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Ask HN: What Is a COO?
114 points by simonhfrost on Nov 15, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 64 comments
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




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.”


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).


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.


> 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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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."


What’s Slim Charles’ title?


Slim is probably a Craig Federighi or Eddy Cue back when Steve Jobs was at the helm. VPs who report directly to the CEO.


General Counsel


He became COO.


what is Prop Joe?


Prop Joe's a King like Avon, except for the other side.


No no, Prop Joe is a member of the board


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.


CSO - You cannot leave the keys in the running car while you load it with food


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.


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.


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.


"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.


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.


-- 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 --


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...


The CEO is a leader, the COO is a manager. The CEO chooses what to do, the COO gets it done.


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.


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


"The king eats, and the hand takes the shit."


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.


In short, the best analogy I have for COO is from the Navy. The Captain is the CEO. The Executive Officer is the COO.


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.


CEO and COO can be thought of as the same job, but CEO tends to be outward facing and the COO tends to be inward facing. (Not strictly or exclusively, of course.)

So you might think of the CEO being strategic or "leader", which isn't wrong, but the CEO is also actually "doing" things but the things he "does" are more with investors, other CEOs, and so on. To the extent that COO is outward facing it is more likely to be with suppliers, partners (after CEO has made the partnership happen), and so on.

I would say that generally you're quite wrong about COO not making decisions.

But also COO is one of those titles that can be anything at all. Chief of Staff, Fixer, EA.

I think an interesting question is, where do the various heads (product, design, engineering, sales/revenue, talent, etc) report to? That would tell you the most about how the job functions are split between CEO and COO. It's going to be company-specific.


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.


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).


I think that's Jamie Lannister?


Gross oversimplification: CEO - Works on the business, focuses on the big picture. COO - Works in the business, focuses on the detailed execution.


Where I work, most of the persons time is spent making sure customers/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.


A COO only has 3 high level things to do (sounds easy but is really hard because it is a blank slate)

1) Figure out what needs to be measured (KPIs, metrics, etc) in specifics

2) Be able to measure items listed in step 1 accurately and timely

3) Make changes to improve what you are measuring (efficiency, volume/counts, speed/rate, etc)

Keep repeating steps 1 to 3


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.


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?


"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.


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.


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.


What do you think this same idea is?


I like the line from Succession:

`I'm the Chief Operating Officer: if it operates, I chief it`


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.


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.


No, delete this. I don't want to portray J-sus as someone evil.


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.


> 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?


Chief Operating Officer


The COO does the work so the CEO can be the mascot.


In a Nutshell, it's a silly title given to people, typically by themselves to make them feel powerful.


COOs do all the stuff that people think CEOs do.


A COO does what the CEO doesn't want to do.


Like Saul Tigh on Galactica: the XO


isnt coo similar to being a chief of staff? thoughts?


Ass kicker


a coo is a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government


This spelling only valid if the seizure of power is performed by pigeons


https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/america-coup-or...


Or a scottish hielan coo.


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}`);




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