{"id":6602,"date":"2026-10-13T05:59:51","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T05:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vaultinsider.top\/?p=6602"},"modified":"2026-10-13T05:59:51","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T05:59:51","slug":"ancestrys-ceo-says-a-billionaire-boss-taught-him-to-eat-lunch-with-employees-in-the-break-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vaultinsider.top\/?p=6602","title":{"rendered":"Ancestry&#8217;s CEO says a billionaire boss taught him to eat lunch with employees in the break room"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Howard-RootsTech71-copy-e1791573464484.jpeg?w=2048\" \/><\/p>\n<p>At many large companies, CEOs are squared away in plush corner offices, where they take meetings and receive elaborate lunch orders. But when midday rolls around, Ancestry employees find their CEO Howard Hochhauser taking his meal in the office\u2019s eating area.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s a habit he picked up from Ace Greenberg when Hochhauser worked at Wall Street investment bank Bear Stearns in the late 1990s. He held multiple positions within the equity research department, ultimately serving as a vice president and equity research analyst. And when it came time to step away from the keyboard and sit down for their midday meals, the company\u2019s longtime CEO, Greenberg, would eat among his employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAce Greenberg, who founded the firm, sat on the floor every day, and it stuck with me. Like, gosh, that\u2019s really a visible statement. He\u2019s really accessible,\u201d Hochhauser tells <em>Fortune<\/em>. \u201cYou could talk to him. He wasn\u2019t sitting in some glass office that\u2019s untouchable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He continues, \u201cOne of the things that I think I struggle with\u2014I think other CEOs struggle with\u2014is access to unfiltered information. People wrap you in this bubble\u2026And so if you\u2019re breaking bread with people casually over lunch, you tend to get that [information].\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What Ancestry\u2019s CEO learned from having lunch with staffers<\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By sharing meals with employees, Ancestry\u2019s CEO can get a temperature check on how policies and decisions land with staffers. Even when Hochhauser had to remind employees of the company\u2019s in-person working expectations, he says employees were honest about their feelings.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">About two days before he announced in-person expectations to his employees, Hochhauser informally ran the idea by a bunch of staffers. Immediately, they felt comfortable raising concerns about how that will impact caregiving: dropping their children off at school; being able to make soccer games in the evenings; helping their kids move into college.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cPeople appreciate it, leveling with them and telling them what expectations are,\u201d Hochhauser says. \u201cAnd over lunch, people were honest and raised their concerns, but also appreciated the candor.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He took their direct, candid feedback into account. While communicating the in-office policy, he made one thing clear to Ancestry employees: \u201cYou\u2019re an adult. Use your judgment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The CEOs who break bread with workers: \u2018That\u2019s when the real stuff comes out\u2019<\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From getting candid feedback to building consensus during difficult transitions, shared meals can give executives a window into what employees are really thinking.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When $36 billion Dutch bank ABN Amro announced it would cut a fifth of its workforce over the next three years, its CEO, Marguerite B\u00e9rard, rallied the troops by discussing the growing pains with staffers over weekly lunches. The bank had been taking hits since the financial crisis, having previously been rescued from collapse. And more recently, ABN Amro\u2019s 2025 fourth-quarter net profit was lower than market expectations. In a bid to turn things around, ABN Amro would let go of around 5,200 staffers between 2024 and 2028. By the end of 2025, 1,500 employees had already been cut, ABN Amro confirmed with <em>Fortune<\/em> in April of this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, once a week, the French banker has sandwiches with eight to 10 colleagues to \u201chear their views on the bank\u201d through the transition. B\u00e9rard told the <em>Financial Times<\/em> earlier this year, \u201cBuilding consensus and coalitions is often important in the Netherlands. It\u2019s something that the French don\u2019t always know how to do well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even Tim Cook didn\u2019t always take lunch in the corner office when he was running $4.9 trillion tech behemoth Apple. The former CEO frequently sat down with random employees at the company\u2019s cafeteria during lunch\u2014a shift from his predecessor, the late Steve Jobs, who often dined with design executive Jonathan Ive.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Leaders at Duolingo also like to gather with fellow executives in the office\u2019s public commissary so they can rub shoulders with all kinds of staffers. Severin Hacker, CTO and cofounder of the $7 billion learning platform, said that these daily team lunches, which include cofounder and CEO Luis von Ahn, are \u201cfundamental to our company culture.\u201d He added that connecting with employees is better than any engagement survey, because they\u2019re more open about how things are going at the company: \u201cThat\u2019s when the real stuff comes out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hacker wrote in a LinkedIn post a year ago, \u201cLunch is an opportunity for people who don\u2019t normally work together to actually talk. On any given day, Luis or I might be sitting next to a new hire fresh out of school. Or people from completely different teams.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First Watch CEO Chris Tomasso takes a similarly hands-on approach to leadership. The leader of the breakfast and lunch chain, which brings in over $1 billion in annual revenue, likes to break bread with staffers rather than hide away in a corner office. He also takes time every month to write out congratulatory letters to cooks and dishwashers hitting career milestones at the breakfast and lunch chain.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI tried to minimize the [CEO] title as best I can when I\u2019m interacting with people,\u201d Tomasso told <em>Fortune <\/em>earlier this year. \u201cI eat lunch in the break room with everybody, which always, for whatever reason, blows new employees away\u2014that I just sit down next to them and bring my lunch and have lunch with them. I think it\u2019s a shame that there\u2019s that feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>#Ancestrys #CEO #billionaire #boss #taught #eat #lunch #employees #break #room<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At many large companies, CEOs &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9709,274,3104,1931,269,2687,283,1405,4665,2677,5405,420,633,9708,2678,537,1388,9710,6160,3719,4602,9668,5265,530],"class_list":["post-6602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-ancestrys","tag-billionaire","tag-boss","tag-break","tag-business","tag-careers","tag-ceo","tag-chief-executive-officer-ceo","tag-communication","tag-corporate-culture","tag-eat","tag-employees","tag-executives","tag-feedback","tag-flexible-work","tag-jobs","tag-leadership","tag-lunch","tag-office-culture","tag-return-to-office","tag-room","tag-taught","tag-work-from-home","tag-workers"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - 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