Ancestry’s CEO says a billionaire boss taught him to eat lunch with employees in the break room—it gives him access to ‘unfiltered information’

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’s eating area.

It’s 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’s long-time CEO, Greenberg, would eat among his employees. 

“Ace Greenberg, who founded the firm, sat on the floor every day, and it stuck with me. Like, gosh, that’s really a visible statement. He’s really accessible,” Hochhauser tells Fortune. “You could talk to him, he wasn’t sitting in some glass office that’s untouchable.”

“One of the things that I think I struggle with—I think other CEOs struggle with—is access to unfiltered information,” he continues. “People wrap you in this bubble…And so if you’re breaking bread with people casually over lunch, you tend to get that [information].”

What Ancestry’s CEO learned from having lunch with staffers

By sharing meals with employees, Ancestry’s CEO can get a temperature check on how policies and decisions land with staffers. Even when Hochhauser had to remind employees of the company’s in-person........

© Fortune