LogFAQs > #966231699

sugarysyntax posted...

the c-suite or jobs higher up the ladder are not for everyone. unless you're in a complete joke of a company, they're actually very hard jobs and the stress is not really worth the money. unless you really really like managing large teams and having to understand products and designs in and out and be good with potential customers and potential investors, and having to always be perfect in your recall of all company information...you're probably not going to like c-suite or higher-up manager type of jobs. those people are usually gonna have to be passionate about the business they're in in order to put up with that effort.

they get paid a lot but it's not for no reason, usually. many of those people are experts in their fields, even if some of their more recent hands-on exp is lacking, they still have a long tenure in whatever field/business they're in.

This is actually very accurate. The problem is that there is a mismatch in the skill required to do these top-level jobs and the people that are eventually hired to do them.

Generally speaking, the ones that do it well you won't hear about, because they are too busy taking care of their companies and producing results while staying scandal-free. The ones you hear about are the bad ones, because they often make news headlines for their incompetence. It's hard to say if there's more competent ones or incompetent ones out there without doing a statistical study of it. Mere hearsay and anecdotes will always make it seems like the incompetent ones are more numerous.

I do want to add another point to this conversation of how the incompetent ones get promoted. I've been in hiring committees where we hire Vice Presidents and the advantage of applying for jobs that high up is that you can claim the credit of every department below you as your doing. I had VP candidates tell us about these breakthrough products or processes developed by their departments that impressed the rest of the hiring committee. In one particular example, I happened to know in detail about that particular product, so I questioned them with finer details about it (things that someone who really had a hand in its success would know). They stumbled through their answer, showing me they really had no idea what the product was and that they just had a really competent team and he had nothing to do with their success.

But to people who don't bother to ask for follow-ups, candidates like that can build an impressive resume of product launches, initiatives, fundraising campaigns, and partnerships created by their strong teams, even if the teams completed these tasks in spite of them and not because of them.

Meanwhile an individual contributor at a company can be the key person to launch a successful venture, but they don't get any credit for it because they only worked on a piece of it, and the boss gets the full credit.