[HN Gopher] My Emotions as a CEO
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My Emotions as a CEO
Author : mooreds
Score : 86 points
Date : 2021-10-09 12:16 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (ryancaldbeck.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (ryancaldbeck.co)
| twelfthnight wrote:
| These (mostly negative) emotional reactions seem pretty
| reasonable for anyone with so much power/responsibility. I'm not
| the first to wonder this, but are there ways to successfully run
| a business without a single CEO taking on all the
| power/responsibility themself?
| jacquesm wrote:
| I've invested twice in Co-CEO managed start-ups. Like
| everything else, it has its pros and its cons, the one was
| decidedly more smooth than the other, but in both cases a
| viable business emerged and both companies are still in
| business (I've exited the one, am still involved in the other,
| which has one member from HN in the management).
| cloche wrote:
| I've worked for a couple single founder businesses (not with OP
| though). I'll never do it again. I think it's much healthier
| when they have someone on equal footing that can tell them when
| they're being unreasonable and going in the wrong direction. As
| a single founder with all the control, it's too easy to just
| dismiss concerns that employees raise. I guess that's where the
| arrogance comes from. Absolute power corrupts and all that...
| dirtypersian wrote:
| Yep, this is exactly why I left my last startup.
|
| Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder%27s_syndrome#
| :~:text=F....
| DizzyDoo wrote:
| Worker co-operation (coops) models [0] exist and can take the
| form of a dozen employees, or scale to really quite enormous
| companies like Mondragon[1].
|
| I've come across lots of them in Europe, and a few where I live
| now in Canada, but I don't know if they're common at all in the
| US?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
| zja wrote:
| America is generally pretty allergic to socialist ideas. The
| tech sector in particular seems to gravitate towards
| libertarian ideologies, idolizing founders as heroes who
| single handedly disrupt entire industries and are rewarded
| with massive wealth.
|
| I'd be really interested to see more product based startups
| follow the coop model, most of the tech coops i've heard of
| are dev shops. I imagine not being able to take VC money is a
| big challenge, and a reason we don't see more tech coops.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| > America is generally pretty allergic to socialist ideas.
|
| I think yes, we often feel allergic to government ownership
| of things (at least that's how I see socialism, which may
| not be how others see it), yet I don't think that's why
| many of us don't like coops, as publicly traded companies
| are owned by many people through the stock markets.
|
| I think what may hinder the rise of coops in the US is
| ironically our allergy to democracy in business. We seem to
| love democracy in governance yet prefer top-down
| authoritarianism in business (and mostly in the military,
| minus the civilian leaders). Most coops I know strongly
| emphasize democratic governance, where all shareholders are
| equal in voting power, and most businesses I know are very
| far from that.
|
| I think the desire for and familiarity with top-down
| governance (which seems like authoritarianism to me) that
| we get in the business world is influencing many of our
| attitudes towards on democracy in governance, as top-down
| can be quicker, more adaptive, more efficient, etc
|
| However, I wonder if the perception of being exploited by
| some of these large companies, especially in the consumer
| tech sector, will lead to a demand for more
| democratic/representative governance, as we see with some
| DAOs and more.
|
| I personally would love to see more coop Clubhouses,
| Facebook, TikToks, etc. Let the users 1) have more decision
| making power on the platform and 2) receive more profits
| from the services.
| zja wrote:
| Very well said! You might find this talk interesting,
| it's about "democracy at work" as a new-ish flavor of
| socialism. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ynbgMKclWWc
| Zababa wrote:
| > yet I don't think that's why many of us don't like
| coops, as publicly traded companies are owned by many
| people through the stock markets.
|
| That's not the same thing. The concept of coops is that
| the people that work in them own them.
| johnebgd wrote:
| Why couldn't you take VC money? The VC would just have more
| shareholders to contend with.
| brianwawok wrote:
| VCs talk to 200 people a month with a single CEO or maybe
| the odd co-CEO. Along you come with a 20 person co-op
| leadership structure. Why would they take that dive? They
| want you to look/act/speak/organize like their previous
| successes. (Which is the same general reason why non-
| white males start at such a giant disadvantage )
| zja wrote:
| The defining feature of a worker coop is that it's owned
| by the workers. That means they can't give shares to
| VC's. I'm sure there's hybrid models where the company is
| only majority owned by workers, but I don't know how
| common they are and I doubt they're very attractive to
| VC's for reasons others have mentioned.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I think one reason it's harder is because typically VCs
| pay more money to have more decision making power and
| many coops are founded on the one member one vote
| principle. So despite how much money they'd contribute,
| they'd have no more say than the average member.
