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Comment by jvagner | Hacker News Reader

Ever worked for an "idea guy" CEO? New idea every day/week/weekend.

Yes! My solution is to only join/consider a company where the CEO has sufficient skin in the game -- either the company was funded with the CEO's own money and/or they are working full time on the company with typical startup pay -- no side gigs.

To me, idea guys is a symptom of insufficient skin in the game. When the CEO has skin in the game, time is valuable, and they really quick start focusing on execution and the value of time.

Oh, yes. He saw himself as Steve Jobs and kept coming to our office every day interrupting our scheduled work and overloading us with more work on his "revolutionary" ideas he picks up from reading SV news and wanted a prototype "next week" to show to shareholders.

In the 1980's, the CTO I worked for (indirectly) met with me a couple of times on the high priority project I was leading. The second time, as I left his office, I saw the cover of an IT magazine, featuring the approach (maybe OO programming?) the CTO had just pitched to me, out of the blue.

Terrifying.

OOP is terrifying

Yep happened at my last job. Ended up pissing away all the companies money on ill defined projects that were started but never finished. I was happy to be laid off from that job.

Yeah I've seen this, and had the experience of working for a few. While its fine for them to be the idea guy, they also need to be the execution guy. Having the disciple to actually execute and be decisive is rare. I've seen this happen a few times where the CEO becomes paralyzed with decision because ALL of their ideas are so good!

I had exactly the opposite experience, the founder/CEO was a former airline pilot. As a pilot you learn to make decisions quickly with the data at hand, because delay can be fatal. Best CEO I've worked for, but unfortunately he wanted to retire and sold the company.

Every new idea takes priority over the previous ideas meaning if anything is actually done it is poorly done. I've seen lower branches pick ideas they think will most benefit the business and work those but the lack of sync between the highest level and the rest of the business causes a lot of problems.

Early in my career someone taught me a useful technique for dealing with this situation.

After each "new" idea, spend about half an hour working on the idea. Best to do this on paper and target producing some good looking notes. Then file it away close at hand. If the "idea guy" ever follows up and asks you about their idea, pull out your notes and say "ahh yes, I've been working on that and I have a few things to discuss with you." You now appear as a hard working and enthusiastic underling. For the majority of cases where they never follow up, you have limited your wasted effort.

Wouldn't this risk the idea guy latching onto you as being the first person who has shown interest (or, in the idea guy's mind, the first person who sees the real potential of my genius)?

I hear stories about the founder of the company I'm at now, gone before I started. He'd have an idea and implement about 10% of it, then hand it off and say "I've got it half done, now you finish it."

Yeah. New idea every day/week/weekend is tolerable if the exec just drops them in a backlog where they can be forgotten. The real wtf is when your priorities change constantly.

It's not the worst thing if the CEO eventually brings actual customers and POs. Product market is really hard, for devs and engineers (IMO). The hard part is if the CEO can't bring customers or if middle management doesn't appreciate that the thrash can be a killer.

Ever had a new CTO come in with "ideas" that have already been explored 10 times over by the current staff (that has 50 more years combined experience in the industry) that won't take no for an answer? Instant motivation deflation.

The attempt and failure of an idea doesn't mean the idea won't work in your current setting. It usually means the implementation was off.

This is the heart of it. Anyone can come up with an idea, few can execute it.

Or the implementation of an actual new and good idea was interrupted by the arrival of a new CTO that stops the presses and convinces the funding company their "new direction" is the way to go, leaving the better plan on in the trash, unlikely to be resurrected until the CTO's plan fails, years from now, or the knowledgeable staff goes off and starts their own company.

Bonus points if that person thinks they are the next "Steve Jobs" building the next "Google" ;-)

Absolutely excruciating.

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