
How to Be a C.E.O., From a Decade’s Worth of Them - dsr12
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/business/how-to-be-a-ceo.html
======
goatherders
My last CEO was a great leader, except he showed up at 10am most days.
Employees saw him get to work 90 minutes after they did. They didn't see that
he stayed until 9p most nights since most of them were gone by 530. He lost
the respect of the employees because he never understood that the example he
set was visual. And he got fired despite the executives who worked closely
with him all thinking he did a great job.

~~~
wolco
I am sure the respect of his employees had nothing to do with why he was
fired.

~~~
pc86
I've never worked for an executive who _didn 't_ take note of how they and
their superiors were viewed by their employees. The bad ones don't care, but
they all at least follow it.

------
zappo2938
One CEO says when hiring he asks if the applicant thinks she is smart or hard
working. The only correct answer is hard working. Later in the article another
CEO at a college job fair looks at a plain resume and asks what the kid has
been doing with his time. The kid says he drives home and works Friday,
Saturday, and Sunday at his family's diner all weekend returning to school on
Monday morning.

I used to work on a massive private yacht. I'm cleaning and polishing the
outside making it look pretty for all the passerby's to admire after we
arrived at the marina at Atlantis in the Bahamas. A tourist perhaps in his
early 40s with a family stops me to ask "How do I achieve getting my own
yacht?" I said what everyone says, hard work. He scoffed at me and replied
that he works very hard in technology in Vegas. He works 50+ hours a week and
that he will never realize a yacht like this.

It's not hard work. That's not the answer. It's something else. After working
6 years on private yachts my best guess is that the people who own the yachts
hire people who know what they are doing, they provide those people with the
resources they need, and they stay out of their way. They do not micromanage.

The writer mentions Ray Dalio and his hundreds of principles for working at
his firm, Bridgewater Associates. Maybe, but the big thing to take away from
Dalio's principles is not to micromanage. He has built an algorithm to make
decisions based on merit of each employee's history of making the correct
decision. [0] "In order to be an effective investor, one has to bet against
the consensus and be right." He has established a way to quantify merit, which
I think is similar the democratization of the stock market itself.

[0]
[https://www.ted.com/talks/ray_dalio_how_to_build_a_company_w...](https://www.ted.com/talks/ray_dalio_how_to_build_a_company_where_the_best_ideas_win)

~~~
troydavis
I’d add “take risks, then do everything you can to reduce the risks.”

Other than possibly in finance, working 100 hours a week _for someone else_ is
not going to lead to owning a mega yacht. One needs to actually take the risk
and accept the consequences. “Risk” usually is working for no compensation for
a while, sometimes years.

(Tech is unique for not absolutely requiring this, in that a VC may be willing
to absorb most of the founding risk. The founders receive salaries long before
cashflow would support them. In almost any other industry, “owning the means
of production” actually means taking that risk yourself.)

~~~
dilemma
Venture capital exists in every industry.

~~~
troydavis
Of course, but it’s almost always after a company at least has a product and
usually after revenue is funding salaries. Using PG’s phrase, it’s after the
company is “default alive.” By that point, the founding risk is pretty low.

A first-time entrepreneur raising capital without a product or revenue is, for
all intents and purposes, unique to tech and biotech. The very few exceptions
aren’t common enough that an entrepreneur could plan around them.

For anyone considering a non-tech business, the podcast “How I Built This”
covers it well: [http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-
this](http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this)

------
PeOe
“Both of my great occasions in life happened by accident simply because I
showed up.” Loving this quote. It´s so true actually. If you don´t put
yourself out there and go network or go to events, it´s quite difficult to
stumble upon new opportunities. You might just get the chance to get your foot
in the door somewhere. This can also be referred to the "online and social
media space" \- if you don´t put yourself out there (eg.on Linkedin) people
are never going to recognize you and your work. In my opinion, you can work as
hard as you want, if no one actually sees it and values it, it´s still a waste
of time.

~~~
KozmoNau7
All of my job opportunities have come about because I just happened to be in
the right place, working with the right people at the right time.

Luck is an _enormous_ part of success, despite how much people would like to
think it's all hard work and determination.

~~~
SuperGent
Yes, but it's about 'making' luck or, more accurately, taking advantage of
luck when it does come. If you don't get out there then you can't be in the
right place at the right time!

