Some CEOs preach work-life balance for their employees. Others expect their workers to stay online late into the night and during weekends.

Lisa Su, the CEO of chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), says she she falls into the latter category. To run her $210 billion company, she holds meetings on weekends and conducts lengthy morning calls with executives to discuss memos she sent after midnight, Time reported on Tuesday.

Su, 55, was named Time’s 2024 CEO of the year — a marker of how dramatically she’s grown her company since becoming CEO in 2014. Over the past decade, AMD’s stock price has increased by nearly 50-fold, as Su built it into an industry giant that currently sits between top rivals Intel and Nvidia, in terms of market capitalization.

She’s done that, at least partially, by setting extremely high expectations for the people around her. “I don’t believe leaders are born. I believe leaders are trained,” said Su, noting that her own career has been shaped by her grit and unrelenting drive.

“People are really motivated by ambitious goals,” she added. “The previous strategy of, ‘Hey, let’s just do a little bit better here and there’ — that’s actually less motivational.”

Though leaders and executives at AMD have ultra-busy schedules and long nights completing tasks, the bulk of the company’s employees have “good work-life balance,” according to over 400 reviews on Glassdoor. Anonymous reviews on the website cite a strong company culture and benefits package, but “low compensation compared to Nvidia and Intel.”

Su has a 95% approval rating as AMD’s CEO from those Glassdoor reviews.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang — who, incidentally, is Su’s cousin — also says he’s a tough person to work for, and he doesn’t plan on changing.

Huang is “demanding,” a “perfectionist” and “not easy to work for,” employees at Nvidia’s Santa Clara, California, headquarters told CBS News’ “60 Minutes” in April. Those descriptors fit him “perfectly,” Huang said on the show.

“It should be like that. If you want to do extraordinary things, it shouldn’t be easy,” said Huang.

Both Nvidia and AMD are part of the artificial intelligence industry’s fast-paced boom, providing tech companies with the computer chips they need to handle large amounts of AI training and processing. That industry is intense right now: AI professionals at companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft feel pressure to overperform, telling CNBC in May that they’re expected to aid in fast-paced rollouts with little time to learn about the models they’re working on.

Despite their employees’ all-nighters, tech CEOs tend to be respected for their dedication to progress and growth at their companies, leadership researcher Rainer Zitelmann wrote for CNBC Make It in 2020.

In Microsoft’s early days, Bill Gates’ employees described him as overbearing and a workplace bully. ”[But] Gates knew better than any other entrepreneur how to inspire and motivate his staff to achieve a shared goal, while also giving them leeway to develop creatively,” wrote Zitelmann.

Microsoft flourished, ultimately becoming one of the world’s largest companies. After the company became well-established, Gates developed a sense of regret over his tough leadership style, he told students at Northern Arizona University’s commencement ceremony last year.

“When I was your age, I didn’t believe in vacations. I didn’t believe in weekends. I didn’t believe the people I worked with should either,” said Gates. “Don’t wait as long as I did to learn this lesson. Take time to nurture your relationships … Take a break when you need to. Take it easy on the people around you when they need it, too.”

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As a kid, Jack Cowin shoveled snow, delivered newspapers and sold Christmas cards for cash. By the time he reached his 20s, it was burgers instead of cards. Fast forward to today: The 82-year-old is a billionaire, thanks to his fast food empire.

Cowin is the founder and chairman of Competitive Foods Australia, the company that operates Burger King as “Hungry Jack’s” in Australia. He is also the largest shareholder of Domino’s Pizza in Australia, and backs a plant-based meat substitute company called v2food.

Before founding Hungry Jack’s, Cowin opened a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Australia in 1969 — his first of many. Then in 2013, he sold off his KFC franchise of 55 stores in a deal worth about $71 million, according to a representative at Competitive Foods Australia.

Today, his business is worth over $3 billion and brings in over $300 million a year, Cowin told CNBC Make It.

Growing up in Canada, Cowin realized early on that he wanted freedom in life. His father was an employee at the Ford Motor Company and was required to travel frequently for work.

“He had a phone call one day, you’re going to Brazil, or you’re going to Mexico, or things like this … When you work for a big corporation, the corporation decides where you’re going to be, [and] what you’re going to do,” Cowin said.

“And as a kid, I wanted to have the freedom to do what I wanted to do. I think I saw that relatively early, because [I saw that] dad’s on the treadmill of here, there and everywhere,” he said. He didn’t want to be at the “whims and beckon call of a corporation.”

So as a child, Cowin spent his time outside of school mowing lawns and delivering newspapers. “I never had to ask for money as a kid,” he said. “I was a sales guy from very early, like 8 or 10 years old.”

By the time college rolled around, Cowin was going from farm to farm selling “trees, shrubs and nursing stock,” he said. He was so successful at it that he was making $8,000 a year while his university professors were making only $5,000 a year, he said.

He graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Western Ontario in 1964, and went on to get a job selling life insurance he said he was very good at.

