Ask HN: What was the biggest leadership challenge of your career? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest leadership challenge of your career?

#101

Post by fighterpilot » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 7:02 AM UTC

rubyn00bie wrote: post #44

Learning to let my go of my ego and trust... Understanding that delegating tasks, instead of doing them myself, was of the utmost importance the more people I managed... especially, greenfield work. Literally: do not steal the fun. This also means inherently trusting people, and if you can't do that you shouldn't be working with them. two important notes about that: 1. If you just thought of someone you can't trust i…

  > When people don't deliver what you expected, it's because you did a shitty job of communicating it to them.

Why is this necessarily the fault of the manager's communication skills?

Sometimes the person sucks beyond repair and needs to be fired.

If you have a competent person who didn't deliver what you expected, then yes, it's probably the fault of the manager's communication. Not so for the lower-end of that competence spectrum.

It might still be the manager's fault for hiring that person in the first place, but that's separate to it being their fault at not communicating properly.

The shitty job here is not firing that type of person quickly enough, and misdirecting the blame towards your communication skills.

EDIT - edited the first sentence for clarity.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest leadership challenge of your career?

#102

Post by takeda » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 7:07 AM UTC

fighterpilot wrote: post #101

rubyn00bie wrote: post #44

Learning to let my go of my ego and trust... Understanding that delegating tasks, instead of doing them myself, was of the utmost importance the more people I managed... especially, greenfield work. Literally: do not steal the fun. This also means inherently trusting people, and if you can't do that you shouldn't be working with them. two important notes about that: 1. If you just thought of someone you can't trust i…

> When people don't deliver what you expected, it's because you did a shitty job of communicating it to them. Why is this necessarily the fault of the manager's communication skills? Sometimes the person sucks beyond repair and needs to be fired. If you have a competent person who didn't deliver what you expected, then yes, it's probably the fault of the manager's communication. Not so for the lower-end of that compe…

If requirements were provided and person didn't fulfill them, they did a bad job. If requirements were fulfilled, but you aren't happy with the result, then you did a bad job.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest leadership challenge of your career?

#103

Post by erikpukinskis » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 7:12 AM UTC

fighterpilot wrote: post #101

rubyn00bie wrote: post #44

Learning to let my go of my ego and trust... Understanding that delegating tasks, instead of doing them myself, was of the utmost importance the more people I managed... especially, greenfield work. Literally: do not steal the fun. This also means inherently trusting people, and if you can't do that you shouldn't be working with them. two important notes about that: 1. If you just thought of someone you can't trust i…

> When people don't deliver what you expected, it's because you did a shitty job of communicating it to them. Why is this necessarily the fault of the manager's communication skills? Sometimes the person sucks beyond repair and needs to be fired. If you have a competent person who didn't deliver what you expected, then yes, it's probably the fault of the manager's communication. Not so for the lower-end of that compe…

> Sometimes the person sucks beyond repair and needs to be fired.

Which is... also the responsibility of the manager. Q.E.D.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest leadership challenge of your career?

#104

Post by greazy » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 7:13 AM UTC

juancn wrote: post #13

Accepting that I was seen as a leader. I've never wanted a leadership position, I just wanted to build cool shit. I'm good at it. At some point in my career (I've been doing software for 22+ years professionally) people started taking me really seriously. I could no longer make certain jokes and I had to be careful about my opinions because they were taken (in many cases) as "the right thing to do". So I got in all s…

> At some point I finally embraced it and actively started figuring out what kind of leader I should be.

Can you expand on this? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. What sort of leader did you become? I don't even know what kind of leaders there are.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest leadership challenge of your career?

#105

Post by fighterpilot » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 7:14 AM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #103

fighterpilot wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When people don't deliver what you expected, it's because you did a shitty job of communicating it to them. Why is this necessarily the fault of the manager's communication skills? Sometimes the person sucks beyond repair and needs to be fired. If you have a competent person who didn't deliver what you expected, then yes, it's probably the fault of the manager's communication. Not so for the lower-end of that compe…

> Sometimes the person sucks beyond repair and needs to be fired. Which is... also the responsibility of the manager. Q.E.D.

I edited my first sentence in my post to make what I'm trying to say clear, I realize it was worded in a confusing way.

I was trying to say that it's not always the responsibility/fault of the manager's communication skills specifically.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest leadership challenge of your career?

