Isn't the answer... most industries? My understanding is that large companies in all domains are heavily populated with executives and managers who came straight out of business school and into a leadership position.

There are those who rise through the rank and file up to the executive position too. I don't know the relative fractions are. But all of those kids who get business and management degrees end up somewhere, right?

Post-experience business school (MBA) can do that (that's usually leadership of 1-2 kids straight out of school), however to get an MBA you need work experience ... which means yeah, you have done the entry work somewhere

Note: I am not saying that they have done "basic" work (as in: developing code, flipping burgers etc.). But they definitely are not launched into leadership position without ever having done anything.

Even if so, that somewhere doesn't have to be the same industry you go with your first (usually not top-level) leadership position, and neither of those may be the industry in which you end up moving into a top-level leadership position.

In fact, i suspect more than half of them basically failed upwards. I can't be sure about this, because in many cases I could only see the piss-poor job they were currently doing, but I've experienced the incompetent junior-to-senior manager pipeline up close often enough that I wouldn't be surprised these senior managers were previously incompetent junior managers.

That's really not true. No one goes from MBA to a CxO leadership position at a large corporation. To pick 3 random examples:

CEO of McDonalds managed one back in 1993 and was the CEO of two other fast food restaurants

CEO of Caterpillar started in 1980 out of college at a company Caterpillar eventually bought.

CEO of CVS started out as a pharmacist at a drug store in that was acquired by CVS in 1990.

Someone in a leadership position typically will have spent decades serving in roles with increasing responsibility in their industry.

In pretty much any industry where the “basic work” isn't white collar professional work, executives tend to have very little if any experience with the basic work. Where the basic work is white collar professional work, that's somewhat less common, but it is still not unheard of to have executives with general management experience but not experience with the basic work of the industry (EDIT: Or even industry-specific management: recruiting executives whose qualifying experience is in a similar executive role in a different industry isn't uncommon; a CxO chosen who was formerly a CxO with the same value of x in a different industry is common.)

Most? Sorry for the blunt answer, but I really don't know how this can even be a question. The "I worked the assembly line and now I'm the CEO" is Hollywood fiction or outright lies in 99% of the cases.

Do you have a citation for 99% or are you... bullshitting?

Is it somewhere online?

Not to belabour a point sibling comments have already made but I think it's the other way around, actually. Much more common to have a CEO in tech who has been in the trenches than in other industries.

Compare the likelihood of a tech CEO having some software engineering/programming experience to the likelihood of an oil and gas executive having worked as a roustabout or a welder, or a healthcare industry exec having done rounds as a doctor or nurse.

Jeff Miller of Halliburton was a field manager.

Mike Wirth at Chevron is a chemical engineer and Chevron lifer.

Ben can Beurden of Shell is a chemical engineer and a Shell lifer.

Clay Williams at NOV is a petroleum in engineer.

Bob Dudley at BP is a chemical engineer and a BP lifer.

Paal Kibsgaard at Schlumberger is a petroleum engineer.

Ryan Lance at ConocoPhillips is a petroleum engineer.

I could go on, you get the idea. These CEOs have definitely been in the trenches.

Margins are fat enough in most tech verticals that operational efficiency often takes a back seat to driving the top-line. And once your growth starts to plateau, in comes a bean-counter CEO with a finance background.

management: 'that's not a helpful attitude right now'

From wiki, "Apodictic" or "apodeictic" (Ancient Greek: ἀποδεικτικός, "capable of demonstration") is an adjectival expression from Aristotelean logic that refers to propositions that are demonstrably, necessarily or self-evidently the case.

The industry could use more literature on the "court politics" of this process, including what happens socially if you lose the capital of those rich people, have a disagreement on strategic direction, or partner with rich people who themselves disagree on direction.

That is fundamentally different from people who just make up random shit that sounds good to whoever has money, without any idea or plans to materialise it or whether it's even possible.

You do raise a good point with Uber/theranos/dao.

The problem is that when "making it" is a huge long-shot (most tech ideas) and "faking it" is really easy (most tech ideas) then you end up with a whole lot of fakes that never make and a bunch of people who either need to come to grips with the fact that they are basically frauds or who will simply spin it as a "learning experience" and use their failure to promote themselves as having "made it", since who has ever made it without making a few mistakes, right?

