[HN Gopher] The hardest people for founders to hire are so calle...
___________________________________________________________________
The hardest people for founders to hire are so called C-level
executives
Author : ilamont
Score : 152 points
Date : 2022-08-01 20:54 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Can we turn it around and ask what we actually want from a (good)
| C-level. Cos I suspect it's not what most of us imagine.
|
| At some point what we want from C-level is putting in place
| (bespoke) systems that achieve the "strategic" goals -
|
| Is the monthly churn growing? Are you not able to get high touch
| sales to take off? Is the European product not ready?
|
| All of those are the sort of "strategic" things people tend to
| hire CxOs for - but any good analyst can get you 80% of the way
| to identifying the problems, and then you have to pick a
| solution. At that point you are hiring someone for a very
| specific job with a clear roadmap. Maybe you can hire internally
| ?
| [deleted]
| throwaway38475 wrote:
| I work for a YC company called Coinbase and it is absolutely
| terrible here because of the C level execs. They are terrible at
| their jobs and from the inside, the org seems to be falling
| apart. I've noticed that since the layoffs there is no motivation
| anywhere. People are hardly on slack and it takes forever to get
| anything done. I hate blind but it's a constant complaint that no
| one is working anymore.
|
| Seems like Brian was fooled into hiring all these leaders that
| don't understand people or the space but have great credentials.
| As for Brian himself, he is the most uninspiring leader I have
| ever worked under. He is a platitude robot saying nothing more
| than 'Crypto will lead to economic freedom' and 'now is the time
| to build'. Before the crypto crash it seems like the only
| motivator was money, now that that is gone the company is slowly
| spiraling and no one cares. Mostly because the execs don't care,
| the CFO and CPO both cashed out all of their shares during IPO.
| If they don't believe how can we lowly engineers.
|
| A blind comment that really resonated with me and the few others
| I've shared with: https://imgur.com/a/jrA3oCL
|
| Another thing, if Brian reads this he will probably go on another
| twitter rant rather than actually address the company.
| yomkippur wrote:
| at this point I wouldn't be surprised if some of them are
| cooperating with the feds
| throwaway_4ever wrote:
| > He is a platitude robot saying nothing more than 'Crypto will
| lead to economic freedom' and 'now is the time to build'.
| Before the crypto crash it seems like the only motivator was
| money
|
| Yes, that's what it's always been about with coinbase. That's
| why they sold their equity on a traditional finance platform
| for USD $ and why Brian bought a $130m mansion. 10 years later
| what has crypto accomplished besides grifting people out of
| their savings through 3% commissions and scams? Do you know how
| useful Google, or like any other company, was after 10 years?
| 79rsgang wrote:
| Seen it all from start ups to public. It's not every C-Level but
| when one does join it doesn't take long for everyone to know know
| they've clearly failed their way to the top.
|
| It's striking how one will be hired to a non-traditional C-level
| title for a department they have no experience in and run it into
| the ground. I've even witnessed department leads beg not to hire
| one from the start and be fully ignored. I guess the fact they've
| been at the top for so long makes them untouchable?
|
| What's outstanding is how often it happens and how both hiring
| and keeping them around never makes a lick of business sense.
| Even once exposed as incompetent, founders will dig their heals
| in and find any excuse to not bear responsibility of their bad
| hiring decision. They eventually leave on good terms and continue
| the cycle elsewhere.
| ushakov wrote:
| that's what happens when you hire people not based on their
| talent but on nepotism
| DethNinja wrote:
| But does hiring for merit really makes sense at C level?
|
| Ideally a C level executive should have deep connections with
| government/large companies.
|
| This is how entire capitalism functions at the moment.
| Connections make you money, not merit.
|
| Even if you hire the best CEO there is, without connections
| there is no possible way to make money. How do you think
| people get good contracts for their companies?
| tomc1985 wrote:
| These people need to be publicly named and shamed, enough to
| show up as a huge black eye in their Google/due diligence
| results.
