[phakding]

Never understood people's infatuation with reading CEO biographies. I've read a few and never found anything in it that could relate to. May be I am not meant to be one of those people. Even if I worked hard, got in at work at 5 am every day, I don't think I could go from being a lowely team lead to cto or CEO of a multi billion dollar corporation. I don't think it just works that way. I could be very wrong, but that's my experience.

[manigandham]

You're focused on the actions rather than the results. Common mistake.

People become leaders by creating and commanding change that positively affects the company. Land a major deal or create a new product line that doubles revenue? You're getting to the top.

Working harder than the others is part of this process, and sometimes that means you come in at 5am, but it's not a requirement nor is it something that anyone in that position actually focuses on as more than just a means to an end.

[CalRobert]

I remember when I was early in my career and fixed an enormous flaw in ad allocation for a large online publisher. It led to easily over a million extra in revenue that year.

My boss was delighted to take credit for it while also ensuring I stayed on message that it wasn't actually a result of him screwing up and being generally incompetent. I eventually figured I had nothing to lose and talked to his boss (politely of course) just saying how successful that had been and that I had plenty of other ideas for improvement. It was not well received.

But I hear my old boss is doing quite well these days.

[gaius]

It led to easily over a million extra in revenue that year. My boss was delighted to take credit for it

Had a similar experience once. A small change generated $2m/year extra revenue. That amount just about covered the bonuses of two execs while I got the standard 3% raise. Not the only reason, but I left shortly afterwards.

[C1sc0cat]

I recall when I did an early web project in 94 using DSDM (agile) and two of use delivered in a month what another team had quoted 2 years for I got a £25 voucher :-)

I put it together with the one I had from my prior project and brought a rio diamond mp3 player.

[manigandham]

Dishonest people will be a constant obstacle, but communication is also important so others know what your contribution is. There can't be progress without measurement.

Being accurate and quantifiable without becoming confrontational is an art though, but ultimately necessary. Going over people can often lead to worse results. Eventually the truth does come out but whether it's worth the time and effort is up to you.

[CalRobert]

I had another offer lined up when I decided to chat with the boss' boss. It went about how I expected, I took the offer, and learned a good deal about how business works in the process.

Communication is important - very important - but it's also often what people focus on when the reality is just a bigger pain in the ass ("so and so is a selfish twit who takes credit for others' work" is much harder to say than "we need to address communication issues between departments")

[manigandham]

I think that's an issue both in communications and in handling people.

For example, did you have to take credit for that particular situation? What was the true downside of your boss taking credit? Why not cover for him and gain the ally? Build the relationship and you'll often find that it pays back in multiples.

Business is 99% about relationships. The only way you can get what you want is by helping others get what they want.

[justaguyhere]

I don't get it - his boss took credit for his work, likely without his consent or even knowledge (I'd guess he came to know after his boss took credit). And yet, you want him to cover for his boss? He also mentioned his boss was incompetent. How can you trust such a person to watch out for you, even if you let it go?

[castlecrasher2]

Relationships are often more important than the right solution.

[lotsofpulp]

>Eventually the truth does come out

Why does the truth eventually come out? Or is this an assumption?

[manigandham]

Because performance is unlikely to be repeated and at some point the person who is wrongly taking credit will not be able to perform, but this can take days or decades depending on the organization.

[CalRobert]

Decades? Are you kidding? Nobody's got time for that. Least of all people like myself who started in 2008 when the economy was utter garbage.

If you don't manage to build a decent career/salary/position by your mid-thirties in tech you're quite likely screwed (though before I'm too depressing, I understand there are counterexamples here on HN). Waiting a year or two for recognition is career suicide.

[mooreds]

And if it takes decades, well, their career is made.

[C1sc0cat]

Or they find a scapegoat

[albertgoeswoof]

Did your boss hire you? Did your boss ask you to look at it?

[rfeather]

The boss could very easily at least make it known which engineer did the good work to fix it. If that isn't standard practice, something is seriously wrong. I make it a goal to be clear about who did the work when talking about something my team accomplished, even if I had the idea.

[CalRobert]

No, and no.

[dagw]

Land a major deal or create a new product line that doubles revenue? You're getting to the top.

Be in charge of the department/team that "lands a major deal or create a new product line that doubles revenue" and you're on your way to the top. Being the person who was in the office until 3 am working out the final details of that deal or fixing the show stopping bugs that let you actually launch the product won't get you anywhere.

