You could be right, but in the hypothetical world where he's 100% right, and the current path the project or feature is taking is heading towards a dead end or is broken in some way. I feel there is a real cost that can be more easily ignored, e.g. working on a dead end or slowly failing thing that isn't set on the right trajectory is ultimately demoralizing and ends up in hindsight having been an opportunity cost and waste of your time vs. working on something else. And conversely if he's right about something like this, there should be positive feedback when it is turned around and starts performing better for the team involved?
Yeah I don't mean to say founders, CEOs, etc, should ignore problems when they see one (let's assume they correctly identify the problem, ie 100% right): quite the opposite!
But there's a (slower, harder?) way to right the ship and make the team better, and (quicker, easier?) way to swoop in like a Marvel Avenger and break everything (and everyone) in the process.
I feel Founder Mode should in theory be the former, but is in fact excuse for many to do the latter (I've no evidence for this, just what it looks like to me).
Ah ok yeah I see where you're coming from there. It's kind of like the question of did Steve Jobs need to be an asshole to be as successful as he was. And it can be tempting to think that they are intrinsically linked, but I also like to believe there is a world where he grew more on the empathy side but was still able to lead Apple perhaps even better.
A CEO/founder can be the most brilliant person in a company, and still not be as well informed about a specific aspect as someone else, simply because they don't have time with their other competing responsibilities.
So the allure of parachuting in and fixing a problem also comes with understanding the limitations that your brief on the situation was by summarized Powerpoint.
Which is one thing that's been said about old Microsoft era Gates -- he simply worked that much harder and faster to be able to do it effectively.
