Hacker News Reader

Comment by speby | Hacker News Reader

This ... it is a total fantasy to think that the leader(s) of a company are somehow aware of all of the work that is entailed by every job in the company. For really small companies, or junior employees with a line manager, that may be true.

But as you said, the more senior you become, things completely change. There isn't a CEO in the world that could do all of the jobs they hire other executives to do (finance, sales, tax/accounting, HR, marketing, technology, operations, legal). It's impossible.

View on HN

>There isn't a CEO in the world that could do all of the jobs they hire other executives to do (finance, sales, tax/accounting, HR, marketing, technology, operations, legal). It's impossible.

Impossible, yet accomplished by thousands and thousands of small business owners every month.

For sure, for very small companies or small/junior teams who have a line manager.

This also doesn't quite acknowledge that even if you can do all of those functions [in a small business or one-person company] it does not mean you're actually good at those jobs.

It's hard to manage if you don't have a clue about what you're managing. Every estimate looks equally realistic to you. You can't tell lies from the truth. Your own sense of other's performance is limited to easily faked "symptoms" of working hard, like spending a lot of time, or talking in meetings. You don't have to be good at the jobs beneath you to manage them, you just need a clue.

Definitely agree there.

2-person startups often have someone called a CTO.

Similarly, a small business owner might call themself a CEO.

Neither is wrong per-se, but when we're talking about CEOs who have hired a team of executives to run their company, it's most reasonable to assume that GP was not talking about such a small business.

> Impossible, yet accomplished by thousands and thousands of small business owners every month.

It's an appealing thought, but really they are doing a different job. Vast majority of those thousands of small business owners couldn't effectively step into one of those roles at even a mid-sized corp, let alone all of them.

Apparently actual CEOs can't either judging by the number of them that get golden parachutes for running a business into the ground.

Hahahahahaha, owned in such a concise way. To the moon!

The comment said that your boss can likely do your job, not that everyone more senior than you can.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com