[manigandham]

But that is your job, is it not? What is wrong with the person in charge of the entire department being recognized for meeting the goal? Are they not working hard in their position? What did they do before their current position and what is stopping you from getting to theirs?

There's a tendency to minimize the work by others because we don't have the same perspective, but it's rarely ever accurate. Or helpful.

[dagw]

What is wrong with the person in charge of the entire department being recognized for meeting the goal?

If they played a material role in meeting the goals then nothing. The question is so much about who is getting recognized as who isn't getting recognized. If you want to get recognized and get ahead then simply putting your head down and doing hard work isn't going to get you there.

[termie]

That would seem to depend on the leadership. You might get the leader’s former job.

[village-idiot]

Depends on the company, and a few other details.

Smart companies reward those workers, dumb ones often do not. This naturally pushes some of the smart and self motivated talent towards organizations where they will be rewarded.

The one other exception is personality. The toxic person who works until 3am will rarely if ever get rewarded, because people judge more on the toxicity than anything else.

[a_imho]

Land a major deal or create a new product line that doubles revenue? You're getting to the top.

From my experience this does not happen at all. Not to underclass developers at least.

[manigandham]

At all? I don't know what you mean by "underclass" developers but it is common to see many devs who spearhead projects get higher titles and progress faster. There are many such examples just in SV companies.

Part of it is making sure contributions are measured and noticed. People can't act on what they don't know.

[theshadowknows]

I started out at my company building HTML emails. I started seeing places things could get better. Better code base so I built it. More sophisticated tooling and build chain so I built it. Problems with the Econ site so I helped find and fix them. Possible places to integrate and become more efficient so I helped build them. 3 years in, 3 raises (I’ve more than doubled my starting salary) and 3 promotions now I’m a Systems Architect. I recently presented to the owner of our parent company and (feel at least) that I’m valued and make real contributions. I work on big projects and am seen as a leader. So it can happen.

[lukeholder]

That's great and I am in no way diminishing your achievements; but a work of caution for others reading too:

It's most likely that you were severely underpaid in the first place, the raises have just slowly brought you up to industry standard, just spread over 3 years.

Your title increase is also great, but keep in mind, having you feel like you are a leader is also a great retention tool for you to keep working for them, producing good work.

I recommend looking in the marketplace for a new job to really see where you can be in your 4+ years. Don't feel like they have been so good to you that you couldn't increase your salary again by 30% by switching employers.

[theshadowknows]

That’s sobering but good advice. It’s easy to fall into the “hey, they do care” trap just for some more money. Good advice also on looking into other places in the same industry - I’m still 3-5% too low for median!

[CalRobert]

"it is common to see many devs who spearhead projects get higher titles and progress faster"

True, but if we're going with anecdata I'd point out that it's also common to see devs (and managers) who are taller get higher titles and progress faster too. My own experience is that the correlation is at least as strong as that with getting stuff done.

[a_imho]

I mean the blue collars sitting with other developers at lunch. We can pretend there is a meritocracy out there, but that's simply not true.

Sure, in theory it might be possible to progress as a developer but in practice the roi of putting in enormous effort is simply laughable compared to the alternatives. A few percent raise realistically. Getting to the top? Not a chance.

[manigandham]

Blue collar (in the US) refers to manual labor positions, not software developers.

There are a rare few who are extremely talented and productive individual contributors but most are not, so try to maximize output by working with others. Even small teams have managed to make big impacts in massive companies so I reject the notion that you can't do anything.

But regardless, many people have gotten very high up in many organizations through persistence and patience. It's not easy, and each level will get harder because you have more intense competition for fewer slots, but saying "not a chance" goes directly against the fact that many have done just that.

[village-idiot]

It’s absolutely not a true meritocracy, that’s true.

But if you’re claiming that individual contributor devs never get promoted for good work, that’s just clearly and utterly wrong.

[a_imho]

I claim no one gets to the top for being a hard working developer.

Also claim quality engineering is only loosely correlated with advancement, it is one of the less efficient ways to secure a promotion/raise. In fact, managers often have no idea who is doing a good job.

[C1sc0cat]

By definition developers etc are "professional" grades.