“I had a reputation of being someone that could sell,” he said.

By the late 1960s, Cowin had begun to settle down in Canada with his wife and his first child when he one day received a phone call from a couple of high school friends.

His friends had landed a job with the American Kentucky Fried Chicken company and were sent to Australia to do some market research about whether they should expand into the country.

“Since my father had been there [for work], and I was the only guy … that knew where Australia was on a map … they phoned me up and said: ‘You should be down here. You should come and see this.’ So without a moment’s notice, I’m on a plane and I fly to Australia,” Cowin said.

Cowin landed in Australia in February 1969, and spent three weeks there helping his friends conduct research — ultimately finding that there was indeed a market for fast food in Australia.

“At that stage of the game, the restaurant business in Australia was fish and chip shops, Chinese restaurants and fancy white tablecloth restaurants,” he said. Meanwhile, McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC and other fast food restaurants were all rising in popularity in North America.

“So at the end of the three weeks, I pay $1,000 as a deposit on a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise [and] if the American company is going to open a store, then I was going to have a 10 store franchise,” he said.

Six months later, he received a phone call saying that the American KFC company agreed to expand into Australia and Cowin had the opportunity to own his first franchise location. But he didn’t have the funds, so he started raising money.

Imagine this “kid comes into your office and says he wants to borrow $10,000, which is probably about $100,000 today or more … he’s got no experience in the business, no interest on your money … how long before you throw him out of your office for wasting your time?”

“The biggest break I’ve had in my life was … I got on my bike and I got 30 Canadians to lend me $10,000 each, so got $300,000,” he said. “Otherwise I’d still be shoveling snow in Canada. I hadn’t had the finances back then.”

By December 1969, Cowin moved his family to Perth, Australia, where he opened his first KFC franchise. “It was like drilling oil and hitting oil on your first wildcat well, because it was a booming success,” he said.

“Then, you open two more, you get into the hamburger business, you get into the pizza business, you get into the food manufacturing business, and today, that business is a $3 billion business and makes $300 million a year.”

Today, Cowin owns 98% of his company while the other 2% is held by some of his original investors and shareholders, he said. “That original $10,000 is $40 million at book value [today]. So everybody’s got their money back, and those that stayed in have done increasingly well,” he said.

When asked what his secret to sales is, he said, “I think the secret is, whatever you do, do it well … The people that lent me the money really backed me as the investment. I was the investment.”

″And an expression [I have is] when you can’t tell the difference between work and play, you’re in the right place … I’ve never really worked a day in my life because I’ve enjoyed it.”

Correction: This story was updated to make it clear that Jack Cowin opened a KFC store in Australia in 1969.

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If there’s one thing Terry Petzold knows about how to stand out in the job market and get hired, it’s that in-demand technical skills can come and go.

Petzold has 25 years of experience in recruiting and is currently a managing partner at Fox Search Group, an executive recruitment firm for tech leaders.

Take the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, for example. “Just two-and-a-half years ago, everyone was saying, ‘We need to hire coders,’” Petzold tells CNBC Make It.

“I was even talking to my own children about, ‘Oh, maybe we need to go the crowd coding route,’” he jokes. “Not six months later, ChatGPT comes out, and now coding is not the future.”

To be sure, having up-to-date digital skills is important for workers across industries and career levels, Petzold says. “If you’re in marketing, or if you’re in a warehouse, you need to understand technology.”

But because companies can train workers on learning developing tech to serve their business, Petzold says leaders are most interested in hiring people with a different set of skills.

“I’ll tell you where the future is,” he says. “It’s not even necessarily in technology space. It’s in soft skills. It’s in emotional intelligence — that is what we’re noticing is the future for talent.”

Emotional intelligence, or EQ, is the ability to manage your own feelings and the feelings of those around you, which can make you better at building relationships and leading in the workplace.

For Petzold, job candidates with great technical skills really succeed when they can demonstrate high EQ.

It’s good to be specialized in an area of expertise, like data, security, infrastructure or enterprise solutions, for instance, “but it’s really those with strong EQ and those soft skills and business skills — those are the future IT leaders,” he says.

By hiring professionals with high EQ, Petzold says companies are really looking for people who can do crucial things like:

• Handle and deliver constructive feedback
• Manage conflict
• Have critical conversations with urgency
• Work cross-functionally by persuading peers and other leaders
• Effectively present ideas to leaders above them

“The general EQ skills we’re noticing really have to do with communication [with] others and the ability to push through challenges and come out unscathed,” Petzold says.

He adds that some companies are getting better at helping leaders develop stronger EQ skills, especially around managing effectively and navigating challenges or conflict.

Good employers can further develop their workers by offering mentorship programs and facilitating networking, Petzold adds, so people can see what good models of leadership and high EQ look like.

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Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck is perfectly content watching the rockets his company builds reach the heavens while his feet remain firmly planted on Earth.

“Some people have this burning desire to go into space. I just have a burning desire to create things to enable others to go to space,” says Beck, 47.

