Hacker News Reader

Comment by RickS | Hacker News Reader

During my exit from a previous employer over a CEO whose sexual misconduct makes Uber look like the ACLU, one of our investors gave me the advice that "the CEO sets the culture". The context there was that if the CEO and I didn't see eye to eye on something, that was never going to change while this person was CEO.

In the time since, I've found that advice to be so reliably true that it's one of the core things I use when deciding employers. A kind, pragmatic, ego-free CEO is mandatory for a culture that values the same. Likewise, the personality flaws in a CEO will propagate downward through the staff because everyone looks up to the CEO to signal what does and doesn't fly.

Anecdotally, I expect that Uber will not change while Travis is employed there, and as long as he makes more money than the lawsuits cost, (most of) his investors will find that perfectly agreeable.

View on HN

Literally, the age old wisdom holds true: "The fish rots from the head down".

Or "The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate.”

...if the CEO and I didn't see eye to eye on something, that was never going to change while this person was CEO.

This advice may be reliably true but I would also argue there are major exceptions. For example, take founder & ceo of any billion dollar company and you will find that they evolved drastically (in good and bad ways) over the years. Zuckerberg has radically transformed himself from an immature frat boy to a charitable, intelligent billionaire CEO. I am sure people who have known him over some period of time would disagree with your investor's line of thinking.

Totally agree with your point about zuckerberg. Zuckerburg evolved over time, but the culture did not, to my knowledge, radically diverge from zuckerberg. Facebook as a whole made that same cultural journey to maturity, which I think only reenforces the point.

Re: "founders can change" - I don't think it's the role of the staff to wait around while a guy spends years in management learning not to be a dick. If they put up with it, and it happens, fine that's great, but it doesn't impact the linkage between CEO and culture.

I don't think anyone will deny the linkage between CEO and culture. The prior comment was pointing out that CEO's can change, and culture will change alongside, hence refuting this statement "that was never going to change while this person was CEO."

Fair point.

>charitable, intelligent billionaire CEO.

The creepy and megalomaniacal strains of his personality, though, still seem to be there in full force and are reflected in his company and product.

creepy and megalomaniacal strains of his personality

If you choose to, you could attach those super subjective labels to almost any founder of a billion dollar consumer tech company.

You can attach a subjective label to anyone anywhere. But since words mean things, people can generally suss out how close they are to being an accurate description or not.

That may be true, but it doesn't really change the outcome -yes, you could stick around and hope the CEO does a Zuckerberg, but realistically the best strategy is to move on.

lol zuck wasn't an "immature frat boy"

dude spent his time studying latin, programmming and taking psych courses.

evan spiegel of snapchat is more your typical transformation from immature college kid to billion dollar company CEO

Once I found out Evan Spiegel is banging Miranda Kerr, I became determined to ruin Snapchat by purchasing far out of the money put options with my measly tax free savings account barely amounting to 1 ten-thousandth of his post-IPO net worth.

What do you make of his promise to "fundamentally change" his behaviour?

I think we'll see - and I'm hoping that he does - but people with power overall tend to have a very bad habit of making empty promises in the face of criticism.

If you or anyone else has a great way to bet biiiiig that he stays exactly the same, let me know.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com