|
| I have suffered under a few such C-levels and their
| incompetence is maddening. It is hard not to see the C-level
| social network as one big circle-jerk, and they get to walk
| away scot free. These folks are only worthy of spending the
| rest of their life as a clerk at a gas station, not
| (mis)managing million/billion dollar companies.
| istinetz wrote:
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I have suffered under a few such C-levels and their
| incompetence is maddening._
|
| Preceded by:
|
| _These people need to be publicly named and shamed_
|
| You first.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| This isn't the place, and it needs to be a sudden,
| collective effort.
| samstave wrote:
| emaginniss wrote:
| "named and shamed"
|
| The defamation lawsuits will be overwhelming. They don't even
| need to win, they can just lawyer you into submission. It's
| just like when you end up firing a regular employee for
| cause, the best course is to say nothing so nobody has a
| reason to get litigious.
| bad_asks wrote:
| Lol Bob Smith (CEO of Blue Origin) is the pinnacle example of
| this.
| kache_ wrote:
| Mishires kill
|
| The safest thing to do is not hire anyone
|
| The second safest thing to do is hire your homies
|
| Unfortunately for companies aspiring to become megacorps, hiring
| your homies doesn't scale
| etothepii wrote:
| Unless you network like it's 1999.
| immigrantheart wrote:
| Grifters. Influencers.
| datalopers wrote:
| Hey let's not forget the founders who hire a buddy or two and
| give them C-level titles when they're woefully unqualified for
| that role and proceed forever drag the company down.
| ushakov wrote:
| nepotism at its best
| account-5 wrote:
| Isn't that cronyism? I thought nepotism was family based,
| like trump's appointments.
| mathgeek wrote:
| Nepotism is the favoring of friends and relatives,
| especially with jobs. Cronyism is, specifically, putting
| friends and family in positions of power.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| That happens, but I don't think that's really relevant to pg's
| tweet. I mean, if a founder is willing to hire a buddy and
| deliberately overtitle them, that's easily the fault of the
| founder and, for better or for worse, shouldn't be a mystery if
| things go south.
|
| That's very different from what pg is referring to, where, even
| through all the best of intentions and due diligence of a
| founder, a shitty C level is hired because they excel at
| bullshitting.
| etothepii wrote:
| It depends on the stage of the company. Hiring a buddy early in
| the company's life might make total sense, especially if
| willing to work for primarily sweat equity compensation.
|
| An early joiner will get a grandiose title.
| daenz wrote:
| A lot of anger in the comments here. Not exactly sure who it's
| directed at: the existence of connected people? The founder who
| makes the bad hiring decision? The fact that their compensation
| is so high? All of the above?
|
| Unless you're advocating for capped compensation or removing
| autonomy in who a founder is allowed to hire, if you're angry,
| it's probably a form of jealousy. It's somewhat natural to feel
| jealous at people who don't "work hard enough" (by your
| standards) and yet reap larger rewards than you. Or who have
| seemingly casual lives (by your standards), yet get more
| opportunities. It's also easy to pretend that jealousy is
| actually selfless outrage and claim offense against everyone else
| (for whom your outrage represents).
|
| But the same could likely be said about you, if you talked to the
| right people. Where I used to live, "Go home, tech bro" was
| common graffiti to see. I knew a woman in the beauty industry
| whose partner was in the tech industry. She _resented_ how much
| money that he made because, her words, "she worked harder than
| he did." As if her idea of work was how value should be
| calculated.
| greatpostman wrote:
| No it's just years of watching some average guy make millions
| for literally nothing
| kriro wrote:
| Takeovers and special circumstances aside, "promote, don't hire
| externally" should be way more common and the prefered approach
| (imo). I think there's a three question protocol that should work
| reasonably well.
|
| Q1: Do we actually need this CxO role?
|
| Q2: Who will report to this CxO?
|
| Q3: Why can't we promote from the pool from the answer to Q2
| instead of hireing externally?
