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Comment by brey | Hacker News Reader

I'd add a caveat - I've seen this done before, but with unintended consequences.

exposing a CEO directly to your users is a great idea for all the reasons given, but it can be distracting if they seize on a randomly chosen user's idea as the Next Big Thing which Must Be Implemented Now because it resonates for some reason.

users' ideas and suggestions are great in aggregate, but any given one can be totally the wrong thing to adopt just because the CEO searchlight happens to pause on it and it's given disproportionate attention.

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If you feel your CEO lacks good judgment to the extent that you are afraid to expose him/her to customers lest he/she latches on to an issue that is not so important just because the customer he/she was exposed to happened to have that problem, then I think you either have the wrong CEO or are vastly underestimating his/her decision-making skills.

Having the "wrong CEO" is a hard problem to solve as an employee.

Really? I view that as a very straight-forward problem to solve. Leave the company.

I can speak from immediate experience that it is frequently not that easy. There are a lot of places with very few jobs, and plenty of people tied down geographically for other reasons. I'm not saying you can't change your employment situation, but we shouldn't hand wave that away as easy. As I said, it can be a hard problem to solve, that doesn't mean the solution can't be straightforward.

But then I would be unemployed.

Not if you employ the law of two feet.

... drop-kick your CEO? Could work.

> I think you either have the wrong CEO or are vastly underestimating his/her decision-making skills.

Unfortunately the demand for the 'right' CEO far exceeds supply. Then add the criteria of treating employees with respect, motivational ability, and integrity, and you can see why people stay in their current jobs.

(And if you ever find a CEO like that, then they will be lured away to greener pastures.)

not really that they lack good judgement, more that it's risky exposing them to a non-representative sample.

Agreed in that listening to your customers is great, giving them what they want is really great, getting lost in all the projects of giving everyone everything is a real problem. Too many 'feature' projects can really damage a product.

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