I’m continually struck by how brave Andreas is for talking about his addiction problems out in public. In most every interview he leads with it when he could just easily say a vague: “I found myself with a lot of free time”.
Addiction can come with a LOT of shame baggage. To embrace vulnerability over it is quite substantial. Thank you Andreas for being a positive example for the world! Keep up the great work!
It can be a psychological trick you are playing on yourself by just putting it out there in public. Lots of people now know about it so you don't want to let them down by misstepping again.
In a way it's a form of holding yourself accountable.
I'm not sure how rehab works but I guess the first thing you need to do is to admit that you have a problem. And then you need to find ways to prevent yourself from giving in.
I think if more people were vulnerable, the world would be a kinder place. I also wish more CEOs were vulnerable. They are forced to "show strength" and "not complain" especially if they are a billionaire. But it would really show how much their lives are a mixed bag and we all face challenges and try to figure it out.
> They are forced to "show strength" and "not complain"
I wonder about this. Sometimes I think that is the job of a CEO: to put on a good face and keep and maintain “The Plan Is Gonna Work” vibes.
Every CEO I’ve worked under—no matter how compassionate they were on a personal level—has had a policy of absolutely crushing voices of dissent. Maybe not immediately, but within a couple quarters. At least when the dissent was regarding things that the CEO felt were not something they could address on the current roadmap.
I’ve come to appreciate that this attitude may be necessary… that companies (with headcounts in the 50-500 range at least) cannot afford to have some of their people pulling in a different direction than their roadmap. And that people who will do that must be excised.
But your comment makes me wonder… is that the only way? I think maybe a company like Valve lets their employees pull in different directions, and also then just allows them to be starved of resources. Which maybe is effectively the same? Or maybe is an innovation on the standard CEO model?
> I’ve come to appreciate that this attitude may be necessary… that companies (with headcounts in the 50-500 range at least) cannot afford to have some of their people pulling in a different direction than their roadmap. And that people who will do that must be excised.
There's a big difference between differing opinions and outright insubordination though, and one should not mistake one for the other.
IMHO, a good leader should encourage his underlings to express their opinions and giving him feedback and advice, but when the boss has made a decision then that decision should be followed.
A leader who does not allow the former is a weak leader.
But it is difficult sometimes, because being able to give and take criticism in a constructive way is a skill that not everyone has, but it can be learned.
> Every CEO I’ve worked under—no matter how compassionate they were on a personal level—has had a policy of absolutely crushing voices of dissent.
I think there's a really interesting confluence of factors here.
(A) CEOs tend to be psychopaths and/or narcissists -- people who care about others, or who don't have a bottomless need to prove their own self-importance simply don't become CEOs (or don't succeed at it). So of course they crush dissent: it is antithetical to their whole psyche. That comes from their weak, fragile egos, not any real "leadership" traits. That being said ...
(B) Luckily, having a singular, narrow-minded focus is sometimes good for a company. And the times when it's really needed, this narcissistic ego-fragility of the CEO happens to be beneficial ("wartime CEO"), at least for those companies that survive.
(C) Survivorship bias eliminates the cases where the singular, narrow-minded focus driven by the CEO's narcissism actually completely destroys the company. You haven't worked under them because they destroyed the company before you applied. Darwinism does the rest: good companies survive long enough for you to work for them because the narrow-minded idea the narcissistic CEO focused on happened to be the right one at that time. The company looks strong, the CEO looks smart, and then they exit to another CEO job and completely fuck it up, because they've never actually been smart, never been a good leader, never had all the answers -- they just got lucky, and the lucky ones are the ones who are around to be seen and worked for.
(D) When it's "peacetime", not "wartime", the narcissism of CEOs is slowly eating away at the company, corrupting it from the inside out, but it doesn't matter so much, because the company is generally doing well. They can hire and fire whoever they want; their "singular focus" is just ignored by the people who are actually doing the work, and the company plods along, being productive despite the cancer slowly growing inside of it.
We forget the bad CEOs, misattribute random success to good leadership, and ignore their parasitism when the company is doing well. We praise them when they save a struggling company, even if the company is only struggling due to their past ineptitude. And so we perpetuate the cycle of CEOs generally looking like strong, visionary leaders, when they are nothing more than narcissistic parasites who occasionally force a struggling company to randomly do exactly what it needed to survive.
Of course letting your employees pull in different directions is a better strategy for the long-term health of the company. But long-term health of the company is not what CEOs, nor shareholders, nor board members, nor anyone pulling any strings actually cares about. Of course this entire treatment mostly applies to publicly traded companies, or companies with an "exit strategy".
> Valve lets their employees pull in different directions
Valve is not a publicly traded company, and therefore its CEO is actually invested in its long-term health.
Addiction can come with a LOT of shame baggage. To embrace vulnerability over it is quite substantial. Thank you Andreas for being a positive example for the world! Keep up the great work!