A recurring theme in so many startups I've seen inside is how the CEO in particular is extremely aloof with regards to presence. Sometimes that translates to aloofness for staff, but what more often happens is that when the CEO _does_ come in they expect other people to be there. So long as the alignment is good they don't care, but when it's not aligned, they just assume nobody is ever around and get real pissy about people showing up on time.
Fortunately the "good" ones are able to disassociate how much of that emotion is just them being lonely vs how much of it is actual synergy-seeking or whatever. The worst cases are people who get real tyranical, on top of just like... outright not showing up to do the actual day-to-day work that they are blockers on. A proper theory of the mind can often be quite absent.
My really glib take on this phenomenom is that a not-insignificant chunk of decision making for HR stuff is "make the CEO fill the tip-top of their
Maslovian pyramind". And to a lesser extent other executives who have decided that their job is their life.
Very annoying to listen to post-facto RTO arguments when you can feel the loneliness as the driving factor. Make a fun space, and make people's work schedules be loose enough to where they can actually relax in the space, and some people will show up! Or at the very least, give the CEO a fun side project to work on or something.
Fortunately the "good" ones are able to disassociate how much of that emotion is just them being lonely vs how much of it is actual synergy-seeking or whatever. The worst cases are people who get real tyranical, on top of just like... outright not showing up to do the actual day-to-day work that they are blockers on. A proper theory of the mind can often be quite absent.
My really glib take on this phenomenom is that a not-insignificant chunk of decision making for HR stuff is "make the CEO fill the tip-top of their Maslovian pyramind". And to a lesser extent other executives who have decided that their job is their life.
Very annoying to listen to post-facto RTO arguments when you can feel the loneliness as the driving factor. Make a fun space, and make people's work schedules be loose enough to where they can actually relax in the space, and some people will show up! Or at the very least, give the CEO a fun side project to work on or something.