Unfortunately those who are the first in their family to go to uni and go into a professional job don't always get the support and informal knowledge passed to them.

One example would be read a proper newspaper - I can recall when being asked which newspaper you read was a common interview Q in the UK

[SuoDuanDao]

I would disagree and say that Elon Musk has repeatedly cited working twice as hard as everyone else as the key to his success. But the trick he seems to be following is that if you work flat-out on difficult problems until exhaustion, you spend a lot of time in flow state and consequently learn a lot faster than someone who isn't pushing themselves.

[manigandham]

I'm not sure what you disagree with, since it seems to fit with that I'm saying. Elon doesn't focus on the work, he focuses on the results. The effort he puts in is just what's necessary to meet those ambitious goals.

Waking up at 5am because other people are doing it won't get magically get you anywhere. However when you focus on achieving similar goals, you'll probably find yourself getting up at 5am too.

[gph]

Anecdata. There were undoubtedly many other engineers working just as hard as Musk at other startups that never turned into Paypal.

You can credit him and his cohorts for having the foresight to work on products/services that turned out to be winners, especially given that he's followed that success with other potentially successful ventures. But I don't buy that work alone got Musk where he is.

[jjoonathan]

Same appeal as any other type of cargo-culting: it's a lot easier to get up at 5am, shake hands firmly, and dress for success than it is to spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct.

[sonnyblarney]

" it's a lot easier to get up at 5am, shake hands firmly, and dress for success"

Let's not be superfluous. Being a CEO is hard, even the 5 am rising and 'hand shaking' parts.

[Kurtz79]

I appreciate that the work is hard, what I cannot come to terms with is the apparent and total lack of accountability of the role (speaking about big-company CEOs).

Yes, a "bad" CEO will be fired, meaning that he will pocket a fat severance package and he will be able to try again in another company with almost no stigma attached.

Even if he did it so badly making himself unhireable for similar positions, he will have already earned more money that most people (even with professional jobs) see in their lifetimes.

"With great power comes great responsibility" seems not to apply to CEOs, more like "the house always wins".

[sonnyblarney]

Most CEO's don't do 'bad' as in illegal stuff, this is very rare. If they do really bad stuff their equity disintegrates.

The reason the golden parachutes exist is because CEO is likely going to be 'the end of the career' for most. There are so many reasons to get fired and it will probably happen. After that, there's not much else.

Nobody in their right mind would be a 'Big Co CEO' without some kinds of rewards even on the downside - many of these folks can make quite a lot of money in some other C-level position and do just fine right there. Why put your head on the chopping block?

You might also ask the question why athletes are paid gazillions for doing something fun, that they enjoy that comes with zero responsibility basically, and can often do very well even if they don't perform, although usually that's not the case.

And FYI most CEO's don't make gazillions of dollars, that's just what we see in the news.

[C1sc0cat]

Not realy don't do what the trendy thing is in the city and any C level might get pushed out.

on example was the campaign against a former BT CFO would not would print shares to go on a buying spree - like Vodaphone was doing

[coldtea]

>Being a CEO is hard

Much easier than many other jobs, from mining and nursing to jobs that single mothers do in 2 shifts.

And with much more perks, respect, personal influence, and earnings...

[manigandham]

It's all relative. Someone in life always has it worse than you and these positions just cant be compared like this in any productive discussion.

Being a CEO doesn't mean you're the boss. It means you serve everyone, from employees to customers to shareholders, and are responsible for every single thing that happens. If someone doesn't do well, it's your fault. And being responsible for others livelihoods with every decision you make is definitely not easy.

[coldtea]

>Being a CEO doesn't mean you're the boss. It means you serve everyone, from employees to customers to shareholders, and are responsible for every single thing that happens.

Golden parachutes ensure that this responsibility means almost nothing. CEOs have driven whole companies to the ground, losing the jobs of thousands, and got their fat check in the end. Heck, even white collar crime goes largely unpunished.

[jjoonathan]

The hard parts are "getting to the top" and "staying there," not performing the duties.

I am sure the duties are "hard" in an absolute sense, but not relative to pay and accountability, not when compared to other jobs that are hard in an absolute sense, as you point out.

[enraged_camel]

>>Being a CEO is hard

Not necessarily. It completely depends on the company and the industry.

