CEOs don’t actually do anything, they are just a face. They collect all the money and then fuck off to do whatever they want, which for musk is TV interviews, trump rallies, obsess over Twitter and apparently play video games.
There are CEOs like that. Then there are CEOs completely reshaping their industry while figuring out what new systems the company needs from scratch. Everyone wants the second kind, but most of them are the first kind, including Elon.
I mean ideally CEOs make informed decisions and have at least a pretty good grasp about what the company does and what could be done to make it better (after listening to people under them). CEOs like Musk are lazy and skip the actual work and make uninformed decisions that hurt the company.
Since CEOs are never actually punished for doing the latter it becomes the norm more and more.
True but often do you need to make ones that affect millions of people or involve millions of dollars. It’s not the ability to make decisions. It’s the level of responsibility in those decisions.
This guy was in my family for a decade during his rice up the ladder. Company he worked when I knew him was over 200k employees. He was VP there but he’s CEO at a different giant company now.
That’s nice, but it’s still only an anecdote and with your proximity to him leads to a bias. What I’ve learned about these people is that their real skill is being a smooth talker. I’ve dealt with business and political types and all the successful ones are smooth talkers. The root word for conman is Confidence, but that confidence doesn’t have to have any backing to it.
Because he is a CEO.
CEOs don’t actually do anything, they are just a face. They collect all the money and then fuck off to do whatever they want, which for musk is TV interviews, trump rallies, obsess over Twitter and apparently play video games.
There are CEOs like that. Then there are CEOs completely reshaping their industry while figuring out what new systems the company needs from scratch. Everyone wants the second kind, but most of them are the first kind, including Elon.
I mean ideally CEOs make informed decisions and have at least a pretty good grasp about what the company does and what could be done to make it better (after listening to people under them). CEOs like Musk are lazy and skip the actual work and make uninformed decisions that hurt the company.
Since CEOs are never actually punished for doing the latter it becomes the norm more and more.
CEOs like that just needs some extra motivation, maybe a 20 mill pay raise will make them work a tiny bit harder
I’m thinking you’ve never been near a CEO for any period of time. It’s a non stop barrage of critical choices with major outcomes. Day and night.
Life is a barrage of critical choices with major outcomes. The ability to make decisions is not a distinguishing trait amongst humans.
True but often do you need to make ones that affect millions of people or involve millions of dollars. It’s not the ability to make decisions. It’s the level of responsibility in those decisions.
What size business? A “CEO” of a company with 20 or so employees is a whole different thing to Musk.
This guy was in my family for a decade during his rice up the ladder. Company he worked when I knew him was over 200k employees. He was VP there but he’s CEO at a different giant company now.
That’s nice, but it’s still only an anecdote and with your proximity to him leads to a bias. What I’ve learned about these people is that their real skill is being a smooth talker. I’ve dealt with business and political types and all the successful ones are smooth talkers. The root word for conman is Confidence, but that confidence doesn’t have to have any backing to it.