Accountability is the big problem, but I also think that the superficiality of relationships is another big contributor. It's the same as accountability, really, just on a different scale and it's done before the "fraud".

I once went through an LGA (large group awareness) program where a part of it was about having small teams and buddies keeping each other accountable to their personal goals. There was a phrase that came out of that when people who were supposed to be holding each others accountable would both fail in their goals because neither wanted to call the other person out for fear of being called out themselves, or out of a sense of hypocrisy for giving someone shit when they had not finishing their own goals.

This was called "Cosigning each others bullshit" and I think it's what happens more often than not in high level business/political dealings. We'd have a lot less high-profile fraud/incompetence cases if more people had the courage to keep other people honest before it got to that point.

this is why we have so many hero myths/stories, to valorize those few people brave enough to pay those costs for the rest of us. that esteem bestowed is one of the few ways we can repay the costs (if only incompletely) that "heroes" incur for us.

Bullshitters never really followed this. It's the Trump game. Keep talking, making stuff up, while moving faster in the direction you want. And it's too hard to keep up, so implicitly people believe portions of it.

That's actually an interesting case because, although he didn't have MS BASIC at that point, he knew he'd be able to deliver it by the time he needed it. So, was he really faking it?

Causality then render a situation where bullshitters have now gotten so good at faking it that buyers of tech are simply herrings among hungry dolphins. Bullshitters in our industry have united and made it impossible for buyers (herrings) to see any other choice but to become swallowed as a meal. So they try their best to choose the very best dolphin to be swallowed by. And then they are swallowed.

Because:

- founders (who are bullshitters) will hire other bullshitters - the world is saturated with flawed, illogical messages and we have become used to it

Solution:

- stand the F up on every meeting where you hear BS, and call "shenanigans"!.

>> - stand the F up on every meeting where you hear BS, and call "shenanigans"!.

Great way to get yourself sidelined in the near future, and not being able to intervene when it will be your job to implement a fantasy...

The problem with being honest in a situation like this is, that it will disrupt everyone in that meeting, not just the bullshitter. You'll be perceived as a fire starter and the next meeting will likely take place without you -- organizations at a certain size can be very flexible this way. Or worse: They retaliate. Bullshitters are usually good at manipulating peoples perceptions. Once they feel threatened, they are likely to respond (in a way, you'll probably lose, since they can dictate the turf and the weapons).

A way I found to deal with a situation like this is: Try to gouge the impressions of the other participants of the meeting -- cigarette breaks are perfect for this kind of "talk in private". Try to figure out if they also found this or that aspect of the meeting a bit odd. If it is so (and it very likely is) call out the BS for what it is, but don't be too bold about it and focus on one - two key aspects, not more.

You are usually not alone in your perception of bullshittery and others are probably aware of it in one way or another. It can be a real eye-opener to them that they are not alone in thinking that, was was talked about before was a bit... exaggerated. Once they are aware they might percieve this notion in other aspects of the work of said bullshitter and it gets harder for them to get away with it.

I have to say, I have only limited experience with roles in higher management. Usally the higher up the food-chain, the better the bullshitters and the better the strategies and tactics of them -- it might not work that way when you are up against a hierarchy of self-proclaimed experts. But in smaller organizations and "everyday"-meeting that are somewhere "near production", this is a valid tactic, that has never failed me thus far.

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Gosh how I hate this form of office-politics...

@maze-le, realize, your fingers are going to get burnt, either way. Just do the right thing. For your kids. Because they are going to ask themselves: "why did daddy work so hard toward X, when X is so bad for humanity?"

Don't fucking do X, man, is all I'm saying. You know what X is.

I can relate to this to a 'T'. The worst is when they are sociopaths on top of everything else

Still something I'm trying to live up to and it's much easier said than done... likely there is a selection mechanism in these organizations where anyone with the courage to do that is recognized and passed over early, or else is removed as soon as they do this.

There is definitely such a thing as a "selection mechanism" and it lives within every organisation.

In the best of worlds people would be selected for X. X is not:

- feeding the "growth economy" - attribute to "the growth of the market" - "become a unicorn" - destroying wealth, and by wealth I mean "nature" - delegating responsibility not to yourself and your peers but to your offspring

I have no idea what X is and you know what, who cares? Who are we to strive for being the "best of worlds"? We haven't even gotten past the notion of being the "best of nations".