[sonnyblarney]

Yeah, some are harder than others but I can't think of a CEO job that isn't hard. It's always fraught with political risk, changing times, etc. etc.. From the 'inside' we might think it looks easy, we get a paycheque, it's all hunky-dory ... but from that top spot it's almost always hard.

[tomgp]

How hard is it really though?

If someone said to me: "you can either work in an Amazon warehouse (either shift 7.00am-5.30pm or 5.45pm-4.15am) or be the CEO of Amazon but you're going to get paid the same whichever you choose" I know which I'd do.

[larrywright]

Whether a job is hard or not depends on more than just how many hours you work and the physical aspect. Which of those jobs is more stressful? CEO, hands down. The decisions you make as a warehouse worker don’t matter all that much - if you make a bad one, the impact of that decision won’t be felt far. If the CEO makes a bad decision, it could lead to his removal, the failure of the company, huge financial losses, people losing their jobs. Just because something isn’t physically demanding doesn’t mean it’s not demanding.

[sonnyblarney]

You would be a reliable stock picker, surely, but you'd also run Amazon into the ground, probably.

I think you are misinterpreting what 'hard' means.

[coldtea]

>but I can't think of a CEO job that isn't hard. It's always fraught with political risk, changing times, etc. etc

That makes it volatile, not hard. And the stakes are much less for volatility when you already have several cool million in the bank...

[sonnyblarney]

No, it makes it hard.

The CEO of an Ambulance company I know has about 500 staff, he's been doing it for 25 years, it all seems like a smooth operation but they're constantly facing issues. Labour and training problems, international actors that won't pay and their governments won't help, shipping problems, supply chain problems. Liability issues. IP issues with some special things they do. Orders come in batches, they might have a down year and possibly have to play people off. And I'm not even getting into the very basics of product development, financing the working capital i.e. the regular stuff employees do.

People who think CEO's just show up and wear suits and have meetings, and kiss up to the board ... I don't think have any exposure to what the job entails.

[mikeash]

I’m sure it’s hard if you’re a normal person with human feelings and take seriously your responsibility to your employees and shareholders.

If you can avoid that, it must be a great job. Massive pay, no labor, people do what you say, and if you screw up the politics and get fired you’re still set for life.

The implications of this are not great.

[gitgud]

Well, regardless of the industry. Most people would consider the tasks of:

-leading a company

-dealing with finances

-constantly making important decisions

As a hard job.

[gaius]

constantly making important decisions

This does not explain how CEOs such as Fiorina and Elop can inject themselves into established companies, run them into the ground, and still walk away with lavish rewards. They are in a completely different category than ordinary Workers.

[coldtea]

Hard to get right is different than hard to do (physiologically, in the way it affects the mind and the body).

And even hard to get right matters little if you have a golden parachute (as many CEOs do). You can drive a company (or an entire sector) to the ground and still get your nice bonus.

[CaptainZapp]

I hope that any company worth its salt has a CFO to deal with finances.

Not that the CEO should be completely out of the loop (she has to sign off, after all).

But if a CEO is dealing with nitty, gritty details if finances there's a severe delegation issue at best and a detail obsessed control-freak at worst.

[sonnyblarney]

No, there are many cases where the CEO will be involved in financial issues, especially where it will affect the company as a whole.

A European company with major cash holdings may want to diversify currency, but that could be seen as speculative. The working capital requirements and details of the revolving loans they have from the bank. The list goes on.

[gitgud]

True, I was mainly referring to making decisions with company money, like how much to invest in resources and development. Not managing the accounting details.

[TheOtherHobbes]

A stable company with good people will run itself. There may be execution issues, but the good people should be able to handle those.

The value-adds from a good CEO are outstanding strategy, positive corporate brand creation, and investor/shareholder relationship management.

The first two aren't hard in the bureaucratic sense, but in the creative sense. A lot of CEOs are terrible at them - see the long list of companies run into the ground by very poor decisions.

The last one is helped a lot by having the correct class background. It's nightmarishly hard for outsiders, and can be anywhere from not hard at all to equally nightmarish for insiders.

[dx034]

Unless your company is small, being a CEO is hard. Knowing about all projects and developments in the company (often several hundred projects and initiatives) and deciding on which opportunities to take is not an easy job.

[Cthulhu_]

Even when your company is small. I mean just the emotional pressure alone, you're still responsible for the well-being of however many employees you have, in addition to your own.