The native New Zealander launched Rocket Lab in 2006 with no college degree or space industry connections. His Long Beach, California-based company now has a market value of $11.9 billion, as of Wednesday afternoon, with dozens of successful rocket launches — making it one of the world’s fastest-growing aerospace companies.

Beck has a net worth of $1.3 billion, Forbes estimated in November. Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, two other billionaires with aerospace companies, have made the trek to outer space. But Beck insists he’s not interested, citing one of the very traits that helped him successfully build his company: “a healthy degree of paranoia.”

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The Rocket Lab CEO says he’s extremely hands-on while planning and preparing Rocket Lab’s missions, and his obsession with the granular details would prove too distracting for him to relax and enjoy the space travel. He has “so much respect” for astronauts, particularly those with engineering backgrounds, who understand the danger of space travel and do it anyway, he says.

“I would just be thinking of all the safety factors on the valves and the structures that are beneath me,” says Beck. “So I don’t think it would be very enjoyable at all … There’s a rare group of people that can do that, and I’m not one of them, unfortunately.”

Beck isn’t completely risk-averse. He’s fairly comfortable taking big risks, provided the stakes aren’t potentially life-threatening, he says.

Founding Rocket Lab at all was a risky longshot, considering Beck’s lack of experience. Years later, when the company launched its first Electron rocket, “we were [only], like, 92% sure that it was going to be fine and work,” says Beck. That attempt failed to reach orbit due to an equipment glitch, but fixing it paved the way for future successful launches.

“You have to take risks,” he says. “If you take no risk, there’s no reward … [and] you end up as a traditional, dinosaur kind of player if you want to remove every last percentage of risk.”

Beck’s advice for anyone in the workplace: Identify the risks you feel are worth taking, and then do as much as you can to mitigate their potential consequences before taking the leap. That means doing a lot of research and preparing for every potential outcome — good, bad or in between — before choosing to take action, he says.

Broadly speaking, Branson shares a similar outlook on risk-taking. While the billionaire has a well-known penchant for thrill-seeking — leaping 400-feet off a casino, crossing oceans in a hot-air balloon — he’s adamant that the key to his success is the calculation behind those risks.

“I’ve always believed in protecting the downside, thinking through what could go wrong and how to limit the damage,” Branson told Forbes last month. “That’s the smart way to approach risk. At the same time, trusting your instinct is key. If something feels right, even when the odds are tough, I’m a believer in going for it.”

But Beck maintains a more analytical stance when it comes to stepping foot on a rocket and propelling himself into outer space. “Never say never,” he says. “Look, I would do it if I had to. If my life depended on it … [But] if you do it for enjoyment, that seems counterproductive.”

This story has been updated to clarify that Rocket Lab is one of the world’s fastest-growing aerospace companies.

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Unlike other high-paid tech executives, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says he accepts a smaller paycheck to do work he loves.

Altman, a co-founder of the artificial intelligence company, didn’t take any equity in OpenAI when it launched in late 2015, he said at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit last week. He was more focused on simply getting a front-row seat to the AI arms race, and now makes $76,000 per year as OpenAI’s CEO, he said.

“This is my childhood dream job,” said Altman, 39. “Getting to work on [artificial general intelligence] and…getting to sit in the room with the smartest researchers in the world and go on this crazy adventure, like that is what I always wanted to do.”

OpenAI is currently a nonprofit company with a for-profit arm, which Altman runs. He turned down an equity stake because the organization needed a majority disinterested board to qualify for nonprofit status, and he felt he needed to show he could keep his personal and professional interests separate, he told the “All-In” podcast in May.

OpenAI was most recently valued at $157 billion, meaning even a 1% stake would be worth $1.57 billion. But Altman likely doesn’t need the money: The former president of Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator is already a billionaire, with an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion, primarily from equity he owns in Stripe, Reddit and nuclear fusion firm Helion, according to Forbes.

Working at OpenAI — where a recent tax filing obtained by Bloomberg confirms that Altman took a $76,001 salary last year — is more a labor of love, he said at DealBook: “I think it should at least be understandable that that is worth more to me than any additional money.”

It’s an unusual setup for a tech CEO. Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos still only takes a small base salary — the same amount, $81,840, for decades — but much of his estimated $242.6 billion net worth is from the equity he retains in the company. Elon Musk recently lost a bid to receive a $56 billion salary package, the largest compensation plan for a public company executive in U.S. history, at Tesla.

Musk, who’s also an OpenAI co-founder, is currently suing OpenAI in an attempt to prevent it from fully becoming a for-profit company.

Altman’s choice to eschew equity has previously spooked investors, who saw it as a sign that he didn’t expect the organization to succeed, he said. At a recent all-team meeting, Altman said he had no plans to take an equity stake in OpenAI as its board considers a for-profit structure, a person in attendance told CNBC in September.

“If I could go back in time, I would have taken [equity], just some little bit, just to never have to answer this question,” Altman said at DealBook.

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