6 ms·

Many comments are missing the point or just totally backwards. I have been both an IC eng and a founder / CTO (though me and my cofounder ran it more like co-CE

by bwest87 21d ago

Many comments are missing the point or just totally backwards. I have been both an IC eng and a founder / CTO (though me and my cofounder ran it more like co-CEOs). AI's will not be replacing CEOs (or other great execs) because being CEO (especially of a startup) is all about a few things, and all of those things are almost structurally what AI can not do. It's all about... * Setting a strong, non-consensus vision. -> AI's are trained to produce the median / mode answer. So this almost disqualifies them by default. * Having courage to do the correct, obvious thing even when your team or investors don't think it's the right call. (This might be firing someone everyone likes but who's role is no longer needed, it might be changing strategies away from the product everyone just spent 6 months on, etc. etc. the list goes on). -> Ben Horowitz has called this kind of decision basically the entire value of a CEO. This is also EXACTLY where today's LLMs keep getting worse and worse. They are utterly spineless. * Having unique skills and credibility to build a team -> This can come from many sources (track record, vision, charisma, specific achievements, network, etc.) , but people need to want to join YOUR team, not someone else's. They have to believe that YOU are going to win against the market. There is no way you're going to have an edge by using a commercially available AI API with an open source harness at the helm. That is just so utterly uncompelling to top candidates. * Fundraising -> On the surface, very ammenable to AI, but again, as an investor, would you seriously invest in a CEO that is literally replicatable by any other company? The value I can see for something like this is a human to get a "2nd pair of eyes". But humans have tons of advisors already and generally speaking, getting takes on what you should do as CEO is not the hard part. It's seeing through the fog of war, finding clarity, and then implementing that clarity across the org, which is surprisingly hard.

nitwit005 21d ago
> Setting a strong, non-consensus vision. -> AI's are trained to produce the median / mode answer. So this almost disqualifies them by default. Most human CEOs are disqualified then. Whenever I join a company these days, they stress how important the company's values are, and they are somehow basically the same as every other company.
brazukadev 20d ago
Everything you described can be replaced by someone + AI. With a much better quality than replacing devs with someone + AI.
psd1 20d ago
That rhymes with the reasons why AI can't replace engineers. VCs likely won't demand that you be replaced with a claude subscription. But shareholders might wonder why they should approve a fat package for a meatbag. Private equity, picking over dinosaurs, won't hesitate. Lindy Fiorina hacking up HP? That job is now mechanised.

by bwest87 21d ago

nitwit005 21d ago

> Setting a strong, non-consensus vision. -> AI's are trained to produce the median / mode answer. So this almost disqualifies them by default. Most human CEOs are disqualified then. Whenever I join a company these days, they stress how important the company's values are, and they are somehow basically the same as every other company.

brazukadev 20d ago

Everything you described can be replaced by someone + AI. With a much better quality than replacing devs with someone + AI.

psd1 20d ago

That rhymes with the reasons why AI can't replace engineers. VCs likely won't demand that you be replaced with a claude subscription. But shareholders might wonder why they should approve a fat package for a meatbag. Private equity, picking over dinosaurs, won't hesitate. Lindy Fiorina hacking up HP? That job is now mechanised.