No wonder a lot of top level executives are psychopaths, the emotional detachment must really help.

[toomuchtodo]

> spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct.

Or be born into money. No amount of self-help is going to tilt the scale towards that.

[apatters]

> spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct.

> Or be born into money. No amount of self-help is going to tilt the scale towards that.

While there are undoubtedly success stories which resemble both of these caricatures, I think they're in the minority. I can't say I'm hobnobbing with the Forbes billionaires list but I have personal relationships with many people who built successful businesses. Betting on a unique opportunity is often an amplifier, so is starting in a good place in terms of money/family. But what they all have in common is they focused religiously on the top line, they didn't fuck up the bottom line, and they worked very hard.

[bicubic]

You can't bet on an opportunity if you don't have any money to bet. I've lost count of how many ambitious and talented people I know who had ideas they wanted to bet on, but couldn't because of lack of disposable funds.

Having the resources to take risks is the number one factor to succeeding, I think. Being able to identify good opportunities comes after that.

[ryandrake]

And a lot of these people have the resources to keep betting after they fail. I recall someone I know who failed 4 businesses, falling back to his rich family after each try while he cooked up the next one. Eventually hit the jackpot on the fifth one and acted as though he was a self-made genius.

Baseball is easy when you have unlimited at-bats.

[stephengillie]

...born on 3rd base, having grown up thinking she had hit a triple... - various, 2013

[apatters]

Even if you have no money you can bet your personal time and effort.

I agree that having financial resources is a huge leg up, but I don't believe it's mandatory. My beliefs are formed from personal experience. I came from a working class family that lived below the poverty line. My parents kicked me out at 18 with a warning that if I ever wanted to come back I'd better be ready to pay them rent. (Resolved that I would never take them up on that offer, never did.) When I started my business I had $250 in the bank and no idea how I was going to pay the next month's rent.

For years I failed and I sacrificed where I had to. I worked long hours at terrible rates, I didn't spend a dollar more than necessary to survive, I gave up on my hope of saving and buying property, I neglected my health, I gave up on my hope of finding a partner and starting a family because women aren't interested in a nerd who has nothing to his name except dreams.

These are the sacrifices you can make if you aren't born into wealth but you want to achieve it. Some people absolutely have success handed to them. They have a safety net which allows them to fail until they succeed. For the rest of us, you sacrifice time, energy, opportunity, and health.

It took years but it worked, one day I hit on a great business and it all turned around.

Being broke certainly limits the type of opportunity you can invest in, but there's always something.

[schnitzelstoat]

> Being broke certainly limits the type of opportunity you can invest in, but there's always something.

Always? It's not a law of physics...

[taurath]

I’ll add - “they had the privilege of being able to focus their attention and not be harmed for it”.

[white-flame]

In betting on opportunity, often times they have everything riding on it.

Where does the "harm" you talk about come from? Usually it's because there are other responsibilities you're engaged with. If you literally give everything else up to focus on one thing, these barbs aren't in your life. I'm talking forgoing rent to crash with family/friends, eating ramen, selling/getting rid of your things, live on credit cards, etc, and have a 24/7 focus that keeps you going.

You'd be surprised how much that frees you from the immediate "harm" you describe, but you also have nothing to fall back on, because you pretty much have nothing else anymore than your pursuit, and can be amassing enormous debt (financial and otherwise). It's a huge amortized, pushed-forward harm in the hopes that the gamble pays off. For many, it doesn't.

[devdas]

That sounds like a fairly large financial privilege to me. If you are working two jobs to just get enough food to survive, and your friends are in a similar situation, you don't have that opportunity or ability to take risks.

[taurath]

> You'd be surprised how much that frees you from the immediate "harm" you describe, but you also have nothing to fall back on..

All the things you described doing are the fallback options - you have to have a family and friends, things to sell, credit to burn. Even then, family or friends have less patience to carry you when you’re taking a moonshot unless they also have a lot they can fall back on.

[manigandham]

That's a very complicated situation. People, especially when young, have incredible freedom and really don't need much at all to survive. As they get older, 95% of the responsibilities they take on is their own doing.

That's not a judgement on what they choose, but many times the "lack of privilege" is really they because they made different choices.

