"Do not overlook the steadfast truth that your direct supervisor is your boss"
Many years ago in one of my first board meetings I remember presenting an org chart of our start-up and joking that I wasn't sure of what the semantics of the lines were. One of our non-execs pointed out, quite seriously, that the relationship is "can fire". After all, employees are there to do what their employer wants in exchange for payment - now in various places and various times what the employee would like to be doing and what the employer would like them to be doing may or may not be closely aligned, but the underlying commercial relationship is still there. Best not to forget it - which is what I think the article was getting at.
'Be as particular as you can in the selection of your supervisor.'
In larger organizations it is often pretty easy to change your direct line manager - e.g. by expressing a desire to be on a project they are managing. Experienced and successful CxO types will also know that it is tricky working out where best to place senior technical people in an organization. I was asked fairly recently by the CEO of the company I work for who I should report to - I thought about it for a bit, gave a sensible choice together with an explanation of why I thought it was sensible and that was what happened. Seemed like a pretty sensible way to run things to me - as it happens the CEO is a engineer (nothing to do with software or computers), which probably explains the no-nonsense approach.
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"Do not overlook the steadfast truth that your direct supervisor is your boss"
Many years ago in one of my first board meetings I remember presenting an org chart of our start-up and joking that I wasn't sure of what the semantics of the lines were. One of our non-execs pointed out, quite seriously, that the relationship is "can fire". After all, employees are there to do what their employer wants in exchange for payment - now in various places and various times what the employee would like to be doing and what the employer would like them to be doing may or may not be closely aligned, but the underlying commercial relationship is still there. Best not to forget it - which is what I think the article was getting at.
'Be as particular as you can in the selection of your supervisor.'
In larger organizations it is often pretty easy to change your direct line manager - e.g. by expressing a desire to be on a project they are managing. Experienced and successful CxO types will also know that it is tricky working out where best to place senior technical people in an organization. I was asked fairly recently by the CEO of the company I work for who I should report to - I thought about it for a bit, gave a sensible choice together with an explanation of why I thought it was sensible and that was what happened. Seemed like a pretty sensible way to run things to me - as it happens the CEO is a engineer (nothing to do with software or computers), which probably explains the no-nonsense approach.