> Everyone on this site is so anti-C-suite it's crazy. All the standard "big company CEO bad, me entry level employee good" talking points.
This condescending "entry level employee good" thing is total nonsense. It's absolutely common for many 30 year career stretches to never actually see a decent hard-working executive out in the wild. And if you do actually encounter one, then there's a decent chance that you also got to watch that person get dethroned and replaced with someone worse by political machinations of the rest of the executive suite!
What is crazy is dismissing thousands of man-years of lived experience with completely broken "leadership" as.. what exactly, jealousy? But most of the people that hate the C-suite probably don't want to work there, and probably don't even really expect fair compensation at this point, they just want a little more accountability, and a little less hypocrisy.
And just in case you actually want to understand the angst and the zeitgeist around this stuff, I'll add this more subtle point. Engineers that work in tech today are increasingly seen by outsiders as roughly equivalent to, IDK, blood-diamond tycoons. But the fact is that lots of engineers are struggling too, and anyway we didn't ruin the world, the MBAs did while they told us (and everyone else) they were building something different. There's a strong reluctance to shoulder all this blame for the executive class, because at the end of the day or the end of our careers, most engineers actually still have to live next to normal people and won't get to fuck off to the Hamptons or whatever monied enclaves executives use to insulate themselves from the world.
> It's absolutely common for many 30 year career stretches to never actually see a decent hard-working executive out in the wild.
Really? In my bubble this is far from common and more likely ignorance to what executives are doing. Execs tend to become so because they are highly motivated people willing to dedicate themself to their jobs.
I had an employee once would would constantly complain about their old bosses, all of them as far as I could see. He was a really smart guy with potential but so negative about anyhting leadership. One day I decided to roll the dice and said something like "you always talk about how bad your bosses are, and no doubt you'll add me to the list when you move to the next company. Have you ever considered we all get a bad boss or two, but when every boss is bad maybe you're the problem not them". I knew this was a risky move but it worked. He took it on board and became a much better contributor and dropped this 'all bosses are bad' type approach.
I bet your bubble congratulated you when you used your soft skills to encourage a problem employee to become a better contributor. Just curious though, could you actually do the job of this contributor? And if that employee had your own job in leadership, do you think they could maybe also come up with the creative idea that for solving personnel problems, one need only loom threateningly, and declare quietly "Maybe You're the Problem"? Very subtle. It's almost like a power difference solved the problem all by itself, without needing any problem solving skills.
I've had great bosses, but that's not what we're discussing. This is about executives. And while I agree that executives are certainly highly motivated, I just think that at a certain level mostly that is motivation to lie, misdirect, deflect, and steal. This also isn't about small businesses, which are much more likely to have legitimate entrepreneurs or merit-based processes, even at the top. For most medium-sized businesses and certainly for large ones, everything is different and anyone can see that pedigree, nepotism, and failing upwards all become more dominant factors. Take an honest look at yourself and your bubble and the line workers. Who can do who's job, really? Which work is more skilled?
This condescending "entry level employee good" thing is total nonsense. It's absolutely common for many 30 year career stretches to never actually see a decent hard-working executive out in the wild. And if you do actually encounter one, then there's a decent chance that you also got to watch that person get dethroned and replaced with someone worse by political machinations of the rest of the executive suite!
What is crazy is dismissing thousands of man-years of lived experience with completely broken "leadership" as.. what exactly, jealousy? But most of the people that hate the C-suite probably don't want to work there, and probably don't even really expect fair compensation at this point, they just want a little more accountability, and a little less hypocrisy.
And just in case you actually want to understand the angst and the zeitgeist around this stuff, I'll add this more subtle point. Engineers that work in tech today are increasingly seen by outsiders as roughly equivalent to, IDK, blood-diamond tycoons. But the fact is that lots of engineers are struggling too, and anyway we didn't ruin the world, the MBAs did while they told us (and everyone else) they were building something different. There's a strong reluctance to shoulder all this blame for the executive class, because at the end of the day or the end of our careers, most engineers actually still have to live next to normal people and won't get to fuck off to the Hamptons or whatever monied enclaves executives use to insulate themselves from the world.