[manimino]

I once interviewed at a company for a job that was pretty much a dream job - very niche passion. Everyone there was very into that niche.

Except for the CEO, who prided himself on not knowing anything about the field. He saw not knowing the niche as a perk; he'd focus on the "business side" only, leaving the rest to everyone else.

Got the offer, turned it down because of that.

[Karrot_Kream]

Idk, I can see that as being healthy (in the abstract; you were there in person so I'll bet you had a much higher signal than I do as an internet commenter.) I've definitely seen non-profits be sunk in by groupthink when being too close to a problem. Sometimes an outside perspective is what you need to reframe your approach, as long as it's tempered by lots of insider expertise.

[DwnVoteHoneyPot]

I can see that as a good thing too. CEO is not a know-it-all, not a micro-manager, see's his job as an enabler instead of dictator, values the people lower on the ladder.

[rhaway84773]

I think such a CEO can be excellent.

The problem with the GP’s description is that the CEO took pride in not knowing the business. A good enabler type CEO who is an outsider to the business would certainly make an effort to build expertise and even passion about the business.

[jeromegv]

May be. Or they just look at every initiatives from a pure bottom line perspective and have no way of taking guts decision based on what they think might bring the industry forward.

[ip26]

It sounds like this particular individual was not just an outsider, but also did their best to remain completely ignorant. That’s not promising.

[Tor3]

Well, yes. But it depends. I worked for a company which had to go through a re-organization, and in that period we got a new CEO who didn't know anything about the tech, unlike everybody else. But he was great at turning companies around to become profitable, he had done that many times before. So what he did was leaving all technical, marketing, and product decisions to the next level while he worked on getting external funding for as much as possible of our product research and development. He even took on himself to take care of necessary work in people's gardens if that meant they could do some particularly important work on a Saturday, if something critical came up. And finally, his salary was quite a bit less than mine - he said "You're the people doing the work. I don't need that much." When the ship was turned around to get profitable he left for the next company and did something similar.

[yurishimo]

He sounds like a pretty cool person! Any chance he exists on social media somewhere, or has a blog? I'm sure he has a ton of fascinating stories...

[Tor3]

It was a long time ago by now, so he passed some years ago. All of us from the old company came to his funeral, he wasn't easily forgotten.