[jhowell]

Or personal health outcomes in themselves or people they care about. As we get older this should not be understated and bears out in personal bankruptcy applications. Good health is the ultimate privilege. Many factors that determine good health are rooted in real privilege (safe streets, clean water, quality diet, free from sexual abuse, etc.)

[louprado]

Nearly every self-help book mentions the importance of goal setting. It is important even for those with a pedigree and born into wealth (I recognize not every student in this study was born into wealth but the median Harvard family earns at least 3 times the national average).

From https://sidsavara.com/why-3-of-harvard-mbas-make-ten-times-a...

“Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” In 1979, interviewers asked new graduates from the Harvard’s MBA Program and found that :

    84% had no specific goals at all
    13% had goals but they were not committed to paper
    3% had clear, written goals and plans to accomplish them

In 1989, the interviewers again interviewed the graduates of that class. You can guess the results:

The 13% of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all.

Even more staggering – the three percent who had clear, written goals were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent put together.

Edit: I had often heard of this study and just pasted the first reference I found. I would delete this post, if I could, as its credibility is questionable. Thanks femto.

[femto]

Myth, as referred to in an update to the link you provided: https://sidsavara.com/fact-or-fiction-the-truth-about-the-ha...

Though it's claimed that the myth did prompt an actual study (not peer reviewed?)

https://sidsavara.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/researchsum...

Which claims to support a fuzzier notion that writing things down helps achieve a goal.

[PhasmaFelis]

Bo Burnham on getting into showbiz: "Don't take advice from guys like me who've gotten very lucky. Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner saying 'Liquidize your assets! Buy Powerball tickets! It works!'"

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-JgG0ECp2U)

[UpshotKnothole]

Ah Taylor Swift, she didn’t really win the lottery though, or if she did, she was able to start off buying a loooooot of tickets. Her father worked for Merril Lynch, from three generations of bank presidents. Her mother worked in finance. When she was 14 her father moved the family to Nashville and worked for Merril Lynch there, and invested in a record label called Big Machine to the tune of $120,000. This was the company that first signed her.

She grew up rich, with the freedom to pursue her passion from the age of 10, when her mother would take her to karaoke contests. The ability to up stakes and move to Nashville, to have your father buy your way into a record label... well... it doesn’t overshadow her natural ability, but it helps to explain how she was able to leverage it so effectively.

[phakding]

You probably misunderstood the post you replied to.

[andrewaylett]

Even with all those advantages, success isn't guaranteed. I think you're reinforcing the parent's point, which I read that Taylor Swift was given the opportunity to follow her dreams and that worked out really well for her; that doesn't make it good advice for other people to follow, especially if they don't have the advantages she had.

[tomnipotent]

> She grew up rich

Exactly - she won the lottery being born into a rich white family in the U.S.

[UpshotKnothole]

She won more lotteries than that. She won the lottery of being born rich, white, and connected. And in a country like the US. She won the lottery of being beautiful, of having an excellent voice and musical talent, of having parents willing to use their money and power to further her career of choice. She won the lottery of not having any crippling mental illnesses or learning disabilities, of not being sexually assaulted, and more lotteries besides.

But Bo Burnham’s quote really isn’t about that, he’s talking about getting lucky and having your career take off. The truth is that many many lotteries typically need to be won before you can even enter that lottery. My point was that Taylor Swift didn’t just “take a chance” on music, she used all of her existing wins to stack the deck in her favor. If you look at a lot of CEO’s the same is true of them, and it’s not just the luck of their career taking off, but the luck of ever being in a position to have that happen.

[manigandham]

There is nothing wrong with leveraging your opportunities. Most people don't even do that and would be surprised at just how far they can get if they did.

[Aeolun]

I’m sure if you are born just right, things will start looking up for you soon.

[jiveturkey]

Interesting perspective. Is it your belief that people read these as how-to or self-help books?

I enjoy reading them the same way I enjoy learning from my co-worker's habits. I take what matters to me and throw away the rest. I'm always trying to improve how I do my current job. It's not enough to have an open mind about work habits / techniques, one has to actively seek out new information.

Also it's usually an interesting look into someone else's life, at times even fascinating.

[ericdykstra]

Biographies can be interesting, but books that extrapolate directives from case studies of winners are totally useless. If 8 of the top 10 CEOs do x, you can be sure it will be reported in that kind of book, even if 999 of the bottom 1000 failed business leaders do the same thing.

