Comment by sulam | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sulam | Hacker News Reader

I’ve had an EA for three years dedicated to me (before that in my career it was always shared). They are definitely a super power, but only if you trust them. They really have to have a lot of context to do things you’d normally be doing. Without that trust you aren’t going to be getting the full potential out of the role.

I’ll give one example. My EA is aware that I have a desire to take some time off through the rest of the year. She knows what planned family vacations are of course and I gave her carte blanche to clear my schedule so I can take a day off here or there through the rest of the year. She knows my preferences in terms of ideal days of the week, which meetings are easy to reschedule vs which aren’t, what projects are especially hot right now, which execs I meet with that are usually flexible, etc. I keep her up to date on my priorities so she can always shift things appropriately. Project Take Time Off wouldn’t really be possible for me to delegate to her if she didn’t have all that context.

That's interesting. Are you saying that instead of telling her "I want to take next Friday off," she tells you "I cleared your schedule for next Friday so you can take off?"

I wouldn't bother hiring a PA that wasn't proactive to the point of doing that sort of thing

Proactive! More like telepathic

Maybe thats the 'executive' part of 'executive assistant'? They are taking action based on a abstract goal rather than a concrete wish. At least, that is my interpretation!

No, the 'executive' part of 'executive assistant' refers to the assistant typically working for an executive, or performing more advanced executive duties as opposed to an administrative assistant, whose role may be more general across a company. No one's livelihood should depend on having to read the room like a geisha.

>No one's livelihood should depend on having to read the room like a geisha.

Why not? Isn't that most jobs?

Seems to me a lot of jobs require you to "read the room" in one way or another. If some work doesn't need that, then a machine should just do it since that's what human excel at.

>Why not? Isn't that most jobs?

No. In most jobs, employees know specifically what their employers' requirements are, they have specific tasks and itineraries and boundaries. "Know what I want before I want it" isn't an appropriate expectation to have of any assistant.

I certainly would expect, for example, a senior or staff engineer to have far more autonomy in setting the requirements, specific tasks, and boundaries. Being able to predict the technical needs of the company before they are needed is a big part of those roles.

At a certain price point, it certainly is an appropriate expectation.

Even at my job, where all my work is laid out for me in the form of Jira tickets, fulfilling unsaid (or unknown) desires is hugely beneficial for my team, company, and career. Sure, I’m technically paid to solve problems, but really I’m paid for the ability to think creatively and execute autonomously.

Most jobs like you described are super low paid. The more agency you're supposed to use in your job to take decisions, generally the higher paid you'll be. It's like you want everyone to be a drone or else they're being exploited.

People who expect EAs to read minds are watching too many movies with butlers or pepper pots like secretaries.

Imagine asking your EA why they didn't do something you expected them to do without being explicit about what you want.

Maybe some people are flexible and just like to have a random day off every once in a while and don't care so much exactly if it's a certain day or not

Why would they do that in this scenario? There is a world of difference between trusting someone to clear your schedule and tell you that you are taking a day off, and silently expecting them to do that on a specific day.

Imagine asking a software engineer why they shipped code so slow it made a system unusable when “don’t slow the software down 1000x” wasn’t explicitly in the requirements.

This is exactly the same thing. Assistants are there to help people and to know what to do with high level directives.

“I want to take a stay at home vacation next week” should not require explicit instructions to reschedule everything and notify people…

If you think about it, this feels like the assistant version of a good developer. From a good senior developer I expect initiative. I expect them to have a high level view of the system while still working on the 'in the weeds' stuff. They proactively create a ticket for later to do that refactoring they think is really needed but we don't have time for right now and they ninja it in on Friday afternoon because they were done early with the work on the feature. Did I have to say anything about that? Nope! They just did it and I give them positive feedback about it when I notice it on Monday.

It seems like you want one person to be willing and eager to fill the role several employees, including half of your own. Or a genie.

A personal friend is this form of executive assistant. I think that's effectively exactly what they signed up for - a very wealthy couple pays them to do whatever needs to be done. Delegating everything explicitly seems like it would significantly reduce the value of an assistant.

My understanding is once the trust is built in these kind of roles, the assistant is a professional/personal boundary crossing extension of the employer and is prized for their ability to resolve concerns without those concerns having to surface. Agreed that it can be a demanding, temperamental, unpredictable job.

There are a lot of people in this thread who seem outraged because someone is expected to have skills they don't have. I personally know both people who are, and people who have, this type of help.

There are people in this world who are very good at empathizing and very good at organizing, and those people can make a ton of money as what used to be known as being a majordomo.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majordomo

This is definitely a weird thread in that regard. Maybe people aren't appreciating how many people will do all sorts of things for money? The more outrageous requirements require a more trusting relationship between employer and employee, certainly, and a skilled EA (or majordomo, it seems) is hugely valuable.

My EA-style friend is in a major US city right now supervising the construction of a house - that absolutely wasn't in their employment contract, is not something they have experience in, but it's something their employer wanted. It's hard to get too up in arms when the position is well paid, exciting, and voluntary.

I think the background outrage levels are abnormal, doesn’t take much for someone to be on tilt.

Could also be some folks thinking if you earn enough to afford an assistant than you earn too much.

People that think like that are setting themselves up to be a lifelong loser.

Paying an EA is no different than paying McDonald’s to cook for you. Outsourcing things you can afford to is how we have a productive society.

If someone can make $800k a year pouring their life into their job and delivering tons of value for customers, that’s great. They should do that even if they spend $100k on an EA.

I’d take 50 highly productive people over 50 clock punchers any day. Demonizing them is just tall poppy syndrome.

