"Jason was the one who had to live with the consequences." -> the people being fired have to live with the consequences. Jason only has to live with making the decision, which is much easier. Jeez.
Grump.
They're different kinds of hard, and they're also all worth thinking about. There's many places that articles and discussions are happening on being a better teacher or being a better parent too.
And this blog post (1) isn't gushing, and (2) has a lot of truth in it. I'm staying with a friend of mine in China who left IBM to start his own company. He's experiencing the whoa-holy-shit-I'm-the-guy-responsible feeling.
There really aren't too many things similar to it - being the final decisionmaker is its own kind of stress and neurosis. If things screw up, it's your fault alone and you have to live with that. In theory, that's true for everyone. In practice, there's a huge difference between being employed or contracted, and running your own shop or self-employed. The psychology of it is really, tangibly different - that's not glorification, that's just the facts here.
> the people being fired have to live with the consequences. Jason only has to live with making the decision, which is much easier. Jeez.
Have you ever recruited anyone to work for you, had it not work out, and had to let them go? It's one of the hardest, most gut-wrenching things you'll ever have to do. You asked someone to trust you, and you were wrong and someone else is going to suffer for it... and you have to pull the trigger now. Ask anyone who has had to lay off someone they recruited and brought into the company - it's miserably awful.
Agreed it's also bad for employees to be let go, but writing it off as "much easier" to say to someone, "I'm sorry, I made the wrong decision and you have to suffer for it"... I don't know, I'm guessing you've never had to do it. Very few things weigh so heavily on your conscience.
It was a case of survival, and I did not envy him for a second. I think he probably carries the emotional scars of that moment to this day.
In most cases you go through an adjustment period, and after a while you get desensitized - or you go crazy. The same happens with CEOs, you're not going to care the same about the 200th-time you fire somebody as you did with the first.
I'm not saying is easy, or that anybody can do it, but we need to step back a little. The same way praising a child about their smarts puts them in a well-I-can't-get-any-better locked position, glorifying CEOs prevents us from critically evaluating their performance or even suggesting there's a better way... After all, we can't possibly know how hard it is.
-> Yes. It wasn't fun, but it's less fun being fired.
"Very few things weigh so heavily on your conscience."
-> Realizing that you haven't been there for your kids. Accidentally killing a bicyclist with your car. Building a product that rips people off. I can easily write a really long list here of things that are harder than firing someone who is not working out.
Just saying.
When I was running the Stanford Daily, we were bleeding cash and I had to lay off a 65 year old lady who had been working at the company for 10 years. She was reliable but did poor work and was costing the company tens of thousands of dollars annually. That conversation was not fun and the entire process was stressful. I can't imagine having to lay off an entire division, especially of people that I hired.
"Nobody is more important than any other person, but some people are more important to the business. To your children, you are the most important person in the world, and I don't matter whatsoever to them."
He used it in the context of making it clear that some people would need to carry greater responsibilities, and would be held to a higher standard, and be remunerated differently - but everyone in the company deserved a high level of respect.
And, let's be clear - Ben is _also_ the person who suggests that it's _easier_ to teach a founder to be a CEO, then to take an outsider and have them successfully run a business. It would suggest that he believes that the true challenge is finding great Founders, not turning them into CEOs.
- executive hero-worship
- living in a fantasy world where parenting is not a fundamental activity in society
BTW, the gender stuff is NOT elidable. If y'all weren't mostly men, y'all would take women's work much more seriously, and be much more skeptical about the way heroic CEOs fail to acknowledge the woman who is caring for their kids in the typical narratives of their awesome business accomplishments.
(I'm not gonna talk about parents; I've never been one and it seems pretty all-consuming to me. But there are an awful lot of parents out there who will happily tell you how insane being a parent is, so they're probably not a good example for your argument.)
This generalizes a bit too much. There are various kinds of teaching situations (college, private school, inner-city public school) and various kinds of CEO situations. Apples and oranges.
The psychological burden of teaching can be pretty intense. Depending on your situation you may have to deal with: unsupportive parents/administration, paying for school supplies out of your own small paycheck, noticing and reporting child abuse, dealing with the issues of your pregnant ninth graders, dealing with violence toward yourself and other students (including gun violence and gang violence), etc. all while you are trying to inspire in your students an appreciation for cosines.
" The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say: “I didn’t quit.”"
What a load of crap. For several million a year, neither would I.
I've been on the receiving end of a lay off, and I can assure you that letting someone go (especially if I was the one who hired them) is much more stressful psychologically than being let go off.
If you're so worried about the company's financial prospects while you earn more than anyone else in it, I don't have a ton of sympathy for you.
We're a small startup, and me and my cofounder earn less than everyone else in the company. As we grow, I expect our salaries to grow a bit, but they'll never be much higher than a median salary. Most really great people are compensated in stock options.
Was the article talking about small startups? I've worked for (more than) my share of small startups - most of the "CEO"s of small startups are closer to owner/proprieters than CEOs.