[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What Is a COO?
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Ask HN: What Is a COO?
Throughout my career I've held exclusively engineering positions.
However, I've noticed the parts of my work I enjoy the most aren't
necessarily the technical challenges, but instead improvements to
process and productivity. My favourite books are 'Getting Things
Done' [0], and 'Deep Work' [1]. I also consistently try to find
improvements to communication, requirement clarification, and
decision making. Is this mindset aligned with what would be
expected from a COO? I know virtually nothing about the position
apart from a line that stuck with me (paraphrased): 'A COO is
similar to a CEO, where they have to do the same amount of work but
don't get to make any of the decisions'. Do you have any insights
or books/article recommendations for what the role of COO looks
like? It would be greatly appreciated [0]
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1633.Getting_Things_Done [1]
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25744928-deep-work
Author : simonhfrost
Score : 96 points
Date : 2022-11-15 12:53 UTC (10 hours ago)
| walthamstow wrote:
| I like the line from Succession:
|
| `I'm the Chief Operating Officer: if it operates, I chief it`
| indymike wrote:
| In short, the best analogy I have for COO is from the Navy. The
| Captain is the CEO. The Executive Officer is the COO.
| mathattack wrote:
| It's a bunch of functions that the CEO doesn't want to
| micromanage. At many tech companies it's sales and support but
| not Tech Ops. At retailers it can be running the supply chain. At
| some places it's facilities.
| sc90 wrote:
| If you've watched The Wire, Stringer's the COO. "And you see
| this? It's the Queen. She smart, she fierce. She move anyway she
| want as far as she want. And she, is the go get shit done piece.
| Remind me of Stringer."
| pighive wrote:
| what is Prop Joe?
| sc90 wrote:
| Prop Joe's a King like Avon, except for the other side.
| kshahkshah wrote:
| No no, Prop Joe is a member of the board
| drexlspivey wrote:
| What's Slim Charles' title?
| reydequeso wrote:
| He became COO.
| sc90 wrote:
| Slim is probably a Craig Federighi or Eddy Cue back when
| Steve Jobs was at the helm. VPs who report directly to the
| CEO.
| kgrin wrote:
| General Counsel
| csdvrx wrote:
| Like Saul Tigh on Galactica: the XO
| acqbu wrote:
| let dog = 'dog'; let food = 'scraps'
|
| console.log(`${dog} gets ${food}`);
|
| dog = 'coo'; food = 'what ceo doesn\'t wanna do';
|
| console.log(`${dog} gets ${food}`);
| athorax wrote:
| I don't think there is any one specific answer. It is going to
| vary a lot company to company and will depend highly on the CEO.
| Places I have worked, the CEO & COO operate very closely together
| with the COO usually focusing more on the internal company
| functions while the CEO focused more externally.
| tobr wrote:
| > Is this mindset aligned with what would be expected from a COO?
| I know virtually nothing about the position apart from a line
| that stuck with me...
|
| I know even less. What's the O?
| mattweinberg wrote:
| Chief _Operating_ Officer
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| "Operations" and COO, in my ignorance, I find extremely domain-
| specific.
|
| I think of Operations from technology perspective - datacentre
| and servers and SRE and ITIL; processes like release / incident /
| problem management.
|
| In many other businesses, Operations/COO is much more focused on
| business finances, supply chain, paying the bills, accounting,
| etc.
|
| From that experience, while I too would love to have better
| understanding and will read this thread eagerly, I think we all
| need to be careful to "domain scope manage" it.
| simmschi wrote:
| In my experience the CEO - COO relationship is similar to that
| between a CTO and a VP Engineering.
|
| If you are the CTO and have a VPE, the VP typically tends to
| focus inwards, while the CTO has the luxury to care more about
| outwards topics - strategy, vision, investor relations, business
| relations etc. The VP focuses on processes, projects, coding
| standards etc.
|
| It's similar between CEO and COO. If you have a COO you trust, as
| a CEO you can focus much more outwards about high level issues
| (strategy, investors, business partners etc). The COO makes sure
| that the business runs smoothly (hiring, processes, quality of
| service etc).
| conductr wrote:
| I work in C suite for non tech/start up industry, more
| traditional setting, and could not have explained better than
| this.
|
| It's mostly a bifurcation of strategy and execution. The CEO is
| forward looking and COO is focused on the day to day. Making
| sure all teams and processes are running smoothly. Helping
| determine which investments have a high priority, etc. The COO
| is still very involved in the strategy as well. Because they'll
| eventually need to operationalize it.
|
| Pretty much every C level role that gets added as a company
| grows is to pull away some domain specific stuff from the CEO.
| The CEO could do it all in theory. COO is usually one of the
| later additions to the C suite during growth as it usually has
| a lot of overlap with CEO.