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| I wonder if this is also true for founders, but by virtue of
| selection bias "good" founders hiring "bad" executives is more
| common than good executives joining bad founders (because good
| founders' companies last longer and hire more people than bad
| founders)
| e10jc wrote:
| As an employer, I have seen low-performing employees resign
| because they found a senior/management/VP-level title elsewhere,
| and I think "well, good for you, I suppose"... I imagine people
| like this just fail their way up, learning enough jargon along
| the way to impress the next employer.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Yeah, this 100% triggered me. If I'm not careful, I'll spend the
| rest of my morning feeling really angry. Again.
| mattzito wrote:
| I think there's all kinds of problems that intersect to create
| the problems we see with these hires:
|
| - founders, especially first time founders, often have middling
| experience hiring for any role, and zero experience hiring execs.
|
| - the absolute best execs often have no shortage of offers, and
| hence it can be quite hard to identify and attract these people
|
| - founders often don't want to pay what the really good execs are
| worth. Not that I'm even "really good", but there's a number of
| startups where I've been recruited because things are a disaster,
| can't figure out how to scale the business, etc etc, and then
| after speaking with everyone they turn around and offer half a
| percent of the company, and act like they're being generous.
|
| - founders want to hire someone who's the right person for the
| long haul, because of all of the above pains - except that those
| people often are accustomed to two stages ahead of where the
| company is now and may not be prepared for what's required _right
| now_
|
| And then, sure, there are the people who have failed up enough,
| or gotten lucky enough to win the startup lottery, and then
| coasted from there.
|
| But look at it this other way - 50% of engineers are in the
| bottom half in skill and talent. It's just that you do your best
| to optimize for the upper half, and since you're hiring lots of
| them, you trust in the numbers to pay off for you. When you are
| hiring one, and just one, head of sales - the margin of error is
| really thin.
| cgio wrote:
| I guess you comment as an exec but this comment does not help
| make the case. Without being an engineer myself, I would be
| very frustrated with the last paragraph. It uses a
| statistically true fact to make a meaningless argument (how is
| optimising for top 50% different to e.g. optimising for bottom
| 50%?). Furthermore it demonstrates a view of a team of
| engineers as a bag of individual contributors. In a team, skill
| and talent are only one factor in optimising team dynamics. You
| don't trust in numbers, you trust in dynamics and collaboration
| and in people growing within your organisation. I recently
| hired a PhD and a bored junior admin whose most exciting piece
| of work was scripting his boring work away at the same day.
| Also to your core intended argument, you hire an engineer in a
| couple of interviews, an exec would go through an extensive
| round of meetings and interviews and therefore you would
| optimise the process across different dimensions. The margin of
| error should be pretty similar, given fundamentally
| organisations have an underlying risk appetite even if it is
| implicit. The issue is that execs have more experience
| manipulating your perception of risk and therefore you should
| go with your eyes open, because this is part of the skillset
| you are probably looking for anyway.
| ospray wrote:
| Sounds like a strong argument for delaying hiring exces till
| your larger. Unless they have contacts you need to tap.
| tomrod wrote:
| I interpreted it as "execs are investments. Tread
| accordingly."
| swyx wrote:
| have now encountered two C-level execs who came from big names,
| were airdropped into our startup, and then proceeded to
| completely mangle the parts of the company they ran. always takes
| at least a year for people to realize (i didn't realize it myself
| for the first one until AFTER he was fired seemingly out of the
| blue, and then you start to pattern match the subsequent ones. my
| personal reflection is this is a horrendous waste but is part of
| the benefit of being an early employee at a startup, that you get
| to see other pple's costly mistakes while having a lower stake in
| the cost. I didn't know to trust my instincts then, because org
| chart = truth when you are new to the game).