| DizzyDoo wrote:
| My understanding of co-ops, while I haven't experienced
| them first-hand, is that they are still capitalist in
| nature - they are usually profit driven (though not at the
| expense of workers), pay is not equal, and the difference
| is a democratic decision making structure.
| culi wrote:
| I'm not sure how much it applies to tech as an industry, but
| research shows that coops (or, "labor-managed firms") tend to
| last much longer and be more productive than non-coop
| companies as well.
|
| https://www.uk.coop/resources/what-do-we-really-know-
| about-w...
| DizzyDoo wrote:
| Thanks for the link, what an interesting pdf.
|
| What I still don't quite understand about coops is how they
| practically come about? The pdf you linked to says that 84%
| come into being from scratch. If you need to buy some
| mechanical equipment and rent a factory, does everyone who
| joins the coop at the beginning pay into those start-up
| costs? Or is the investment in the coop usually entirely
| from the outside like bank loans? Is there ever a
| distinction between coop members who have invested money
| into the firm, and those who join later that haven't?
| conradev wrote:
| Worker co-ops don't eliminate executive roles, though. They
| just make it so that executives serve at the pleasure of the
| members (and are usually elected in some form). Mondragon has
| a President, who was formerly a Vice President and Managing
| Director. REI, a US-based co-op, has a more complicated
| story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recreational_Equipment,_
| Inc.#G...
|
| They still have hierarchy and pay still scales with position
| in that hierarchy. The ratio of CEO pay to worker pay is
| generally more equitable, but it is still a ratio. I have no
| idea what the work-life balance is like, but running a co-op
| (or a nonprofit, for that matter) still sounds like a
| stressful job to me.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| I'm sorry this person has had such a negative experience of the
| job. I can relate to some of it, but as a former CEO (up to a
| team of 20-30) I've not felt lonely or jealous. Does he really
| think a desire to leave is unique to the c-suite? Apallingly out
| of touch.
|
| In my experience you get what you sign up to take. As CEO of a
| company that's taken tens of millions in funding you a) are
| indepently wealthy b) have other options for fulfilling work c)
| can apply a massive amount of control to your everyday
| circumstances. Don't feel like reading 500 emails a day? Delegate
| more effectively. Feel lonely? Should have made some fucking true
| friends in your life. Feel an unbearable desire to quit? Figure
| it out or, you know, quit. I did.
|
| Founder-CEO is a great privilege of a job and this self-pity
| party is unbecoming of a leader. You don't have to be happy all
| the time but you do have to face the fact you've chosen this life
| again and again over many options most people will never have the
| privilege of having. It's not a life sentence.
| nojito wrote:
| >as a former CEO (up to a team of 20-30) I've not felt lonely
| or jealous
|
| CircleUp is probably 3x as big and C-Level work/responsibility
| grows exponentially as headcount increases.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| That seems unlikely, no? How would Jack Welch ever have been
| about to cope with 10^19 the work as this dude (or me)?
|
| At a certain point it all just ... tops out certainly or we'd
| have no Presidents. Certainly whoever is the CEO at circleup
| has had more responsibility than I have ever had, but
| exponentially more?
|
| I think it's much more likely different people feel stress in
| different ways, and that what we bring to the job influences
| our experience.
|
| Not to paint myself as a stoic in any sense, I can remember
| spells of not being able to sleep for 3 nights in a row out
| of terror and axiety. But when that happens you must find
| mechanisms to keep it from happening again. The pain is
| transient, not intrinsic.
| [deleted]
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Did we read the same article? I didn't interpret it as a pity-
| party at all. I haven't been a CEO, but I have been in upper
| management, and that has been stressful enough for me to know
| that being a CEO is the last thing I could do.
|
| I just thought this post was an honest discussion of one
| person's emotions, and I didn't feel that it was too strong one
| way on the positives or the negatives. If anything I found it
| helpful putting into context some of my own emotions that I
| have in leadership positions.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| Maybe my reading was too coloured by my own emotions and
| experiences with the job, and I apologize if so, but
| continuing my rant I have a real problem with anyone who
| takes very optional and voluntary hardships on and complains
| they're hard. Especially when the problems he openly talks
| about are so in his control. Email, really? Tell me about the
| times your own board tried to oust you or the funerals you
| missed for a biz dev meeting that went nowhere and maybe I'll
| take you seriosly.
