I'm not upper management. Most upper management gets paid way too much for the value they bring.
But, when you have the opportunity to work under an excellent CEO or CTO you will learn that they do bring 10x or even 100x the value you bring to the team.
> But, when you have the opportunity to work under an excellent CEO or CTO you will learn that they do bring 10x or even 100x the value you bring to the team.
The same can be told about OP who claimed that they work 5-10 hours a week but their performance reviews have consistently ranged from mediocre to great. The point is, the hours you work is not an indicator for the value you bring to the team.
They are also capable of causing 10x as much damage. Their job is to make correct decisions because they supposed to have the permission and responsibility to make larger decisions.
Agree with your second statement. I work at a semiconductor startup. Both the CEO and the CTO are excellent folks. Kind, extremely competent, hardworking, and reasonable; I love my time spent interacting with them.
- Investing themselves into the company (bringing capital to help you grow)
- Domain specific knowledge. Hopefully they know the industry better than anyone.
- Management. Do not underestimate how far good management can go. It can really be a productivity multiplier - but the other way is true, too. If you have bad management, you're going to kill productivity.
I would love to see an experiment where a single CEO competes with a group of 100 experienced software engineers, sales people, product managers etc. I have a feeling that close to no CEO would win that one.
This is uncharitable, the parent comment explicitly said CEOs are a power multiplier.
Using your parallel, I think it'd be more fair to compare
> CEO + 300 software engineers, sales people, product managers
> 400 software engineers, sales people, product managers in a flat structure
I tend to think that the former would be more efficient, because otherwise we would be seeing at least some organizations of the latter type outcompeting the former on the free market. We don't, with 1-2 exceptions.
But, when you have the opportunity to work under an excellent CEO or CTO you will learn that they do bring 10x or even 100x the value you bring to the team.