There are tons of these books, and the only lesson they teach is how often people fall for the trap of survivorship bias.

[i_made_a_booboo]

bingo

[bendotero]

They are often sold as self-improvement books. I picked up a "wise quotes from CEOs" book thinking it'd have some gems as well. Just made realize that most of the people writing and saying these things were grossly out of touch with the people they direct.

[phakding]

> Interesting perspective. Is it your belief that people read these as how-to or self-help books?

My friends and acquitances definitely read these books to glean some sort of inspiration/hidden jem that would start them on path to riches.

My life has no parallel to lives of these people and there's nothing I could copy.

It's my opinion that the odds of me being a CEO of a huge Corp are same as a person who is homeless for years going through college and getting a job making six figures.

[throwaway82729]

I don't think it's helpful to copy what they do as CEO. I look for what they did in their lowest paying job and how they changed as they progressed in their careers. Of course, very few autobiographies cover this.

[ksdale]

I think this is quite insightful. There was a post on here a while ago about William Faulkner being an absolutely atrocious postmaster when he was in college. Of course, a lot of artists tend to have a more meandering paths than a lot of CEOs, but his habits as a postmaster were probably just as important to his writing career as his later habits.

This may be more applicable to artists, but my own take is that a lot of people would be surprised at how much a lot of really successful people looked like "losers" for a significant part of their early lives, due to them living in their own world and not working hard enough on anything they didn't care about because they spent all their time thinking about the one thing they really cared about.

[snaky]

It depends.

> Faggin: Well, for the timing of the product out, that was put three-and-a-half months of my life at 80 hours a week doing the layout. I mean, that was the only way I could solve that challenge. We couldn’t find a layout draftsman. They weren’t experienced enough or fast enough. And that was the absolute, the limiting time in terms of getting the product out. Because the design, Shima pretty much was doing it all the time it was allotted, but the layout was just not getting done fast enough. And so that’s why I had to do it. You know, a CEO doing layout draftsman job was not something that would be normal, but that’s what I had to do, and I did it. So that’s how I solved that problem. And that certainly saved many, many, many months for the project. As I said, I did two-thirds to three-quarters of the chip drawing it myself.

http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_Histo...

[PhilWright]

Great point. Telling us how the CEO operates day to day now when they are the finished product is not helpful in understanding how they became that person. A step by step description of their career would be more useful. How did they get every promotion, how much was luck by being in the right place and how much from hard work and talent. What were the thinking and strategies they used along the way.

[MetalGuru]

Have you found any source for this kind of information. Sometimes I’ll look over the work histories of founders LinkedIn, but employment history is pretty superficial information.

[bjelkeman-again]

I think it is because it is fairly mundane. Hard work and a dose of good luck.

[internet555]

It seems like such a dull choice of reading material. I could read about poetry, a math book, a biography of someone at the level of an actual historical figure, a great religious work, or even just the news. But instead I’m going to read about some guy who sold database software or ran a printing company.

[matwood]

Why do you think that you couldn't become the CTO? Serious question. What qualities are you lacking?

[phakding]

Well I don't even know what a cto does. I have been in many meetings with them, but besides making high level decisions and asking for status, I don't know what they do.

Besides I was born in poverty and needed lot of efforts to be able to socialize with people born upper middle class. I can only imagine what else I need to learn to socialize within upper echelons. I can't explain it to you fully.

Thanks for asking though, I never thought through this before.

[pandapower2]

>I don't know what they do.

In my experience all C level executives do a very good job of seeming like they know what they are doing. That seems to be a huge part of the job. Seeming like you know what you are doing, seeming like you know what is going to happen in the future (despite that being fundamentally unknowable) and being vaguely intimidating.

Beyond that they select from the set of possible projects that could be undertaken ie create a new product, overhaul some existing system, lay off a bunch of people etc etc. Having made that selection from the options put in front of them their reputation improves if the project goes well (or at least looks like it did). Their reputation takes a hit if the project goes badly.

They may have little or nothing to do with the project execution upon which their career rides. It seems like a bizarre job in that regard. Decide on a high level course of action then wait 6+ months to see if you will be considered a genius or an idiot. During that time your involvement is limited to periodically listening to status updates while looking stern.