|
| It makes me uneccessarily mad to read about sacrifice in
| privilege. CEOs sometimes want to quit the job? How about
| grunts on deployment? My paternal grandfather was a military
| man - wartime general. Never heard him complain but did hear
| a proud story of when he was a platoon commander in the
| jungle. If his platoon happened on a mine field he'd stand
| besides the poor sod tasked with defusing it until the job
| was done. That's leading. That's grit.
|
| Let's have conversations about mental health and sacrifices,
| but let's not pretend san francisco tech entrepreneurs
| leading large successful companies are in a uniquely hard
| place in life.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| If you're leading a company of young, mainly unattached
| folks and don't have other companies depending on your
| product, then yes, it's more like a gold rush where you all
| prosper together and the downside of flying the company
| into a mountain is 'oh, well, we tried and we learned,
| let's move on to the next thing.'
|
| It's a different matter if your company is staffed by
| family breadwinners and you have customers that would have
| serious deletierious consequences if your firm failed. You
| don't even need to fail, just go through a rough patch and
| lay off some the workers you hired and trained, or, fail to
| deliver a project that negatively affects a customer. These
| are nerve-wracking for CEOs that aren't made of the stuff
| that can lead firmly through these situations.
|
| Perhaps the better notion is that startup CEOs that really
| do react poorly to the 'hard stuff' need a plan to move the
| burdensome work to a 'professional CEO' and step into
| Chairman/CTO, or somesuch. Keep the fun, keep the equity,
| offload the hard stuff.
| n4r9 wrote:
| The article didn't come across as a complaint to me, rather
| a description of the emotions they experienced while in
| that role.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| I guess what triggers me is the stressors they describe
| as responsible for those emotions. To me they are
| meaningless compared to things that really should cause
| anxiety in a CEO: am I making payroll this month if deal
| X falls through? Can I land in jail if thing Y turns out
| to be illegal instead of a harmless hustle? If I fizzle
| is my professional life over?
|
| The Hard Thing About Hard Things made the same points as
| the author in much more poignant ways to me, when I read
| it. No current or future CEO should stress about volume
| of email or thoughts of another career as a bartender in
| a tropical island - stress about real problems instead.
| cj wrote:
| > as a former CEO (up to a team of 20-30) I've not felt lonely
| or jealous
|
| Re: loneliness, you must have had a tremendous support network
| of other executives. I find the job rather lonely not because
| I'm not around people but because the people I'm around don't
| understand half the words coming out of my mouth when talking
| about the top 3 work related challenges I'm having at any given
| time.
|
| > Feel lonely? Should have made some fucking true friends in
| your life.
|
| That's just unnecessarily cruel.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| Re loneliness I knew zero other executives or business people
| when I started. I had a great support network of close
| friends and family, but no one I could confide in. What I
| think helped me cope (when I could cope) was keeping front
| and center how privileged I was to have chosen this mountain
| to climb. I've since met people starting startups literally
| in the middle of warzones. Can't complain I've had it too
| rough. Neither has Ryan from the stories which is the point
| of the cruelty.
|
| If he has had it rougher than it seems, let's hear those
| stories! Would make for much better blogging than this.
| cj wrote:
| I fail to see how the legitimacy of someone's suffering or
| emotions is affected by their societal privilege.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| Well not the suffering, you're certainly right there. But
| the internal narrative around that suffering can be
| challenged, and in being challenged lessen the suffering.
| In my experience. Doubly so in public.
| [deleted]
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I always appreciate it when folks write about their humanity, in
| this venue.
|
| Of course, everyone will have their opinion, as to the "validity"
| or whatever, of what people share here, and I can't always say
| that I'm thrilled with what these folks write, when they share
| their humanity, but I'm still glad they do it.
|
| Despite all the technology, infrastructure, money, and culture,
| the basic work unit in technology is always a _human_ , and
| humans are complex, emotional creatures. Our relationships with
| each other, and the teams we build, are what make great product
| and endeavors.
|
| I have nothing to share about, regarding this chap's journey. We
| have had different paths in our lives, and I don't really relate
| too much to this article. I have liked other articles that he's
| written.
