[austenallred]

[citation needed].

Seriously though, are you an employee at Twitter or Square, or are you basing this statement on the fact that you (presumably someone who doesn't see what's going on within Twitter and Square) only see Jack in interviews, and he tells the same story?

I mean, I'm by no means a big time CEO, but the only contact people outside my company have with what's going on internally are interviews. And when I give interviews I tell the same story probably almost identically, word for word. Why? Because that's the story. It doesn't change interview to interview. You have one story, one vision, one mission, and you talk about it to anyone who asks. That's not surprising.

Internally, if you're not an employee or talking to employees (ideally executives), you pretty much have zero idea what the CEO does day to day.

[jes5199]

I worked at Square when it was relatively small (<100 people) and Jack seemed to only be around for weekly presentations. But! That seems to be normal for CEOs? It's not like their job is actually to play pingpong with software developers all day.

[codingdave]

How much they are around matters much less than whether or not they have set a clear strategy for the company, whether their direct reports have the autonomy and ability to execute on their pieces of the strategy, whether they have built and maintain a culture that keeps the organization productive, and if they are available to their direct reports when needed.

If all those things are true, then they can be in the office as much or little as they want. If one or more of those are missing, then the CEO has work to do.

[jleader]

In my experience at startups, especially as they get past 100 employees or so, if you see the CEO around the office a lot, something is probably wrong. The CEOs where I've worked have usually been off talking to investors, potential partners, large customers, etc. Sure, they show up for all-hands meetings, and they're in the office for a couple weeks at a time sometimes, but at least half their job is externally-facing, explaining the company to the world.