~~~
PeOe
Yeah, exactly. That´s what I meant. If you don´t put yourself out there,
stumbling across a great opportunity becomes rather unlikely. What I always
ask myself is, if that phenomenon should really be called luck. I mean, if
you´re at an event already that a lot of interesting people attend, then it´s
very likely you´re gonna get to know someone "interesting". Like you´re
already better than "the ones on the couch". Because I guess luck is something
you don´t really get to have an influence on. Do you understand what I mean?

------
contingencies
CEO = Communal Evangelist + door-Opener

------
panic
The article never really explains why you'd want to be a CEO. Are most CEOs
satisfied with their job?

~~~
jpatokal
Money, power and prestige is a pretty attractive triumvirate of reasons to be
a CEO.

~~~
jorangreef
"To serve people" \- is a far more attractive reason to be a CEO and a far
more likely reason to succeed massively as a CEO. Most business books focus on
the "how", but the "why" is critical for a CEO.

Money, power and prestige are byproducts and make very poor motivators in
themselves. A CEO motivated by money, power and prestige (even those who
naively pretend second order effects) will likely make suboptimal decisions.

"If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all."

~~~
tormeh
Have you heard of Larry Ellison?

~~~
kornish
Cue the ever amazing Bryan Cantrill Oracle rant:
[https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=33m8s](https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=33m8s)

------
0xbear
Our CEO is strictly a 9 to 5 dude. CTO, too. And this is at a startup, I
imagine if this was an established company, they wouldn’t even show up. In
general they just push the responsibility onto the people who are willing to
take it, and then claim credit for their success. That, in short, is how to be
a C*O.

~~~
rorykoehler
It can be different in a very early stage startup but generally a CxO's job
isn't to do the grunt work. It's to set direction/vision, create opportunity
and ensure there is money in the bank. That's why you have a job. If you don't
like it you could always do what they did and go out on your own. If you do
that be prepared to live with daily existential dread and possibly a
realisation that you don't have the skills to do what they are doing. Desk
time is a very bad indicator of performance.

~~~
35bge57dtjku
> It's to set direction/vision, create opportunity and ensure there is money
> in the bank.

Getting funding I understand, but the other 2 are so nebulous and/or trivial
sounding it's no wonder people sometimes make fun of those roles.

~~~
rorykoehler
I take it you've never had that weight of expectation? If it were so trivial
everyone would be a billionaire. Deciding what to do and what not to do is no
easy task.

~~~
35bge57dtjku
That's quite a claim. Maybe it's other things preventing people from being
billionaires, like the fact that there are so few CEO positions, for starters.

------
TaylorGood
Thanks for this.

~~~
TaylorGood
Downvoted, only commented as a way to reference this later.

Has HN considered a bookmark or favorites feature like dBforums?

~~~
grzm
HN does have a "favorite" feature. Click on the timestamp of the comment and
you should see a "favorite" link. There's a similar link for submissions.
Favorites can be referenced via your profile page. Or are you thinking of
something other than this?

------
crush-n-spread
Lots of comments here about how to be a successful CEO. We should all be
looking at Elon Musk as the prime example. Work 120 hour work weeks when the
going is tough, 100 hour weeks when the going's good, and if you're just
starting out, spend every waking hour on your product/company.

If you do this, people will tell you you're insane, and you'll eventually
stop. That's why Elon is different, because he cannot stop. I feel that this
alone explains 90% of the CEO question - who can choose to stop and who cannot
choose to stop.

~~~
nefitty
So are you saying this is an inherent quality of certain individuals? If so,
what can we learn from Musk in that case? I hope there are things he does that
I can implement in my life, and that I'm not relegated to wishing I was born
more "Muskian".

~~~
indubitable
I think this is why it's far more important to try to find your own path to
success than to emulate others' paths.

People are inherently different. In the physical realm this is completely self
evident. It's far from controversial to acknowledge that you could train day
in day out for years at a sport and never be even remotely comparable to even
a middling professional in one of those sports. And whilst we try to ignore it
in the mental domains, the same is no doubt true. So ultimately I think the
key to success is to find what you personally do well at and leverage that
into your own path to success. While keeping with the one constant in advice -
the first time you fall, which you will, get up and try again.