|
| Shreyas Doshi calls this the Incompetent Leader
| (https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1339997380335128576), which i
| will quote below for the twitter allergic (it is a better framing
| than I can ever come up with):
|
| ---
|
| First-time founders, CEOs, and even employees should understand
| the playbook of the Incompetent Leader (IL).
|
| The IL is savvy & charismatic, and excels at 4 things: 1) Feign
| competence 2) Create confusion 3) Buy time 4) Fail up
|
| The IL playbook & what to do about it
|
| The IL's most favorite move is simple: Buy Time
|
| The IL's 2nd most favorite move is: Buy More Time.
|
| After doing this a few times, the IL's masterstroke is: Fail Up.
|
| The IL will repeat this a few times over a 20-30 year career to
| reach "spectacular success"
|
| Here's how it works:
|
| Once upon a time:
|
| IL joins a new company, with much fanfare from the CEO, who
| really wants this to work out.
|
| Remember, the IL is incapable of making a significant, singular
| impact.
|
| IL doesn't want anyone to know this.
|
| So what does IL do?
|
| IL sets the playbook in motion.
|
| Step 1 -
|
| IL: "I don't have the right people. Cannot execute without the
| right team."
|
| CEO: "I guess that's reasonable. Do what you have to."
|
| Result: IL has just bought 6-9 months to go hire org leaders,
| managers, while hiding incompetence behind charisma & confidence.
|
| [after 6-9 months]
|
| Step 2 -
|
| IL: "Have a better team now. Look how well I've hired! But my org
| doesn't have the right structure. Not aligned with new strategy,
| worried execution will suffer."
|
| CEO: "Hmmm... fine, go ahead."
|
| Result: IL has just bought 3 months to plan re-org, 3 more to let
| it settle
|
| [after 6-9 months]
|
| Step 3 -
|
| IL: "Okay, that reorg helped & my people are firing on all
| cylinders. But I don't have enough cross-functional alignment. We
| need a company re-org/Need to bring those functions into my
| org/Need new cross-func leaders"
|
| CEO (pot committed): "Fine, let's do X, Y, Z here"
|
| [after 6 more months]
|
| Step 4 -
|
| IL: "Some of my key people left because of frustration with all
| of this. I need to replenish the gaps. Btw, look at these amazing
| results last quarter!"
|
| CEO to IL: "OK let me think about it"
|
| CEO (thinking): Those results are due to market tailwinds & not
| THAT amazing
|
| [Privately, CEO makes a call to an executive search firm to begin
| finding a replacement for IL]
|
| [At the next CEO/IL 1:1]
|
| CEO: "It's time to part ways"
|
| IL (after expressing some incredulity & outrage): "I understand.
| I want to do what's best for the company. Let's work on a comms
| plan for my departure"
|
| [IL or CEO send an announcement to the company reflecting,
| thanking, looking onward/upward, etc]
|
| Step 5 - (most vital move for IL)
|
| IL (in interview with hot company Foobar): "Here's everything I
| built at previous company. Company grew 70% in my 2 yrs there
| despite all the challenges I faced"
|
| CEO of Foobar: "When can you start?"
|
| [and THAT is how our IL fails up]
|
| THE END
|
| ---
|
| he continues with a "what you should do about it", which if you
| are still reading here at this point go give him a "superfollow"
| ($10/month for his product/executive thoughts, very worth it)
| https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1339997399909994496
| bitwize wrote:
| Sounds like you've met "Action Jack" Barker.
|
| I worked for a place whose former CEO (before I joined)
| basically committed the company to sales contracts it had no
| hope of fulfilling, then gtfo'd before the delivery dates, to
| pump up his CV with "closed so many millions in sales with
| company X".
| jbm wrote:
| While I agree with a lot of what he says, I also think there is
| a bit of wishful thinking when it comes to "world class
| leaders".