My friends daughter is only 17 and quite radicalized, detests anyone who can afford a home, car, etc. It’s quite sad.

I get that you want to down vote this, no worries there.

I respectfully disagree with your assessment though. I work with many such individuals and it's exactly how I got where I am today. By being one of those guys that care. I love working with these guys. It's a pleasure to do so. I really love that I'm at a company right now where we have a lot of these kinds of individuals working together.

Yes I have a label of "manager" on my forehead. All that means is that I have to do some stuff most guys would rather not deal with and that's fine. It means I code less. That's fine. I enjoy the mix. They code more and I enjoy seeing them make decisions by themselves, create tasks to make visible what they are doing and why, so that I can defend them against upper management easily. I can shield them and I do so with pleasure.

On the other hand there are developers that I need to basically do the work for. What's the point of doing 80% of the work myself and then transferring over to them to spend 80% of the time for a task to do 20% of the work? At that point I'd rather not have that person on the team and do the work myself.

And to tie this back to the exec assistant topic: if the CEO has to do 80% of the work, what's the point of the executive assistant?

What about that story implies that it is the work of several people?

That’s the bog standard description of senior software engineers at any top tier companies. You get paid a shitload of money because you’re not just parsing requirements in the bare minimum and building the wrong thing. That’s what outsourcing companies are for.

I’ve been working with this person for three years. It’s not telepathy, it’s shared context and experience.

Well, I want days off when I want days off, and I wouldn't want that.

She doesn’t schedule things on Fridays and if it were required for something important she would communicate it to you.

That’s right. I have the 6th off because that was relatively easy to clear.

I realize this seems bass-ackwards to how you normally do things. The normal way of doing things results in my not taking days off.

EAs on a mission for their boss are a major pain in the behind, they tend to act as though their boss is the most important person in the universe, which inside the company they work for may well be the case, but they tend to project that well outside the company as well. They also tend to consume a disproportionate amount of time in others to save their precious boss a few minutes.

The main function of EAs for people that aren't all that important is to make them feel more important. "I'll have my EA contact your EA to set up a date for a five minute phone call".

I'll have my EA contact your EA to set up a date for a five minute phone call

I’m not even an executive but this is a big time suck with someone outside your organization so you can’t see their calendar. I wish I could outsource this to an EA

Calendly is a much cheaper option. Managing my calendar would be the last thing I delegate to PA.

I find calendly depersonalizing and extremely insulting. I.e. the shift of power when someone says "Hey, let's find a time to chat" and the answer is "Here is my calendly link, good luck". I usually break off the conversation there.

I am slightly confused, why is saving time for both parties considered insulting?

my take from parents post is that he finds "the shift in power" insulting.

while i agree that saving time is a worthwhile goal, i can sympathise with the unhappiness over beeing deferred to an (online) form for stuff that could be tackeld here and now.

This unhappiness seems to me why it's so important Calendly exists: if it's not important enough to merit a visit to an online form, it's sure as heck not important enough to merit interrupting my flow.

You're the second person I've heard say this lately. To me, using Calendly feels like demurring to the reality that you have times that work for you, these are the times that work for me, my respect for you is so strong: pick any one of them, and I'll be there. If anything, the posturing seems submissive.

Nope, because if you are a heavy calendar user there are tons of things that could be trivially shuffled. A calendly link is “I will fit you in only if it’s extremely convenient for me”.

“Here’s the link to my calendly. If you don’t see anything that works in the next week or so, just send me over a few times that would work for you & I can reshuffle things to make one of them work.”

Exactly. From my experience Calendly works 99% of time, and remaining 1% is where it is better to handle it personally than through PA.

If someone says "Hey, let's find a time to chat", would you refer this person to your PA to schedule a call? I hope not, and just like normal people you would look at your calendar and find time slot right away. This is not a use case for Calendly. It is good for asynchronous conversations.

Breaking the conversation at the point, where you are being offered to pick a convenient time looks like a good question for AITA on Reddit.

If it takes great effort to bestow this institutional knowledge on the EA, is it buying you that much of your time back? You already know the algorithm for when free time can be most easily made. Just a matter of flipping through the calendar for a brief, few moments, versus the hours spent with the EA getting them up to speed on these nuances.

Sounds like once there is an initial brain dump, the rest of the year you can unload that stress

The calendar flips don't scale as well as the EA does. The holidays are just an example, there are a million similar things that the EA can do with the same training.

Not to mention some people are just better at that than others. When I’m operating at my full personal capacity, ‘just spend a few minutes’ is the siren’s call. I’m not an executive but I’d pay out of my own pocket if i could find the right person for that job.

Yeah, the proactive part of it could become so much more than "it's been two months since you took a long weekend— I cleared your calendar so you can have next Friday off," it might also be "and here are 2-3 possible options for gifts for your spouse / activities to do with the kids that weekend / options for date night / birthday cards to send to Aunt Flo / etc etc"

I've never had someone be this role for me, but I definitely know I waste a lot of time during the day (both working and non-working) thinking/fretting/researching these kinds of things, and I could imagine it being a real boon to be able to fully set that all aside, knowing it was in good hands. Nothing is a silver bullet on being able to focus on the things we want to focus on, of course, but it would be one more set of excuses to remove.

Exactly. This is one example, but it scales to many.

Decision fatigue is a thing and if you're an executive then there's more important decisions to be made.

We’ve been working together for three years. I wouldn’t try and pull this off on day 1 of the relationship, but after three years of working together we talked about it for 15 minutes in our weekly 1:1 and I have a day off next week that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Win!

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