| aerosmile wrote:
| I've followed Ryan's writing over the years, especially since our
| careers were on a parallel path throughout most of his time as
| CEO. I've led a company that had a difficult time in achieving a
| PFM and as such everything else was painful. And I was also
| blessed to have a perfect PFM in another company. I think I've
| seen enough of the spectrum to be able to say that Ryan's writing
| is not reflective of the job itself, but more of his perception
| of it, which I am not even going to try to analyze. This is not
| meant as an attack at Ryan, but more as a data point for anyone
| else who is considering becoming a CEO and is feeling discouraged
| from reading too much of Ryan's stuff.
|
| The job has its downsides, and the worst thing that can happen to
| you is 1) be a first-time CEO, 2) have no PFM, and 3) have no
| safety net. If you hit that trifecta, it's not going to be easy.
| But here's the deal - you'll get through it, and you'll come out
| on the other side with a much improved mental model that will
| allow you to be more successful in your next go around. You may
| or may not ever achieve market-level compensation, and you may
| even end up in debt. But it will get easier each time you try, it
| will come the closest to being your own boss, you will learn more
| than doing anything else, and most importantly, you won't turn 70
| and think of yourself as having not taking enough chances in your
| life.
| notreallyhere00 wrote:
| Having had that 1-2-3 combination, they were some of the most
| difficult years of my life.
|
| But the lessons I learned were invaluable and could not have
| been learned any other way.
|
| And - the next thing I started achieved Product Market Fit
| right out the gate.
| aerosmile wrote:
| Edit: sorry for the confusion, "PFM" was meant to say PMF
| (autocorrected and I didn't notice) - product market fit.
| maCDzP wrote:
| What does PFM stand for?
| wombatmobile wrote:
| I right-clicked and Looked It Up
|
| Premiata Forneria Marconi is an Italian progressive rock band
| founded in 1970 and which continues to the present day. They
| were the first Italian group to have success internationally.
| The group recorded five albums with English lyrics between
| 1973 and 1977. During this period they entered both the
| British and American charts.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| I come to HN for the sarcasm
| culi wrote:
| Product Farket Mit
| tarr11 wrote:
| I think he means "Product Market Fit"?
| beberlei wrote:
| product market fit (PMF), the PFM abbreviation are typos i
| believe.
| williamstein wrote:
| It seems like a permutation or typo or autocorrect for
| "product market fit"?
| [deleted]
| dougSF70 wrote:
| Worth reading about what personal and professional challenges
| Ryan Caldbeck faced before leaping in to criticize. He wrote an
| excellent tear down of a destructive board member appointed by
| the VC backer.
| eigengrau5150 wrote:
| Only the weak are lonely. Only the weak seek power over others.
| No wonder CEOs are lonely. This guy needs to man up and accept
| that his feelings don't matter to anybody but him.
| ajb wrote:
| Parent has the following in his profile: "I'm gonna keep
| shitposting until the mods ban me or until HN provides account
| deletion. "
| eigengrau5150 wrote:
| My real name is Andre Linoge. Give me what I want and I'll go
| away.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| The article would be different, or at least I would read it
| differently, if it had been titled
|
| My Emotions
|
| instead of
|
| My Emotions as a CEO
|
| But clearly, the author intends this to be informative about the
| experience of being CEO.
|
| So what is a CEO?
|
| Is it a guy who earns $12 million a year + options at the top of
| a NASDAQ corporation with 15,000 staff?
|
| Or is it a smart guy hired by a founder (or the founder) of an
| underfunded venture with no staff and a long path towards making
| a vulnerable, contested niche pay?
|
| Those are different things, presumably with different emotional
| challenges.
|
| What does it tell us that the author chose an ambiguous title,
| which isn't explicitly clarified in or by the article?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| A sense of inadequacy, jealousy, arrogance and adrenaline are
| likely interrelated.
|
| You don't feel jealous because someone else has something. You
| feel jealous because of what you lack.
|
| Arrogance is often a cover up for self esteem issues. Adrenaline
| suggests a fear that you won't be able to rise to the occasion.
|
| Not everyone will experience that to that degree when in charge.
| Though we do have the saying "It's lonely at the top" so I fully
| believe that part is very much the norm.
| Zababa wrote:
| > Though we do have the saying "It's lonely at the top"
|
| I wonder, is it because it's more lonely at the "top" than at
| the "bottom", or because people expect the "top" to be less
| lonely than the "bottom"?
| [deleted]
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