|
| Just like you can't hire the top 1% exclusively, your leaders
| won't be top 1%. Chances are they will be somewhere in the
| middle. Creating a "culture" that allows for initiative at
| different parts of the company is going to do a lot more for
| you than rolling the dice on getting exclusively top quality
| leadership.
|
| Re: "Culture": I mean this in the group dynamics sense, not the
| meaningless corporate-speak sense.
| etothepii wrote:
| There are 3 options.
|
| * Fit in
|
| * F-off
|
| * Fight
|
| The primary benefit of F-off is that if you play the game
| correctly you can be well compensated for doing so and maybe
| even get hired back to fix the mess 18 months later.
| setgree wrote:
| You're intentionally paraphrasing the Exit/Voice/Loyalty
| model right
| doctor_eval wrote:
| It's even worse when the IL is the CEO.
| [deleted]
| mgh2 wrote:
| Someone who has never been an IC or has no technical background
| makes me doubt their competence.
| [deleted]
| mikeryan wrote:
| For your CFO, CMO, COO, CHRO?
|
| Most early CXO hires are for the things that CEO's don't want
| to do but now have to be done. They want to hire someone who
| can take stuff completely off their plate and get it done.
|
| Identifying a poor CTO or CPO is pretty straightforward for
| technical founders. It's harder to identify whether your new
| CMO is shitty when they are crafting a marketing strategy
| from scratch.
| lmarcos wrote:
| We had one of those at my previous company! I didn't realize
| until now.
| swyx wrote:
| i'm sorry for the damage caused but also pls do tell
| anonymized version of the pattern/behavior, i am very intent
| on never hiring one of these people
| djbusby wrote:
| IME, these folks are hard to filter out; takes a few
| weeks/months to figure it out. But, because they are
| already somehow a CxO and you hired for CxO, then they'll
| still get considered for their next CxO - cause the short
| stint where their incompetence was detected will be just a
| blip - their previous gig was the fail-up that fools you
| (me, and others I know) and will fool those after you as
| well.
| kodah wrote:
| Are there actual examples of high-ranking engineers transitioning
| into tech company C-Suites? Maybe these kinds of roles shouldn't
| be _careers_ , but something _you do for a period of time_.
| uncassacnu wrote:
| I'm just past the year Mark in being a CTO after a career as an
| engineer / architect. I won't claim to be an amazing exec, but
| I still don't understand how anyone could succeed in this role
| without having significant engineering experience. I approach
| this as "my turn" at playing the executive role - because I
| finally said to myself that there has to be someone who can
| code in the exec team of my next job. I intend for this to be
| my one and only time in a role like this - to do it well just
| requires more time and energy to sustain it for decades.
| [deleted]
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| it happens with CTOs. At many companies, CTO is less of a
| management role and more of "the leader of all of the principal
| engineers and source of innovation for the company". VPE
| reports to CTO and does the administrative side of things, CTO
| sets technical vision. Most other c suite type roles are
| generally bucketed into sales, marketing, operations, and if
| you are particularly unlucky: product, "Information", and human
| resources.
| Bayart wrote:
| Pat Gelsinger, recently. But he's been an executive for a long
| time already. Carmack is a part-time CTO these days.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Internal promotion.
| nabla9 wrote:
| >"I divide my officers into four classes as follows: The clever,
| the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always
| possesses two of these qualities.
|
| >Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General
| Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who
| are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for
| the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the
| mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and
| industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous."
|
| - Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
| ilamont wrote:
| My grandfather used to say "there are two types of people in
| the world: lifters and leaners."
|
| I was skeptical when I first heard it. I still question the
| many special cases or situations that fall somewhere in
| between. That said, the longer I live and work, the more I see
| (or hear of) the leaners ... and their enablers.
| groby_b wrote:
| Indeed. And the worst part, leaning is contagious. At some
| point, good people start wondering why they should lift if
| everybody else is leaning. They either quit, or start
| coasting.
