[ben_w]

Agreed. I know that "fudiciary duty" is a thing, but not what it involves. There are laws about accounting standards, but I can't even say what standard accountants need to rech to know those standards. I only found put a year ago that, in the UK, the (director?) of a Limited company can become personally liable for company debts if they trade while insolvent.

Import and export laws? Nope. Which parts of an employment contract are enforceable? Nope. Minimum standards for office temperature, cleanliness, health and safety? Nope. How much unpaid overtime you can make your employees do, and how that intersects with minimum wage rules. Nope.

Copyright, trademark and patent laws I think I get, but I don't know them inside-out.

[ansgri]

All things that you list are very specific domains, you'd have dedicated people responsible for them in even a medium-size corporation. The thing you really need to know, is how to make sure these people do not lie to you and do their work honestly and responsibly. One of the options is having corresponding competence yourself, but that doesn't scale.

Delegation is a black art, that's what I mean, but without really mastering it you cannot manage anything with >10 people, especially in high tech.

[stdbrouw]

But that's not what people mean when they say they could run a Fortune 500 company if given the chance. All of the things you list are things that are easily learned, the bigger question is whether in addition to that knowledge the CEOs of big companies have any particular character traits, unique skills or business insights or not.

[jimbokun]

Why do you think learning all of those things would be "easy"?

[amyjess]

It depends on how you define "easy".

I have a feeling that if I took all the time and energy I've put into studying and working with computers my entire life and chose to put all that time and energy into studying and working with business concepts instead, I'd be able to run a business, possibly even a Fortune 500 one.

Alas I didn't spend all that time and energy on business, so I can't run a Fortune 500 company, but alternate universe me might.

[nubbins]

Those are essentially solved problems for which you don't need to reinvent the wheel and can copy what any successful small or medium business does.

[dom0]

> Copyright, trademark and patent laws I think I get

Probably not :)

Even copyright law that's "simple" on paper gets sooo hairy so fast in practice - just look at all the FOSS licenses :)

[ben_w]

I think I explained myself quite poorly, because I agree with you.

I meant "get" it in the sense that I can tell when I do or don't need a lawyer, rather than my friends and family who moan about Google for (c)-ing a photo of the sky ("They don't own the sky!") or what trademarks and patents are even for ("How did Apple get a patent on putting the letter 'i' in front of every product name?", to paraphrase).

I'm no expert, but I'm not a n00b either [that said, I think the monkey should own the copyright on their selfie, not the camera owner, but that's opinion not law. :)]

The rest if my examples, well… I don't even know enough to know if they are hard or easy. Which should be a good sign that I don't have the skills to run a business in its own right, so I'm not sure why other people are telling me I'm wrong about not being able to.