Comment by palata

Comment by palata 3 days ago

> They are based on what others pay.

That's the excuse given to make you accept those higher salaries. The truth is that there are not infinitely many positions for a CEO. There are certainly more people who can be competent CEOs than CEO positions.

If you give an indecent salary to your CEO, you will get a CEO who looks for a crazy salary. That doesn't mean it's the most competent CEO you could get. Try offering a decent salary and you'll see that people still apply. You may not get the typical narcissistic profile, but it's probably not a loss.

LtWorf 3 days ago

I feel the role of a CEO and CTO is to suck souls and make sure everyone is under constant surveillance. If people work less as a result they don't really care.

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palata 3 days ago

In my experience, a CEO pretty much sets the company culture. And it feels really weird to choose someone who's here for money/title to set your culture. But of course, the CEO is not chosen by the employees, but rather by other people who are also here for the money/title :-).
In a startup, the CEO also convinces VCs to invest. And again it's interesting: VCs have no clue about the technology, so you would think they try to invest for CEOs who set a good company culture. But instead they get convinced by the CEOs who bullshit them the best. Which makes sense: not only VCs don't have a clue about the technology, but somehow they think they actually do understand. I have heard a few discussions between CEO and VCs in startups (talking about the technology I was actually working on), and it was hilarious.
> If people work less as a result they don't really care.
They just don't know. Even if they genuinely try to ask feedback from the employees, it's biased. Employees generally don't give honest feedback because it's a risk for them (especially if the company culture is bad, which is where the feedbacks would matter the most).

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