| yomkippur wrote:
| as a clever and lazy person this gives me lot of hope
| vkazanov wrote:
| Now that you've realised it... just relax, they'll promote
| you either way
| [deleted]
| abeppu wrote:
| ... but in the military, it's generally not possible to 'fail
| up' into a similar role in another organization when things
| become uncomfortable. A clever lazy Prussian officer can't
| build out their resume for a couple years and then go work for
| the French, so they have to actually stick around and make
| those difficult decisions. Whereas in tech, it's not just
| possible but normalized to change companies with some
| frequency, and a lazy clever C-level exec may not stay around
| long enough to see the outcome of their difficult decisions.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| There are more than enough positions in the military for
| officers to fail up for decades. They don't usually end up at
| the highest ranks, but it happens. Often the path upwards is
| to be hired by a defense contractor, oil company, financial
| company. Usually it's a reward for getting a specific company
| a nice contract and the promise of good connections/lobbying.
| jordanpg wrote:
| Another aspect of this that I observed more than once is the
| fawning reverence that the managerial class and other middlemen
| seemed to have towards the c-suite.
|
| I remember the excitement surrounding the arrival of new execs,
| including details about their house and fancy cars.
|
| There seems to be a belief that if you've made it to SVP or
| better, your talent and intelligence goes without saying.
|
| My interactions with these folks were limited, but without
| exception, I was far from impressed with any of them.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Henrique De Castro's hiring and firing at Yahoo is one of my best
| examples of this. But $60 million for a year and change of work
| sure is a great way to fail!
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-coo-henrique-de-castro...
| rurp wrote:
| It blows my mind the degree to which
|
| 1. C-level execs are given massive compensation, with the
| justification that a good one is well worth the price.
|
| AND
|
| 2. There's no good objective way to measure C-level performance.
|
| That alone should make people deeply suspicious about these
| compensation packages. On top of that, the best person for a
| given CXO job often just so happens to be a golfing buddy and/or
| have outside business dealings with half the board.
|
| I'm not surprised by ambitous execs grabbing what they can, it's
| what they do after all, but I am pretty disturbed by how many
| people outside of those elite cliques will carry water for them
| and pretend like the C-level hiring market is some sort of
| efficient meritocracy.
| [deleted]
| LukeShu wrote:
| > 2. There's no good objective way to measure C-level
| performance.
|
| > On top of that, the best person for a given CXO job often
| just so happens to be a golfing buddy and/or have outside
| business dealings with half the board.
|
| > C-level hiring market [isn't] some sort of efficient
| meritocracy
|
| Those 3 things aren't contradictory, they each follow from the
| other. In absence of an objective way to measure performance,
| the best thing is "I have experience with this person, and can
| vouch that they're good." And so it totally makes sense that
| this sort of network-based hiring is what we see instead of a
| meritocracy.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I am convinced that we need to move companies from effective
| hierarchical dictatorships to more democratic institutions. A
| CxO should be like an elected politician - representing some
| manifesto that is a coherent (!) package of measures and gets
| appointed maybe by an election amount employees / shareholders.
|
| As such they need to persuade a majority of people who will
| supply the (human / financial) capital that their manifesto is
| the best option. They essential earn their way into the office.
|
| Edit: I am also semi convinced that the hierarchical thing is
| half the problem. Having a single person make "the hard
| decisions" is usually a way to have the wrong decision made
| about 50% of the time. Somehow humanity has found science as
| good means of improving those odds. But for the sort of
| decisions we make in business (very little hard science) then I
| suspect democratic consensus might be a much better way to get
| a good decision.
|
| (no this is not about decision by committee.)
