Part of why it is so difficult is that these C-level executives have mastered the art of sounding good with minimal set of accomplishments. Sometimes I listen to these presentations and it feels like a solid story and presentation, but there is nothing behind their rodeo when you sit back and dig deeper. A fucking mirage.
It's not the person who does excellent work that gets promoted or climb up the corporate ladder, but the person who knows how to sell their work, as sad as this is.
There's the "grass is always greener" phenomenon, too. Companies are struggling to figure out the next step, so they hire an exec from some other org that's equally struggling but looks shiny from the outside.
Another pattern I see a lot in the tech world is people who jump up the corporate ladder quickly by jumping from the tech side of companies in some industry, e.g., widget-making, to working at tech companies trying to sell software to the widget industry to startups convinced they can use AI to make better, cheaper widgets and then back to some big widget company that just put out a press release saying they're really a tech company that happens to produce widgets. The widget people figure the exec knows tech, the tech people figure they know widgets.
Well, it's also the people still on the ladder are the ones that aren't smart enough to realize there's diminishing returns on personal wealth and a diminishing supply of personal time.
In less than two years I went from my second job out of college to being offered to come up with any role for myself in a 10B cap company in order to retain me as I was getting bored, and after a night's sleep I came back and gave my notice.
The person that offered that position later turned down an offer for CEO of a 100B+ company for similar reasons.
There absolutely are people out there that shoot up the ladder based on skill. But when the people holding the ladder don't realize at a certain point time is worth more than any amount of additional money, it's hard to keep those that do realize it from jumping off.
The problem with filling the C-level positions isn't just that good candidates are obscured by founder Dunning-Kreuger, it's that generally the pool of candidates is going to be biased towards people echoing the BS toxic work culture that is the startup world, and the good candidates are going to have grown past participating in that charade.
WFH and changing attitudes about work life balance may reduce achiever churn moving forward, but I still see the "I'm so busy" posturing with C-levels and their wannabes here and there when I still have to interact with them, so I doubt it's going away soon.
Yes there can be diminishing returns on time, but C-suite positions are almost always on the declining side of time taken to do their jobs across their careers.
The C-suite of a 100B+ company shouldn't be spending more than a few hours a day really working hard. Compare that to something like a staff engineer who's become the lynchpin for more layers of their engineering org than anyone could ever list.
In fact I'd almost say no one has their WLB respected as much as people in the C-suite. Who's time in the entire org is considered more valuable?
And who has more autonomy to define that WLB to begin with? The chair isn't going to complain because the CEO left at 3pm to catch his kid's baseball game...
I think the other commenter is correct and you don't know as much about what you are talking about as you think.
I'm not talking about small business CEOs that answer to themselves.
I'll talking about CEOs that answer to the board and shareholders.
One of the reasons I turned that position down was watching my mentor and boss offering it having just spent a week away from home flying red eye flights to China and then Europe and then the Midwest and then back to Europe for various meetings and events.
I hated having to do a flight every other week even.
This guy was in the office before anyone else and left after most were gone.
Would put in at least a 60 hour week and MAYBE 10-15 hours of that was stuff someone else couldn't have done just fine. We were constantly having to run interference to hide work from him so he'd finally take a bit of time for himself.
Yes, I think a much better infrastructure would have had him working 15 hours a week on what only he could do, and the rest of the time for family.
But that's not what the reality was, and I saw that workaholism among most of the F500 C-levels I encountered, from the ones that were good, to the ones that had five great faking it.
You simply can't hold one of those positions not being like that, and I am skeptical it is as much because of the workload as the work culture.
> I am skeptical it is as much because of the workload as the work culture.
Hmm, my leader told me I had to work more if I wanted to advance. I told him that I think someone (leader or otherwise) is doing something wrong if they or their team are working/forced to work more than 40 hours per week.
I’ve mostly had visibility into engineering VPs not C-suites and from my anecdotal observation there’s a wide range of hours they put in from 80hrs/week down to 40 vacation days every year. There seemed to be no easily observable correlation with actual output. I suspect a lot of suites are only as good as their admins and their managed orgs (duh)
I’m going to go out on a very short limb and guess you’ve never actually worked closely with one of these people. I have, twice, and they work so hard they make me sad for them. Nonstop, there is no such thing as downtime. Yes they may go to their kid’s baseball game at 3, and proceed to answer 5 critical emails during it, take one or two calls, and then have a meeting on the drive home. After two more meetings from their house they have a quick dinner and do four more hours of work before they go to sleep, get up at 5am and work out, then work another 14 hours. During this entire day they may actually get 10 minutes to themselves, not all in one go of course. Their day is planned out in 15 minute increments and they have to constantly change gears as they go from one meeting to the next. Unless they want to be perceived as an asshole CEO they have to learn to keep a constant poker face, and always be the last to give an opinion for risk that they’ll never hear what people really think. Weekends are reserved for talking to investors, board members and key partners.
It’s a super shitty life, but hey, they get to make more money than the rest of us, which mostly just causes them more headaches, like not knowing if anyone they meet is actually their friend or just looking for a handout.
