just fit exactly the problem at hand. They did not see the future, they just had a hunch - and that can go either way. Put them anywhere else and it will be a disaster. A good case study of this is Ron Johnson, who did miracles at Apple and then ran J.C. Penny into the ground. If you look at the causes, it was blatantly obvious what he was doing wrong (doing away with sale prices). It's a kind of fundamental thing that one could understand by just asking some questions. Maybe it's not genius, maybe people "just do things" and they just happen to work once. Most success stories are accidental, and one's ability to succeed really depends on how many times they are allowed to fail first. Most of us here - we have no such luxury. We fail, we become homeless. There are exceptions, of course, and there are truly talented managers out there. If I look around, however, all I see is clown cars accidentally driving into gold mines.
- phkahler 2mo agothe quality gap between an average hire and top talent ̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶r̶e̶c̶t̶o̶r̶ ̶l̶e̶v̶e̶l̶ ̶ is night and day. Fixed that for ya.
- jdlshore 2mo agoYou’re getting a lot of pushback, but I’m genuinely interested in your experiences. What differences have you seen between average and top leaders? Not in results, but in terms of how they approached the job?
- criddell 2mo agoSometimes a lot of it is in their rolodex. Important people in government or banking or VC firms or other companies will take their calls.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2mo agoMost CEOs are not Lisa Su or Steve Jobs, or even remotely close. Current AI could surely do better than the majority of them.
- elzbardico 2mo agoThere's a huge difference between managing a small company in a competitive marketing with self-funding and the administration of the giant public corporations in a increasingly concentrated marketing. And then, there is the whole layers of wannabees in the middle market.
- dzonga 2mo agothe thing about CEOs (well let us just say strategic/visionary) leaders since they're found across the whole org chart level - is finding them is very difficult since assessing their skills is also difficult. past success does not mean future success. cz one might just have circumstantial. so what tends to happen shitty leaders are promoted based on "reasonable/visible" metrics - such as having an MBA, etc.
- ncr100 2mo ago> The times I regretted going with the 2nd or 3rd place candidate because they were cheaper ended up setting us back by months. Roughly, how did it become clear that the second or third place candidates set the company back by months? Did the company ultimately hire the first place candidate and discover their superior effectiveness in the org?
- rurp 2mo agoHow does a board objectively evaluate that a potential CEO is worth say $25M/year over a candidate who will take the job for $4M/year? Previous job performance isn't that reliable since countless CEOs have been great at one company in terms of raising stock price/revenue/profit/whatever, and then flamed out at a future company. How does one know in advance that one CEO will increase revenue by a few percent more than another, and justify such an expensive compensation package?
- sleight42 2mo agoAlso look at Marc Benioff who checks stock market has seesawed Salesforce into a low it hasn't seen in 4 years. The man seems to manage to repeatedly pull failure from the jaws of success. Now look at his earnings.