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Playing devil's advocate here.
|
| Maybe being a golfing buddy does qualify for being a good CXO.
| To be a "golfing buddy", you need money and connections.
| Connections are important for that job, and wealth correlates
| with success and good finances, again important. Some of them
| are just born in wealthy families, but this is a positive, not
| a negative: wealthy family often give their kids good
| education, have lots of connections, and are used to being
| leaders. Golfing buddies also need to make good conversation,
| including on business topics, otherwise they won't stay buddies
| for long, again a valuable skill.
|
| Being a golfing buddy certainly isn't an objective criteria,
| but it is not completely worthless, and it is easier to detect
| fakers when you spend a lot of time with them, or at least, it
| requires more effort from the faker. Objective criteria
| typically include past work, and CXOs usually have that too.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| If a CEO or other C-level sets some targets, then you'd think
| they would be held accountable for missing them. But from what
| I've seen, this is very rare. So the board is just as
| responsible for what happens as the CEO.
|
| I have seen cases where the board holds executives accountable,
| and that results in a better company lead by competent
| executives. But that kind of accountability is unusual in small
| companies because the board and executives are often one and
| the same group.
|
| If there's anything I've learned over my career it's that the
| theoretical structure of a company has no inherent relationship
| to reality. If the CEO, chairman and board members are all
| mates then they will pat each other on the back until well
| after the iceberg has ripped a hole in the side of the ship.
| jonbischke wrote:
| One measure of a high-quality C-level performer is the quality
| of their teams. The best C-level people can bring in very high-
| quality managers and individual contributors underneath them.
| Below average C-level people really struggle on this front.
|
| Also, for some C-level roles there are good and objective ways
| to measure performance. For example, for a Chief Revenue
| Officer you have (obviously) revenue. There are a ton of
| confounding variables of course but in general CROs who
| consistently out-perform plan are better than those who
| consistently under-perform plan.
| rxhernandez wrote:
| I've definitely seen CEOs with enormous amounts of success
| (in the companies they led previously) bring in dogshit teams
| to their current company. I've also seen dogshit CEOs bring
| in amazing people.
| koolba wrote:
| It's game theory and asymmetric information at its finest.
| Throw in a healthy dose of survivorship bias, a pinch of appeal
| to authority, and you get a perfect recipe for astronomical out
| of whack compensation packages.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Usually C-level execs is all about connections or where they went
| to university. They are not smarter than folk in the trenches.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Maybe that is the way to hire good ones. Exclude all candidates
| who went to a 'brand' university.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| They do that in government. You just get different cliques.
|
| You hire executives for different reasons. Sometimes loyalty
| or incompetence to a degree is valuable as the person isn't a
| threat. Other times people are hired to drive a particular
| agenda and can be relied upon to do that because they are too
| dumb to do otherwise. And sometimes they are sacrificial
| lambs.
| swyx wrote:
| as a fellow skeptic, this oversteps. your mistake is that smart
| = value. connections do have value, as does experience and
| other leadership qualities than domain expertise. your
| criticisms will be stronger if you recognize this.
| beambot wrote:
| Spoke to the founder / CEO of a wildly successful now-public
| (former startup) company about his exec-level hires. He confided
| that 1/3 of executives were net positive (i.e. should retain),
| 1/3 were net neutral (i.e. should be fired) and 1/3 were net
| negative (i.e. separate ASAP!).
|
| Gentleman also indicated that his peers on similar trajectories
| were even _less_ successful at exec hiring. So there 's a point
| of anecdata for you: "Good" at exec hiring might just be a 33%
| success rate. YMMV.
| namecheapTA wrote:
| Ive always wondered why executives get such generous compensation
| packages. Are most people unwilling to take these roles st
| "pretty damn good" incentives packages, so companies are forced
| to give "crazy lucrative" incentive packages? Are there really
| VPs that would pass up a CEO position if it didn't come with a 25
| million golden parachute clause? If it was only 5 million, they
| walk?
| somishere wrote:
| No doubt. Any number of c-levels I have worked with are prolific
| climbers whose numero uno skill is Network. Lords of LinkedIn.
| The kind of people who will say and do literally anything to keep
| their fingernails dug deep. Their actions appear to align with
| the needs of a company, so most are tolerated if not celebrated.
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