The person I was talking about started as a retail store employee stocking shelves and we had to bring in a fashion consultant because the suits he'd buy for himself looked like they were from the discount rack (and may have been).
Hands down the smartest person I ever met though.
Yes, there is a fair bit of nepotism in the corporate world. But there are people who claw their way to the top on merit, and they are often incredible people, and there's more than you'd think.
The problem is 85% of the room can't tell the difference (or looks at the suit to discern), and the best and brightest are stuck dancing on the strings for nepotistic idiots, often even when in C-level positions.
In my experience those types of folks are the ones who create some of the most cutthroat environments and perpetuate poor working conditions among their companies. They are the least equipped to hire, promote, and model in ways that and maintain any semblance of having personal boundaries or that personal time is important. Sometimes it’s much nicer to work for someone who doesn’t pretend they are as important as a head of state, and makes sure it’s not required of them to be.
I guess there are both kinds, and the person you describe is usually someone who's company you'd prefer working in, as it's more likely they reward work over politics.
I've known more than a few CEOs between my father with his PhD in Business and specialization in strategic management and my own start in the startup world...
but if we're just going out on condescending limbs, I'm going to go out on one and guess you're just coping with the "more money than the rest of us part" by convincing yourself CEOs have a horrible lonely lives?
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The reality is nothing you described doesn't somewhat apply to anyone approaching higher levels of a career.
For every study showing how depressed CEOs are compared to the peons, you'd find 10 more about how staff engineers/vps/product leads/etc. are too if anyone actually cared to study them.
It's success that brings pressure and stress, not the title of C-suite.
For example... "not knowing if anyone they meet is just looking for a handout"
The median household income in this country is $67,000. If you're working in tech long enough to be turning down C-suite positions and don't already have this problem I'd start searching for a new job about 5 years ago.
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Your vision of a CEO is either that of a founder CEO who lives like they're guiding their child (and will be replaced if the company ever grows large enough), or a Disney Channel movie you took too seriously.
The "career C-suite" is not hired for their inability to commit to WLB.
They're not hired to kiss ass on weekends.
They're not hired to play psychologist to coax out your "true feelings".
They definitely don't tend to hang around people who need handouts.
They're not putting the company before themselves because at the end of the day the next job is waiting in the Rolodex.
It is pretty hilarious that you think that though! Honestly you're describing what they wish people would see them as. I know plenty of C-suites would be over the moon with your characterization :)
I’ve been a C suite exec at four different companies, and decline to consider more than that every month for at least the last four years. My taxes are more than the average American earns in their entire lifetime for over 10 years running. I’m not dumb enough to believe every single CEO fits the description I gave, but CEOs of $100B companies do not phone it in, and anyone who believes that is both ignorant and sadly lacking in both observational power and imagination.
The only (good) CEOs I have seen 'phone it in' are career replacement CEOs whose job is to come in, sprinkle magic dust (fire & hire & slight rebrand), and use that to sell the company within 18mo. They have a very specific and narrow mission.
The rest I met have too big a mission to phone it in. (A lot of signs of premature aging, ...) I understand it a lot less after $1B/yr in revenue though, so can't say much from experience there.
Yeesh, martyring yourself while trying to awkwardly flex your tax bill? Career C-suite to a tee!
Now we know where I got the vibe of "I know plenty of C-suites would be over the moon with your characterization :)"
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Ignoring the fact there are millions of people would gladly trade their double shifts with no childcare for having to answer emails at the 3pm ball games. I do wonder what would have happened if you just, didn't answer emails during the kid's games? (in case I need to spell that out, it's a synecdoche for putting work over personal life...)
I guess it'd just be a very "career CEO"-esque to wax poetic about how you shortened your life doing a bunch of stuff to keep companies afloat when the reality is you just chose not to be present in your own personal life.
After all, a small team working through a Series B is one thing... but what 100B ship is relying on any single person (or even a room of C-suites) to keep floating?
I agree 100% with your take on CEO at $10B+ revenue companies. I worked closely with a handful of them and it’s a brutal role in terms of WLB.
As you said it wasn’t unusual to be flying international 2 or 3 times per week. Late night/early morning calls with Europe/Asia and not to mention the PR aspects of it.
C-suite at large companies typically have horrific work schedules that preclude a real life, and it is largely unavoidable. That's the job, and one of the reasons most people can't do it. A handful of people are wired to live that way but most aren't. The C-suite is a job for a special kind of masochist that wants to live their role.
Average people that want those roles likely don't understand what they entail. A staff engineer has sinecure by comparison.
IMHO for start-up to hire a C-level manager the best way is to look at VP / director level at a large company, preferably director level. If a start-up looks for a VP look at senior manager / director level. Basically hire people from large, established companies that a re currently at least 2 level below the senior position you are looking for. Those people are high enough to bring the seniority and low enough to still, maybe, do some of the actual work. Select from this population for the ability to cope with non-existing structures, be hands on themselves and the ability to calmly guide an organization.
The last thing you want is those career politicians that tend to climb the corporate ladder and rely on others to actual do the work.
Work is a type of performance art. Bosses pay to see you suffer. And if you do not act like you are suffering enough, more work will be added to your desk for proper amount of suffering.
