[rjtavares]

> Q: Is there anything about being CEO that you don’t like, that you like to delegate?

> A: Finance. Our CFO does 99% of finance. I engage because I want to know how we’re doing. But to say I don’t add value to her operation is an understatement. You can also say the same with technology. Our CTO doesn’t get any help from me. I’ll go sometimes months without talking to our CTO, which as a CEO of a technology company, that’s kind of rare.

Wow...

[onion2k]

As someone who's been a CTO at times in the past, I wish I'd worked with a CEO like that. There are few things worse than having a leadership team who don't trust you to deliver the tech that drives the company's ideas.

[rjtavares]

Of course overly managing the CTO is also bad, but would you really like to "go sometimes months" without talking to the CEO? Especially during a pandemic in which your product becomes the hot new thing?

[parkingrift]

It would be absolutely alarming to go even a week without speaking to the CEO in some capacity. How can you have a strong leadership team if they aren’t communicating?

[nraynaud]

yeah, on the surface it is a bit weird, Peloton has capital intensive hardware, there should be some interaction as to how much capital is allocated to the technology, product releases etc.

[vishnugupta]

>> I’ll go sometimes months without talking to our CTO,

> ...leadership team who don't trust you ....

When did talking come to mean having trust issues!!?

[wink]

I mean I get the sentiment but months? Which kind of company size are we talking? I'm not saying you should talk to your CEO every week, but twice a year sounds really weird to me.

[Ensorceled]

At a tech company? Definitely the CTO and CEO should be talking every week.

Months is VERY weird.

[spookthesunset]

I mean you are both part of the executive team. The CEO is an immediate part of your working group. You probably should be talking almost daily at times.

It would be like the product manager never talking to their team’s engineering manager. The two are tied at the hip—at least in orgs I’ve worked at.

[doctor_eval]

Although I agree with the other child posts here, I also agree with your sentiment. As a CTO, an interfering CEO is worse than one who doesn’t engage at all. But ideally it’s a collegial relationship.

[smoyer]

Having your CEO change course every two months is definitely worse - just let me finish something! (it was a hardware company so there's not really such thing as a pivot)

[arethuza]

I've had experiences like that both as CTO and Director of Engineering - I vividly remember one exchange when I'd been at a company for a month or so:

CEO: How are you fitting in?

Me: Good, I've got a good handle on where we want to take the product.

CEO: I know you don't.

Me: OK, care to explain?

CEO: I've just changed the vision for the product!

This was also a company with a significant hardware component.

[llampx]

How do you make sure you are aligned and that you both see the problems, challenges and opportunities that one party sees?

This looks more like a traditional company than a tech company, which is not helped by it being based in NYC. The CEO and CFO are probably buddy-buddy while the CTO is an outsider "geek."

[mizzao]

I can't tell if this is just humility / delegation coming off poorly or an actual disengaged CEO.

I also think it can be helpful to self-deprecate a bit as a leader but I'm not sure why all these statements got published in public.

[ansible]

At the very least, it shows poor communication skills.

If you have a fantastic CFO, that's great. Just say that. "I'm very confident in person X." or "We have a great team who's been doing a great job." Things like that.

You don't say: "I don't add any value." That makes you sound like an empty suit.

Also the "I haven't talked to my CTO in months" sounds really bad. How the eff are you planning new product launches? Shouldn't the CEO at least be aware of any ongoing issues with current products? Talk about the plan to reduce hosting costs? Anything? WTF

[q-big]

This might be a cultural bias, but for me (being German) what the CEO said sounds much more honest and trustworthy than what you suggest.

[adrianomartins]

One might ask, if the CEO does 1% of finance, and 0% of technology, what does a CEO do? Office, HR, comms management?

[willcipriano]

"Well--well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?"

[skywal_l]

"Office Space" reference for anyone wondering[0]. Another Mike Judge's gift to us.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNuu9CpdjIo

[Salgat]

It's funny, before I starting working as a developer I thought this guy was useless, but now I understand how valuable not having to deal with the customers actually is.

[spookthesunset]

It’s also one of those jobs that is hard to measure the performance of.

[raverbashing]

As much as we make fun of the new Agile/Startup/SV world, it looks like I'd absolutely dread work on a 90's Software company (though granted this is exagerated for comedic purposes).

