[dijit]

> it's quite difficult to become a CEO

on the contrary, it seems to be one of the few jobs that seems to require absolutely no qualifications to have.

What you need to do to be CEO is.... convince someone to lend you money in the hope that you'll get it back to them.

I've worked under some absolutely awful people who wouldn't pass an interview anywhere, but somehow they're CEOs, because they can smarm there way into more money consistently.

[slg]

>convince someone to lend you money in the hope that you'll get it back to them

And it should be noted that many of these people lending money are in a similar situation of not being required to have any qualifications. Sure, some of them have worked their way up through sound investment after sound investment, but many of them were either born into their position or simply got lucky at some point along the way. Just think of all the money investors threw away pursuing crypto and NFTs for example. Many of those investments were transparently stupid from day 1.

[conductr]

Investing has some nuance, it’s not a homogeneous thing. It varies from insanely conservative to high risk gambling. I like to think everyone involved with NFT type investing is fully aware they are gambling.

[Hoasi]

To be fair, raising money takes a certain skill, that few people possess; and in many cases, it’s essential for a startup to even exist.

[manoDev]

> To be fair, raising money takes connections, that few people possess; and in many cases, it’s essential for a startup to even exist.

FTFY

[noisy_boy]

>> To be fair, building connections takes skill, that few people possess; and in many cases, it’s essential for a startup to even exist.

FTFY

[jongjong]

Often, they are good at taking things, keeping things, misdirecting and setting boundaries (especially communication boundaries). They are good at keeping their positions.

This is a broad range of skills and to actually be a CEO, you need to really hone these skills and be among the very top. To be good at those, just enough to qualify for a modest CEO role at a small start-up, you generally don't have the time to be good at anything else.

Saying that you don't need any skills is mischaracterizing it. You don't need any value-creating skills, yes, but you need significant value-capturing skills.

I can imagine a world were all companies become empty of workers and only executives remain and they would just have meetings with each other while they starve and would explain it away as a new diet they're on. There would be no petrol and they would be forced to walk to work and would say that it's their new fitness routine... And they would all believe each other.