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.
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".
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’m sorry, no, I believe the precarious warehouse job is many times more stressful. Especially in the US where time off is limited and health care is essentially contingent on your employers goodwill. Stress is very often a function of lack of agency.
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.
Again, that's not hard as in big "physical or mental toll". Being a miner is hard. Being a surgeon is hard. Being a mathematician working on big problems is hard.
A CEO compared is a walk in the park. All those issues you've mentioned ("Labour and training problems, international actors that won't pay and their governments won't help, shipping problems, supply chain problems") are there in any business (even in a single person shop).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Spoken as someone who denies the safety net beneath their high wire act. For some the risks described and the comforts forgone in the hunt of prosperity are called life. Losing these resources means intense uncertainty of paralyzing outcomes. It's not our job to understand the plight of all around us with compassion, but it does make it easier to justify incongruent rewards they bring.
> 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.
Specifically, I meant there's nothing to fall back on at the end if the gamble didn't pay off. Your family/friends are sick of you, you have nothing left to sell, any credit is trashed, and your venture didn't pan out.
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.
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.)
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).
“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.
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!'"
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.
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.
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.
Nitpick, but this isn't actually true (see lawsuit she won), and we don't really have any way to know if it was true even before she became famous. I agree with your general point, though.
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.
Let's not be superfluous. Being a CEO is hard, even the 5 am rising and 'hand shaking' parts.