alt Hacker NewsThere are a lot of bad CEOs, though. It's a lot like a politician -- it's quite difficult to become a CEO, and the skills to make it to that position don't always intersect nicely with the skills necessary to actually do the job well.
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> 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.
It's not difficult at all to become one, and the work involved in being a CEO is not particularly difficult in comparison to senior technical work at all. The only thing that is harder about being a CEO is the responsibility. I'm sure being the CEO of Microsoft or whatever is plenty difficult and demanding in many ways, but most CEOs are not that, and speaking just from experience most CEOs and CTOs are clueless morons.
With that said, I've been programming for 25 years and I've only been a CEO for 3, so take what I said with a pinch of salt.
I do think people overestimate titles like this a lot, though, and it really comes down to what the company actually does and what is demanding for that company at that position/role. The CTO of a some-bullshit-as-a-service company may as well be straight out of college, because they're likely doing something trivial that literally anyone (including LLMs) could put together. The CTO of a well-used and reliable streaming service that handles a meaningful part of the world's Internet traffic is obviously solving a more interesting and demanding problem, and their decisions are going to be more important.
what about zukerberg he didnt have to do any politics to get to ceo. yet he is the face of ai layoffs and bad ceo.
CEOs do get there with lots of politics in almost all cases. It’s all about who’s ass you kiss and who’s ass you don’t and if you’re lucky with timing things might just fall into place.
I think it’s exceedingly rare that a CEO is actually competent at their job. In most cases it’s the labor class propping the company up, and in some cases the workers are doing so against the wishes of the CEO. Not that executives want to ruin the company, they’re just incompetent and therefore make terrible decisions constantly.