Some execs have already jumped ship. From the article:

"In the final months of 2023, several top executives announced their departures, including Twitch’s chief product officer, chief customer officer and chief content officer. Twitch also lost its chief revenue officer, who worked on Twitch from within Amazon’s Ads unit."

Funny, I read this just recently.

https://adrianco.medium.com/signs-that-its-time-to-leave-a-c...

Sounds like a sweet gig, how do I land one?

Be born in the aristocracy[0] or land one of the very small openings where executives get hired from outside the circle via executive recruiting, which usually means networking your way to VP / SVP at a some kind of notable firm or otherwise getting close to attainment of the executive class.

I hear being an ex-founder is useful in this regard. Apparently, working at McKinsey or Bain or one of the other large "prestigious" consulting firms is also a good move. Going to Harvard, Yale, Stanford or similar univerisities is almost a hard requirement. Almost[1].

Or, in the rarest of events, found a business that is successful and somehow manages to get big enough that you get status by proxy.

In any case, sans the last (and rarest) way, you'll have to walk the walk and talk the talk. It can get unsavory.

[0]: Oligarchy and Plutocracy fit too. Take your pick. To grossly oversimplify: If you're part of the Aristrocratic families (Rockefellers, Dursts etc) thats one way. Another is via being apart of the oligarchy (corporate power is alive and well. from oil companies to big tech) which is often intertwined with aristrocratic insitutions (Harvard, Yale etc). Finally, of course, you have the mesh of percentage at the top that fall into Plutocracy, which are wealthy and powerful themselves but are in service of even wealthier and more powerful oligarchs and artistrocrats in many cases.

[1]: Somehow around the edges you can find your way into it without this, but its challenging to say the least. Usually (but not entirely) its due to the rarest case, being a successful entreprenuer and surviving long enough to be recongized by proxy. Though, sometimes servant becomes the master. See outside executive recruiting

It seems like we could check this. Is your hypothesis that an outsized number of SVP/EVP at top paying tech companies are going to be from either dynastic wealth or from traditional Ivy backgrounds?

They already hail largely from top 50 colleges[0][1], for instance.

We know that Ivy League graduates have better access to opportunity and privilege than anyone else, there's enough out there on this that I would consider it common knowledge by now.

[0]: https://academicinfluence.com/rankings/schools/which-college...

[1]: Note, I didn't say Ivy league, but arisotricatic institutions. These include many state universities with large alumni endowments and historical privileges.

I don’t care that much about fortune 500. I make more than some C level on the lower end of the list as an IC at FAANG. I’m not talking about people making high six or low seven figure a year packages, i’m talking about people making more than most professional athletes.

Then squarely look at the Ivys. Majority come from there either directly or by lineage.

Bohemian Grove, after the human sacrifice. They throw the skull up at the Owls Nest Camp like flowers at a wedding and the person to catch it becomes the next megacorp executive.

Sell your soul. You have to be capable of looking at people and erasing their humanity/removing your empathy.

Necessary but not sufficient.

Also, don't confuse empathy and sympathy - you need to extinguish the latter, but the former is incredibly important to your ability to play suckers.

I think you might have them backwards? Empathy is the one where you viscerally feel the other person, sympathy is where you can simulate what they're feeling but without that deeper connection, or at least that's how I was taught it.

How dare those people build a business and create jobs! They must have no humanity.

Geez.

Most execs aren't founders

These are just some of the lies that anyone in a position to make money exploiting people tells themselves, talk to any drug dealer, you'll get similar answers. We all do it to some extent though, the developer creating a heinous subscription cancel flow, the designer making bail bonds ads. You build walls and look the other way. Every one of these actions forces you to give up some of your empathy for the individuals you exploit, the scale at which most execs operate is just mind boggling in comparison.

In the immortal words of George Carlin: "It's a big club, and you ain’t in it."

ask sam altman what he did - I still can't figure out how he went from "startup that went nowhere" to "hand out other people's money at YC until paulg fires him" to "CEO of openai".

Something called hard work?

and they say HN has no sense of humour, bravo

Please go try to build a company, hire people, make payroll, and.... actually build something. Then get back to me.

Bless you my sweet summer child.

(OP, in some of the longform pieces written since The Event they touch on this transition being a mystery too, but I think it's a tale as old as time: earnest, smile on their face, performs work and passion, team player, right place right time and asked.)

Econ 101, read it.

I'm almost expecting a mention of bootstraps, and not of the CSS framework variety.

Nah, just a basic understanding of how a business works. I suggest you read up!

Glad I'm not the only one