[indigochill]

In the startup I worked at in college, one of the most visible jobs our CEO did was talking with investors to get the next round of funding. He was also the top-level business strategy guy (for an example in a more mature company, look at the difference Nadella made to Microsoft's strategy relative to Ballmer), although implementation details were delegated to other roles (that he was responsible for hiring).

[anthony_r]

The main job of the CEO is to manage the board of directors (i.e. the shareholders). And the main job of the board of directors is to decide when to fire the CEO.

[ansible]

> The main job of the CEO is to manage the board of directors (i.e. the shareholders).

Uh, no. Dealing with the board is indeed part of the job for the CEO, but a relatively small part unless you're doing poorly.

The CEO is also managing the direction of the company, and managing the top-level managers of the various departments. The CEO has to fight the fires, and allocate limited resources to where they are needed across all departments.

[darkerside]

You're right, but I think parent was joking

[anthony_r]

Half-joking, but yeah. "Managing the board of directors" of course means keeping the board happy, which is done by what ansible wrote. Not just directly trying to talk them out of firing the CEO.

[darkerside]

Of course. Jokes aren't funny if they aren't at least a little bit true!

[helsinkiandrew]

He's the Chief Enthusiasm Officer:

> Peloton has been horribly mismanaged, with unbridled enthusiasm taking the place of disciplined leadership

[skrebbel]

Marketing and sales

[johannes1234321]

How can you do Marketing without looking at the curre t development to Merker the new features?

How can you do sales without feeding customer feedback back into development?

How can you do all that without looking at the numbers to see what you can afford?

[skrebbel]

I don't know anything about Peloton, but my impression is that they're selling a way of life much more than a device with a particular set of features.

On the CEO level, marketing and sales might very much be all about mood, positioning, culture etc and very little about the display pixel density or the logistics.

I'm not saying that this is sensible, I'm just saying that lots of companies are run this way and a CEO saying they don't sync with tech nor finance every day doesn't necessarily disqualify them.

This guy built a pretty big company pretty fast so he's gotta have done something right. Maybe let's not go all-in with an activist investor's cherry-picked quotes of an uncommonly honest/humble CEO.

[pmontra]

I've seen many times sellers selling things that didn't exist yet. Maybe a term describing that is Market Development. It doesn't end well every time but there is usually time to cope with customers after they signed a contract.

[masklinn]

> How can you do Marketing without looking at the curre t development to Merker the new features?

Marketing shit that’s not out is just barely better than marketing shit that’s not even planned.

> How can you do sales without feeding customer feedback back into development?

Surely you have normal channels for doing that and it doesn’t require the CEO to talk to the CTO?

[andi999]

Isnt that called 'business development' at the C-level?

[tootie]

The deck also calls out another interview where he said he does very interviews (meaning hiring decisions). The deck also calls out that he gave an executive role to his wife.

[baxtr]

I am not so sure why this sounds odd. All successful startup that I have seen, had a great builder and a great seller. A CFO/COO running internal operations and finance is great to have. So since he is not the builder and obviously not the CFO/COO, he could still be a very successful CEO by being the seller, who is advocating for the company on the market. Think Steve Jobs. Wasn't the CEO of Peloton not that kind of guy?

[Aromasin]

Steve Jobs was one of the most micromanaging CEOs I've read about. He overruled many CTO decisions during his time at Apple, both at the founding of the company and upon his return to the company years later, so I wouldn't use him as a comparable example. You'll rarely find a good CEO that isn't intimately aware of the current actions and goals of each other executive. What you're describing would be the role of a CMO, which Foley is not.

[quesera]

> He overruled many CTO decisions during his time at Apple

That is not micromanaging.

That's the CEO's job. Take input from whatever valuable sources you have, and decide on behalf of the entire organization.

Steve Jobs was a lot of things over the decades. But a micromanager, he was not.

[kumarvvr]

To me, that seems to give off the vibe that he was confident in the business, basically striking a golden goose. And wants to not interfere with it.

It could also show apathy and lack of concern because he wants to cash out.

[eigart]

Amazing. I just hope Matt Levine (of Bloomberg’s money stuff) has seen this deck today.

[EMM_386]

It's here:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-02-08/peloto...

[hhmc]

It was in the newsletter 2 days ago

[eigart]

Thanks, I missed it. Here it is:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-02-08/peloto...

[0898]

He covered it a couple of days ago.