What does a CEO(and other managers) do really?

Sometimes the claim is "set vision" - which AI can extract from the collective.

Someimes the claim is to prioritize the work (with bias), AI can extract that from the collective too, right?

Making resources available to the team? AI.

Coordinating between teams? AI.

Can the AI do this in a more un-biased way? Can it refine collective intelligence and desire into objective goals?

More than a software factory id love to see a manager-factory.

One thing, AI cannot do (yet) is bring the network. Like when you hire folk from Booth or Sloan so you can sell to places that hired Booth and Sloan grads.

> What does a CEO(and other managers) do really?

Be friends with the board. Negotiate high pay and benefits (for themselves), and a golden parachute in case things go south (which they do most often). Take credit for things that were going to happen anyways. Blame xyz for things that didn't work out.

These are all impossible tasks for AI. AI can't play golf.

To paraphrase Andy Grove:

> The job of an executive is: to define and enforce culture and values for their whole organization, and to ratify good decisions.

(And that's the whole list! Nowhere do you find set tasks or make decisions)

To me, that means that they're still pretty essential - on both fronts, AI needs values and AI needs a system that can tell whether decisions are good or not.

At my current job, a 10 person startup, the CEOs job is to generate leads, talk to potential customers, and close deals. He, along with the other founders, shape what we work on based on what he thinks it’s possible for us to sell. He’s essential to the business.

At my previous 50k person company I never talked to anyone within 4 levels of the CEO and thought he was useless. But realistically he probably had a somewhat similar job - talking with the board, talking with politicians, and talking with the CEOs of other companies in the effort to lower costs (tax breaks, partnerships, etc) and generate sales (contracts, partnerships, etc).

In companies large enough to have a board, the CEO's job is to manage relationships with customers, vendors, and wall street. If his company is big enough, he'll need to manage relationships with the government too. In fact, among founders whose business became big, the number one complaint you hear is how little of their busy day is spent on their actual product anymore.

AI is not very good at forming and building human relationships.

> Sometimes the claim is "set vision" - which AI can extract from the collective.

To be an effective CEO, you have to make judgement calls that the collective can’t always have wisdom and context on, is confidential, or requires fast decision making during which there are interactive discussions or negotiations!

Their job is to create an environment where people with a view as narrow and naive as yours can actually do something wholly productive.

Good ones actually are quite aware of the industry, connect the dots and setup the company to be sustainable, growing and ready when its time to be ready.

Like investing in a prototype which solves industry issues the CEO understood.

Same as the CTO just that the CTOs focus is doing the same thing with technology. Like in an org with a lot of 'AI? who cares" saying and seeing the future of it and intorducing it in time and not until everyone else already did it.

Defining core principles like the tech stack, making the decision to keep the current setup or migrating to something 'new' but better in longterm (like migrating from or to kubernetes)

Marketing and they hire and fire important people. That's about it though, where we should take the product, what features to do next, partnerships, these are pretty obvious to anyone paying attention.

They siphon away as much money as they can get away with , screw over their underlings and hop onto their golden parachutes whenever shit hits the fan, which with their short-sighted coke-fuelled decisions always happens.

Well, as soon as they start being replaced is there a network to bring.

Managers coach and develop people. Helping them grow, nurturing their strengths and connecting them with opportunities that help them achieve more.

At least the good ones do.

https://youtu.be/UOYi4NzxlhE?t=82

> can AI do <hard thing>

Not yet. Maybe soon. I'm not placing bets on timelines.

> What do CEOs do

No clue. I'm not there yet. Maybe it's critical. Maybe nothing.

> and other managers

There are a lot of bad managers. I'm halfway not terrible. A significant part of my job is setting technical direction in the same way I did as a staff+ engineer but without the overhead of asking somebody else's permission. Another large part is the "shit shield" function -- somebody thinks they want something, and they either find themselves blocked by me or immediately satisfied with whatever code I'm able to cook up between meetings, not breaking the team's concentration. A huge part is basically just being a teacher, and I love teaching (if it weren't so pessimized by society that might actually be my career). A large part of it is navigating organizational nonsense (for "reasons," I'm rambling, ask if you're curious). And... whatever. My job didn't get easier going into management. Not all of it should have to exist in the abstract, but in any specific company it's still an important function.

> What does a CEO(and other managers) do really?

The answer is to be responsible to the business. The buck stops at the CEO. Therefore, their responsibilities are technically everything in the entire company. And I think many people who have only worked for other people underestimate how valuable that responsibility is.

CEO's exist as a sink for liability. When something goes wrong, they are the fall guys, that's ultimately their job. That's why CEO compensation is generally correlated strongly to earnings and they usually have golden parachutes.

Without a CEO to fire when the business goes south, how is the board supposed to respond? Taking accountability? lmao

They manage people. They’re people people.

> What does a CEO(and other managers) do really?

Take risk with other people's lives and earn the big bucks for that.

They ensure the company is funded.

In the current legal framework, AI can't be held accountable, a human being is required.

That is what the CEO is for – to be on the receiving end of beatings and flogging if the business they are at the masthead of effs something up.

> What does a CEO(and other managers) do really?

The point of a CEO is to be able to deploy a fully authoritative business delegation to any golf course on earth within 48 hours.

This isn't really a joke. At some point, you need to meet with your customers if you intend to close a deal. B2C is also an option but good luck actually making realistic income in this market without an army at your back.

I have yet to meet a developer (myself included) that I would trust to be alone in the board room with a very large client. Total mastery of the technology is great, but you also need to convince people who aren't compelled by rational technological arguments. Sometimes the only way to convince them is to go on a very expensive fishing trip.

CEOs get a lot of hate for the pay and power, but they endure a lot of shit that most developers couldn't handle for more than five minutes. Sitting at fancy restaurants with these people is torture. I can respect anyone who refuses to believe this, but it's true. There's no cuisine or vintage of wine that can compensate for awful company.