
What do executives do, anyway? (2019) - wheresvic4
https://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201909
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zamfi
(2019)

Prior discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21088425](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21088425)

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chrisseaton
> An executive with 8,000 indirect reports and 2000 hours of work in a year
> can afford to spend, at most, 15 minutes per year per person in their
> reporting hierarchy... even if they work on nothing else. That job seems
> impossible.

I don't understand this starting point. The job of an executive is not to
micro-manage every transitive report. Who said it was? Where did the author
get that idea from? That's why you have a hierarchy.

~~~
saiya-jin
Its called middle management, the backbone (or bane) of any bigger comnpany.
Guys up there have no clue about average joe the coder/doer/whatever, maybe a
vague view on distribution of teams. Anyway if you don't earn cash to the
company, you are just a necessary cost (which state is to be evaluated often)

~~~
outworlder
> Guys up there have no clue about average joe the coder/doer/whatever

They also don't have the full picture. They have their own agenda, which is
usually taking _more_ managers under them, to inflate their own importance.
All the while paying lip service to the overall company strategy.

When CEOs get frustrated that the wheels are not turning in the right
direction (or fast enough), middle management is usually the reason. Lower
management (and leaf) will be trying to implement whatever distorted message
filtered through the ranks.

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lisper
> At the meeting, the two leads will present the one, correct decision that
> they have agreed upon.

Um... what happens if the two leads can't agree?

I've had this happen to me multiple times in my career: I was one of the "two
leads". My counterpart was an idiot. Completely uninformed and unwilling to
listen to reason, but willing to go to the mat for his own stupid ideas. That
left me with only two options: acquiesce despite my firm belief that doing so
would not be in the best interests of the organization, or break the algorithm
and force the supervisor to make the decision.

Of course, I'm sure my counterpart felt exactly the same way about me.

~~~
exacube
the article goes on to explain that, with a shared authority present, you are
required to work it out with the other tech lead amicable. if you do a poor
job doing that in front of the authority, presumably the authority will
decide, and also scrutinize both of the leads for not being able to cooperate
/ be successful at their job.

~~~
lisper
> with a shared authority present, you are required to work it out with the
> other tech lead amicable

No, that's not what the article says. Re-read the quoted passage:

> At the meeting, the two leads will present the one, correct decision that
> they have agreed upon.

The decision is made _before_ the meeting, _without_ the executive present.

Having the executive mediate the discussion would make a lot of sense, but it
would also make the job a lot harder.

~~~
loopz
This is fiction. In most places highest rank invites for meeting and presents
black box decision, but only if there are no remaining risks and queries.

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ChuckMcM
The biggest challenge when superstar engineers become executives that I've
seen is they need to switch from being the person with all the answers to the
person with all the questions.

Failure to make that switch leads to dysfunctional organizations.

~~~
an_opabinia
Dysfunctional organizations can still make boatloads of money, for a long
time, longer than your functional organization can stay solvent.

Besides, should some 25 year old Mark Zuckerberg out there - the guy who
really is going to take something from zero to billions of dollars - really be
asking questions from (checks notes) the 21 year old Ivy League people he's
hiring? What the hell answers do you expect to hear?

And then when you talk about people with lots of experience, are they going to
take any risks? What kind of answer do you expect? "Sorry Mark, but we tried
that at Friendster 10 years ago." How useful.

I don't really disagree with you. I'm just skeptical of any reductive framing
of what executives do, most of all "Andy Grove's book," because that's a meme
I've heard a lot. And while no one should ever go around crapping on books,
reading is good, Andy Grove isn't going to have anticipated organizational
structures like Valve's, a place where a lot of people are extremely happy and
effective but where all the management books sort of go out the window.

~~~
outworlder
> Besides, should some 25 year old Mark Zuckerberg out there

> the 21 year old Ivy League people he's hiring

4 years is not such a large delta. It's certainly not sufficient to have all
the answers (not even 4 thousand years would). If anything, however brilliant
the 25 year old is, they are just barely old enough to have a functioning
prefrontal cortex.

High level executives are supposed to be making decisions, setting directions
and oiling the machine. They aren't supposed to have any answers. "Decisions"
is the closest you may get. They are not in the trenches, they by definition
know nothing more than the specialized workforce they are hiring.

> like Valve's, a place where a lot of people are extremely happy and
> effective

It's also a small place. And Gabe seems to be the sort of guy who asks for and
takes lots of feedback.

[https://www.ign.com/articles/gabe-newell-opens-up-about-
valv...](https://www.ign.com/articles/gabe-newell-opens-up-about-valves-past-
present-and-unexpected-future-a-ign-first)

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solidasparagus
I wouldn't say that's the right way to look at disagree and commit. It's more:
I think solution A is better and you think solution B is better and we're
going to make sure we communicate why we feel that way, but we both understand
that making a suboptimal decision today and running full speed in that
direction is better than being unable to make a decision or undermining the
execution because someone doesn't agree with the decision.

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mmaunder
Sounds like a recipe for Denethor in Lord of the Rings. Leadership teams at
any level can’t be stewards without opinion or vision or a rationale to
support that vision.

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suyash
My favorite part of this blog was the last paragraph where he created
important distinction between common courtesies and real values. Nice read.

------
hitekker
The CEO of Dropbox rebutted this post the last time it came up:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21100352](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21100352)

My own impression was that the author was trying to justify his lack of
leadership by distorting the definition of leadership advanced by Andy Grove.

