PA vs EA vs CoS vs Founder's Office - How are they all different?
-
PA - Personal Assistant Managing your personal commitments, people very high up (read rich) hire them, because their personal social life is as active
-
EA - Executive Assistant Managing professional commitments, they ensure your calendar is up to date, your travel and stay bookings, basically admin work for CXOs
-
PM - Personal Managers The ones that celebrities have, they manage personal and professional commitments
-
CoS - Chief of Staff Generally to CEO/Founders (can be to other CXOs too), one person keeping founders on track with mission the company is built for. Strictly professional role, but some new age founders try blurring these lines. Major red flag 🚩
-
Founder's Office Can be one to multiple members, taking care of different departments - marketing, strategy, operations, etc. This is usually huge cost to company, and very profitable (or well funded) companies can manage sustaining these.
Putting in here what I have learnt in the industry, please feel free to correct me/ add more details here
Talking product sense with Ridhi
9 min AI interview5 questions
The problem is the companies themselves are confused in this regard. Saw a Founder's office job description in passing the other day, which mostly revolved around scheduling meetings for the CEO and nothing beyond it.
Exactly! CoS and Founder's Office are strictly professional, if you need someone to manage calendar get an EA or VA (virtual assistant)
Usually, chief of staff heads the founder's office. Chief of Staff is supposed to be a senior role. Agree that EA and PA has been blurred. EA to the CXO has been used by companies either to mean founder's office or admin work for CXOs. In companies where this means founder's office, you might also see a PA role for admin related work.
Well yes, but that would be too big a company to hire all these roles. and honestly that's stupid