| davidhunter wrote:
| Some people would say that the VPE has the luxury to care more
| about inwards topics whilst the CTO tends to focus outwards.
|
| Different strokes for different folks.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| The inward focus aspect is a good way to look at it. Most of
| these titles date back to the manufacturing days, when the COO
| was the guy responsible for production, for running the
| factories (all of the plant managers reported up to him). The
| CEO had a much broader purview (not only production, but also
| sales, finance, etc) and perhaps more importantly being the
| external face of the company to the market and to shareholders.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> while the CTO has the luxury to care more about outwards
| topics - strategy, vision, investor relations, business
| relations etc._
|
| Odd, those are all CEO responsibilities, not CTO ones.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Not in the realm of technology. I.e. what is our strategic
| _technical_ vision, what do I have to prepare for investors
| to explain our _technical_ strategy, etc.
| simmschi wrote:
| Yeah sorry, I meant this of course in the context of a tech
| organization.
|
| As a CTO you will spend time preparing board meetings, OKR
| discussions, be part of strategy offsites, handle audits,
| have stakeholder meetings (CPO, COO, HR), have a part in
| Allhands, talk to vendors and business partners and of course
| handle all internal crisises that are escalated to you.
|
| It's definitely a more messy and political work environment
| that you should take into account when leaving the IC track.
| D13Fd wrote:
| The CEO is a leader, the COO is a manager. The CEO chooses what
| to do, the COO gets it done.
| Ylmaz wrote:
| I never liked 'Getting Things Done'. It's the most repetitive
| book I've ever read. It could be a 5-page article, but David
| Allen decided to write a ~300 pages book by repeating the same
| idea over and over.
| beermonster wrote:
| What do you think this same idea is?
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| I'm a pretty faithful GTD user, and I love the book, because I
| need to hear some of those things a hundred times, but also
| because there's nuance to the method beyond a few mechanical
| basics. I've met a lot of people who say they do GTD and
| haven't read the book or only skimmed it, and invariably they
| seem to basically just use to-do lists. That's a good first
| step, but it's a terrible place to stop.
| stiiv wrote:
| In my experience (6 companies, variety of verticals), COO
| responsibilities really vary. I haven't encountered a COO who
| wasn't interested in improving performance, but I also haven't
| encountered a COO whose role could be described exclusively as
| "business optimizer."
|
| On the other hand, I've seen BAs and PMs do the kinds of things
| you describe, along with plenty of engineers. I've also seen
| people doing those things who have vague made-up titles unique to
| the org. In some cases, they were hired for something else, but
| then ended up what they were good at, and instead advised company
| leadership.
|
| All of which is to say: if you're looking for a career where you
| can do more of that kind of thing, you might do better focusing
| on organizations rather than titles.
| a_humean wrote:
| Depending upon the size of the firm and the nature of the CEO/COO
| relationship, they can be anything.
|
| The scope of their job can be everything from ensuring that the
| office windows get cleaned regularly, to working on a
| hyperspecific project as a fixer, to overseeing large parts of
| business strategy that the CEO does not have time or expertise
| for, to effectively waiting/in training to be a successor to the
| CEO.
| andylynch wrote:
| As a rough parallel, think Game of Thrones - the COO is the Hand
| of the King. As in the novels, specifics vary widely depending on
| those involved and how much/what the leader wants to delegate.
| logikblok wrote:
| Reminded me of some of the excellent lore videos.
|
| "What the king dreams, the hand of the king builds...or so say
| the kings the hands and the lords who wish to be hands."
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59F_ntoGHDI
| marcusverus wrote:
| "The king eats, and the hand takes the shit."
| dehrmann wrote:
| The COO does the work so the CEO can be the mascot.
| mahmoudimus wrote:
| Jaime Lannister, the character portrayed by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
| in the hit show Game of Thrones, said it best:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WawVLChRYzg.
|
| All kidding aside though, a COO is a role that basically
| compensates for the operational day-to-day part of the business
| (think budgeting, planning, etc.) as opposed to the strategic
| side (the direction the company is heading to).
| dopamean wrote:
| I think that's Jamie Lannister?
| sn0w_crash wrote:
| You got it - a COO is focused on process and productivity (among
| many other things)
|
| A good COO will be almost invisible. The company is firing on all
| cylinders, departments interact with one another smoothly,
| everyone is getting what they need.... and the COO is behind the
| scenes making it all work.
| rundmc wrote:
| Gross oversimplification: CEO - Works on the business, focuses on
| the big picture. COO - Works in the business, focuses on the
| detailed execution.
| water8 wrote:
| pigtailgirl wrote:
| -- a nebulous position - depending on the CEO - usually they are
| excellent in things the CEO is not - our CEO is really good at
| thinking about process and productivity - but really bad at
| thinking about finance and legal - so our COO does that stuff for
| her --
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| This is the correct answer.
