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).

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."

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.

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.

"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 --

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.

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).

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?

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 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.

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?

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

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}`);