[dasil003]

C-suite is about setting the vision and aligning teams and departments. It’s anything but choosing from presented choices and waiting months on end for results; to the contrary it is constant evaluation and communication to steer the ship as well as possible. You are right that projecting confidence is important, but that’s not the main job by a long shot.

[bryanrasmussen]

I agree that is what it looks like from the outside to people who have no experience at it, but I doubt that is what it looks like at all from the inside. Just as from the outside a programmer might look like a sweary toddler who keeps you from messing up his toys out of pique.

I may have told this anecdote before, if so here I repeat it:

There was a Friday meeting at a place I was consulting at, the C-level executives were outlining the way projects would run to the end of the year. It seemed in some ways less than optimal, they then in a rare bit of insight into their processes said 'I know this looks less than optimal but the reason why we are doing this is ---blah blah blah 3 sentences of finance technobabble'.

It was quite clear the suboptimal process had been chosen to maximize available moneys for projects due to accounting decisions and specific legal regulations. Although exactly how eluded me.

I was pretty sure that most of the people there understood as little on the matter as I did but everyone did that expression on their face to signify they did understand that people generally use with me when I describe how stemming/decompounding works and why this means we will have to take another way in structuring our data for the search engine.

But yes most of the time I would look at those people and say that they don't do anything.

[manigandham]

> making high level decisions and asking for status

That's it. Along with hiring the right talent which is the half of the job (and often invisible) so that the work actually gets done. High-level decisions can affect hundreds or thousands of people and many more customers, so fewer but more important decisions is the trade-off, then delegating the rest so that other workers can do what they do best.

This description seems minor but the larger the company, the harder it is to keep things on track for a long-term focused vision. Also people don't do things just because you tell them to and you'd be surprised at just how hard it is to keep people working towards a goal.

[vajrabum]

It might be a good thing the next time you have a meeting with a CTO to ask them what they do what their jobs is before or after the meeting. I asked a VP that question at biotech company I was consulting at 15 years or so ago and the answer was very revealing. It didn't make me a VP or even a manager but I have a much better perspective on that level of management then I did before.

[soalian]

Would you mind expanding a bit on your experience with that particular VP, more specifically what you got from his answer?

[briandear]

You need to believe in yourself first. It sounds like you have an inferiority complex. Most CTOs I know aren’t “upper echelon” anything — they just got great at their job and weren’t afraid to take risks (such as joining a tiny startup.) Plenty of non tech founders would love to have someone like you with your experience.

(I don’t mean to be disrespectful; just wanted to implore you to not fall for the self-imposed bigotry of low expectations.)

Just look on Angellist and you could probably find yourself a CTO or role — or one that could quickly lead to one. Just be excellent at your job; learn how to influence and be confident: you know more than most!

[cloverich]

As part of that journey you should also seek to understand if you actually _want_ that job, because it will likely be a lot different than you're current one, and possibly quite a bit different than you imagine. That makes a good conversation point to have with the CTO however: "I want to learn more about what a CTO does". But I wouldn't let your conception of your poverty block you. My parents both grew up poor and eventually ended up in executive positions (in completely different fields).

[dx034]

Being interested in understanding problems in detail and working on solutions can be disqualifying for a CTO position. As a CTO you must have an overview of everything that's going on and where the company is heading. That means, you won't have any time getting lost in the nitty-gritty of a project or problem. Understanding everything a bit but nothing in perfect detail is something many people dislike but which is unavoidable as a CTO.

[jessaustin]

Never understood people's infatuation with reading CEO biographies.

We can't assume that book sales perfectly represent public interest in the books sold. Anytime someone who is very well-compensated in fields other than writing has an inexplicably successful book, we have to wonder how many of those books ever touched a reader's hands. Publishers just want to sell books; they don't care if lots of them are sold to a CEO-author as some sort of vanity project.

[yashap]

Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography was a very well written, engaging bio about a deeply flawed but very interesting man. There’s no need to have delusions about becoming a CEO while reading it, it’s just an entertaining book.

[lostlogin]

> Never understood people's infatuation with reading CEO biographies.

There’s always the biographies of sports people to try I can’t make it though the cover text.

[113]

People get to the top by being manipulative and making themselves look good.

I would imagine similar traits lead to writing a biography that sells well.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

Absolute rubbish.

[mmjaa]

There are CEO's who haven't written a book. Maybe you're like those guys.