I’ve experienced that it suffices to give constant updates on things I’ve shipped and where I’m stuck. In meetings, I regularly give a short show and tell of what I’ve built. So far, that has worked out well.
Using a display of suffering as virtue signal sounds not like a recipe for an uplifting workplace.
I didn't downvote but I think sometimes work is just plain fun, sometimes been looking forward to go to work. And nice coworkers, was looking forward to see. Not so much suffering here :-)
(Sometimes boring++ too of course, especially once at a big corp)
I believe that if I tried playing the game, I'd make a pretty good CTO. But as PG is aluding to, there are a lot of really talented people out there (including myself) who hate playing the politic/self-promotion game. For small startups, you can be an effective C level player while avoiding these "soft skills" but the bigger the org the more important these skills get. Avoiding the game, or worse: playing it badly, can kill a startup. I think this is why a lot of founders struggle as their org grows.
It’s a different skill set. When companies are small, advancing the agenda is the most important thing. As companies get bigger “advancing the agenda without pushing anyone off” is what’s important.
When companies get huge, the balance gets lopsided. So many people have explicit or implicit veto power that the “don’t piss anyone off” becomes more important than getting things done. And that’s why you see execs failing forward with content-free messages of glorious buzzwords. It’s also why it’s very dangerous to hire Big Company execs into a startup where it’s still important to advance the agenda.
A good CTO lives and dies on "soft skills". At two places I've been I've seen competent engineers with solid technical pedigree brought in as CTO and completely flounder since, for whatever reason, they could not get the managers below them to execute his (in my opinion very sensible) plans.
> [...]C-level executives have mastered the art of sounding good with minimal set of accomplishments
I mean, they get hired to do the same for the company (internally to potential and current employees, and externally to partners and financiers). The ability to sell is a crucial skill in the C-suite: it's no wonder they can sell themselves.
The CEO is the greatest salesman of the company. So they better excel at selling snake oil. There are positions for technical people, CEO is not one of them.
People believing their own hype are the worst. As a sibling pointed out, the CEO is the main sales person. that's fine, unless all the CEO and the company is doing is selling some vision. That approach might have worked in the past, it seems to work a lot less lately. Especially when it comes to investors, as those are the main buyers of these visions. Actual product is secondary in a lot of cases. At those places that manage to do both, like flexport (just to mention one that came to mind), great thongs are done. At those other places, not so much...
The people doing good work are too busy doing working and increasing related skills that they have no time to improve their skills in selling themselves.
Those without skills have nothing to do other than sell themselves so that is what they get good at.
I'm very mixed on this as I agree a lot of C-Levels mostly have mastered the art of selling themselves and I find most announcements of new C-Levels in my company to just be a waste of an email and likely salary.
But your last part strikes me as falling to a common misconception that climbing up the corporate ladder from inside is best done based on merit, as leadership is not always compatible with the actual work being done at the lower levels.
C-Level leadership tends to be more about company growth and being able to understand which parts of the company do need to change/evolve to reach that next level, sometimes with hard decisions. I've gone up the ladder like this from a very low level to a few reports away from the CEO and definitely it changes your perspective a bit on how you approach things.
The simplest example is realizing you have a lot more decision power over how you interact with your customer base, and options like "we simply won't support this" are a viable option when before you didn't have such options. How you allocate your people towards projects becomes far different when you introduce a new product/feature, and so on. It becomes a lot less about the minutia of the day to day work and instead about the long-term sustainability and health of the people and the company. Learning to take in a larger scope of understanding is not easy and not everyone naturally learns it, yet many companies still follow the time-based seniority model or promoting to leadership persons who really don't have basic leadership qualities.
You also have to consider your top people and how to evolve your strategy without ostracizing them or causing disinterest; too much workload on your top-tier team members and you'll start to bleed such people. Same with adding in too many things not related to their interests. Ideally, in such a high level position you're listening closely to the feedback from the lower managers and making decisions that try to balance both aspects and pushing only on situations where the growth is very essential, but there in is the catch: how can you know what is essential until you try it and see the result? What worked for one company doesn't work for another as no matter how similar the product/services might be. I've seen this happen tons of times with support and RND teams that were basically modified to include professional services aspects which is not what any of those people signed up for, and there was a huge exodus. The justification was that the C-Level who made the call had success with this at another company X, but the scope of what had to be managed was far more narrow at X and the client base with a support package was significantly smaller. The results at X were undeniable, but the conditions under which such a change were effective were quite different, and the C-Level just failed (refused?) to recognize this.
Leadership is very hard to grow properly, and personally I'm of the opinion that people who seek leadership are to be treated sceptically, as it's something that grows with familiarity and organically, not in a classroom. The Classroom helps with the fundamental skills (statistics, financial studies, etc), but my personal observation is that what gets lost in these classes is that such knowledge then needs to be heavily customized to the environment you're in. It doesn't really matter how many tools you have for leadership if you're using the tools incorrectly.
It's not the person who does excellent work that gets promoted or climb up the corporate ladder, but the person who knows how to sell their work, as sad as this is.