I can't speak to being a CEO - I'm just a middle manager - but a lot of this, especially the loneliness, resonated with me.

Did I choose management? Yes. Do I have a choice to stop? Also, yes. Do I make enough money either way to have a nice apartment and no real material concerns? That too.

But I'm definitely stressed and lonely. I'm really not sure if this is what's best for my mental health. From the article him and I aren't the only ones with that feeling. My boss, too, has talked about feeling exhausted; when we have events for leads, it feels like we're even more burned out than the rank-and-file.

Lonely is easy to explain. The more you move up, the fewer peers you have. The fewer people you have to look up to and emulate. The more "on your own" you are, expected to operate independently and direct more folks. There's less of a playbook. More acting by intuition. More people looking up at, depending on, and often resenting you. Your relationships with communities of coworkers changes. When they're upset, rather than joining in on the griping and feeling camaraderie you feel either vaguely responsible or unaware of what's really been going on. Whatever it is not just a thing to bitch and moan about - you're responsible.

The stress comes from the same place - feeling a sense of responsibility for all the people in your org, for the company, all of it. It's a much bigger scope than your IC responsibility. It's hard to let go of, to accept that you might not pick the right 2 or 3 of 100 things to focus on, and when you do, there are real consequences for real people. With that kind of scope you're making a lot more mistakes just because there's so much more surface area. Those mistakes matter, too! Hire the wrong person, ignore a team that needs your attention? These are big painful mistakes. People might quit, their careers might languish, an asshole might make people miserable, customers might have a bad day(/month/quarter/etc), etc.

You have to accept a lot of failure in this very difficult job with a huge scope and no real rules or guidance, but that's hard when you're a competitive, success-oriented person.

"But you can quit!" is a valid argument. One the article addresses - it says it takes years to set up for a CEO. For me, it's shorter, but I still feel like it's something that you can't just hire an eager replacement for - for a bunch of reasons. Pick the wrong person, and again, lots of consequences to people you care about.

Somebody in leadership did quit without notice recently - and I saw all their reports bump up to their lead, who was already way stretched thin. Those people won't have real support for a long time. Their new lead is really stretching himself very thin. I hope the person who quit is able to find peace in it (genuinely, I don't think they wouldn't have done it if they felt there were alternatives). But I know I wouldn't be able to.

Sometimes I wonder if there would be an equivalent to a Dwarf Fortress tantrum spiral. Somebody quits, their team flows up, that person then snaps, etc, until half the company is reporting to a handful of people. (and imagine how responsible the CEO would feel if that happens?)

Also - COVID has made all of this worse.