|
| There's a great article[0] about Tim Cook from his days as
| Apple's COO that delves into some of the behind-the-scenes
| problems he worked on at the time and that Jobs likely wouldn't
| have had the time and/or skill set to fix.
|
| 0 -
| https://money.cnn.com/2008/11/09/technology/cook_apple.fortu...
| ksec wrote:
| _Shortly after signing on as Chief Operating Officer at Facebook,
| Sheryl Sandberg was looking to connect with people in a similar
| role. She called Tim Cook.
|
| "He basically explained nicely that my job was to do the things
| that Mark (Zuckerberg) did not want to focus on as much,"
| Sandberg said of the 2007 meeting that lasted several hours with
| the Chief Operating Officer of Apple Inc.
|
| "That was his job with Steve (Jobs). And he explained that the
| job would change over time and I should be prepared for that." _
| dboreham wrote:
| Ass kicker
| aviramha wrote:
| I think a classic super-star COO example would be Sheryl
| Sandberg, who was COO of Facebook/Meta. She was practically
| running the company. Zuckerberg mainly focused on strategy,
| vision while she made Facebook a well oiled profit machine.
| new2this wrote:
| This description matches my experience interacting with
| multiple COO's at startups of varying size. Most CEO's I know
| look outwards and to the future, the COO ensures the company
| executes against the path the CEO has set
|
| The role responsibilities are nebulous and change based on the
| company, but can generally be described as "whatever is
| necessary for the business to run". That could mean they focus
| on running Sales, Marketing, Support, Customer Success, but
| they could also oversee Operations and in some cases Product.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Sort of a side question: If someone running a company claimed to
| do all the things in these comments "looking towards the future",
| "strategy", "investor relations", "business optimization" how
| would you disprove that?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| "Investor relations" and "strategy" sound vague, but in this
| context they refer to concrete and unambiguous things. If
| you're not regularly standing in front of investors and showing
| them slide decks, you're not doing investor relations; if
| you're not regularly talking to senior leaders to discuss the
| industry and suggest new initiatives, you're not doing
| strategy.
|
| "Looking towards the future" and "business optimization" are
| more squishy, and you can't really specifically disprove that
| someone's doing them on an ongoing basis. But you can often
| disprove it retrospectively, if you see that the business is
| run increasingly poorly or clearly failed to account for some
| big new trend.
| gsatic wrote:
| Where I work, most of the persons time is spent making sure custo
| mers/clients/partners/suppliers/tenants/banks/investors/employees
| /contractors etc etc honor commitments. Cuz most people dont. For
| all kinds of good and bad reasons. And ofcourse same story works
| in the opposite direction too.
| [deleted]
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| As others have said, it varies greatly. I've seen COOs with some
| focus on process/productivity improvement, but most I see are too
| bogged down with operational details, fixing messes, vetting
| vendors, or a host of other things to work on that. And while
| they may encourage others toward deep work, in my experience COOs
| are very unlikely to get much deep work in themselves, so keep
| that in mind.
|
| What you like to do is often what consultants are brought in for.
| Consulting has its pros and cons, of course, and it's likely that
| someone with a pure engineering background will need at least
| significant management experience or some PM certs to look good
| for that.
|
| As an aside, I'm a firm believer in the idea that GTD or GTD-lite
| for the workplace, with meetings and project reporting focused on
| next-actions and an expectation that people keep up with weekly
| reviews, is one of the best things a company can do for itself.
| mrunkel wrote:
| CEO - we are going over there COO - I'll get the transportation,
| food, and supplies ready CTO - I'll put everything in
| microservices CFO - We can't afford any of this.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| CSO - You cannot leave the keys in the running car while you
| load it with food
| j33zusjuice wrote:
| In fact, the keys to the car need to be in a secure lock box
| opened with a key, and a passcode that only you know. But the
| PIN holder cannot be the same person as the key holder, so
| you'll need a second person with you at all times.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| The person I've been missing my whole life :)
|
| Writing code is fun, building stuff is fun. Handling tax stuff,
| invoicing, managing office space and connecting various
| departments is a major PITA.
| k__ wrote:
| A COO does what the CEO doesn't want to do.
| Konohamaru wrote:
| To use an analogy from Catholic theology, J-sus would be
| analogous to the company owner while the Pope would be analogous
| to the COO. Hope that helps on providing understanding.
| ehcjrvakzjtbe wrote:
| a coo is a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a
| government
| Yenrabbit wrote:
| This spelling only valid if the seizure of power is performed
| by pigeons
| throw_away_8080 wrote:
| Or a scottish hielan coo.
| asciii wrote:
| https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/america-coup-
| or...
| paxys wrote:
| COOs do all the stuff that people _think_ CEOs do.
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