#106

Post by irrational » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 7:16 AM UTC

takeda wrote: post #102

fighterpilot wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When people don't deliver what you expected, it's because you did a shitty job of communicating it to them. Why is this necessarily the fault of the manager's communication skills? Sometimes the person sucks beyond repair and needs to be fired. If you have a competent person who didn't deliver what you expected, then yes, it's probably the fault of the manager's communication. Not so for the lower-end of that compe…

If requirements were provided and person didn't fulfill them, they did a bad job. If requirements were fulfilled, but you aren't happy with the result, then you did a bad job.

This happened to me this past week. I built exactly what the spec said. They came back and said it all looks good, except we expected this to be that. Um, nothing about that was in the spec, nor was it ever mentioned verbally in a meeting. Making the change from this to that will require everything to be redone since it requires fundamental changes. I would have built it differently had it been communicated to me from the beginning. Apparently it didn’t occur to them to mention it. But they really want it. So I’ve started rebuilding it. Sigh.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest leadership challenge of your career?

#107

Post by philosopher1234 » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 7:20 AM UTC

darkerside wrote: post #74

ISL wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the first point -- I believe that OP wants the manager to extend trust as a mechanism and path toward both a trusting relationship and short-term performance. For the second -- it is on the manager to know enough about the reasons affecting their report's performance to be able to adapt before the team underperforms. (and it is on the report to surface that information quickly so that the team isn't compromised)

I understand the first point, but I disagree that is always going to be possible or the correct path. If you blindly trust every employee, you will eventually end up hurting the company, the employee, and yourself. Second point, sure. That's the ideal. But it's not always going to happen, and you need to be able to deal with that situation to be a well rounded manager and leader. IMO.

Thank you for being a voice of reason. Puritanism is so popular on HN.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest leadership challenge of your career?

#108

Post by fighterpilot » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 7:23 AM UTC

takeda wrote: post #102

fighterpilot wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When people don't deliver what you expected, it's because you did a shitty job of communicating it to them. Why is this necessarily the fault of the manager's communication skills? Sometimes the person sucks beyond repair and needs to be fired. If you have a competent person who didn't deliver what you expected, then yes, it's probably the fault of the manager's communication. Not so for the lower-end of that compe…

If requirements were provided and person didn't fulfill them, they did a bad job. If requirements were fulfilled, but you aren't happy with the result, then you did a bad job.

> If requirements were fulfilled, but you aren't happy with the result, then your requirements were wrong.

Isn't it possible for a dev to fulfill requirements but still deliver a bad result as measured by subjective (but important) things such as code smells, bloat, crappy algorithmic logic, and so on? Or do you think managers need to spec things out in such strenuous detail that surprises (but also, to an extent, autonomy and ad hoc decision making) aren't possible?

There's also the case of R&D roles where it's hard to spec things out exactly in advance, and you're partly relying on the employee's ingenuity.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest leadership challenge of your career?

#109

Post by Bootvis » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 7:27 AM UTC

xxxtentachyon wrote: post #81

darkerside wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's prying to care about your employees and want to make sure they are ok. Asking for at least first level details should be done IMO.

What do you consider first-level details? It’d be super put off if my boss asked me if I had a fever when I emailed in sick.

“Nothing to serious I hope? Can I be of any help?” works for me as an employee.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest leadership challenge of your career?

#110

Post by takeda » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 7:31 AM UTC

fighterpilot wrote: post #108

takeda wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If requirements were provided and person didn't fulfill them, they did a bad job. If requirements were fulfilled, but you aren't happy with the result, then you did a bad job.

> If requirements were fulfilled, but you aren't happy with the result, then your requirements were wrong. Isn't it possible for a dev to fulfill requirements but still deliver a bad result as measured by subjective (but important) things such as code smells, bloat, crappy algorithmic logic, and so on? Or do you think managers need to spec things out in such strenuous detail that surprises (but also, to an extent, au…

You're talking about completely different thing than what OP was talking about. It's about developer having a different vision than you.

You either need to accept that someone sees the problem differently than you and accept their solution, or if it is something important to you, you need to get better at explaining your vision.

Anyway, back to your requirements, as you pointed those requirements are subjective. If those are important things you should still outline what's expected. You don't have to do it for every project, and can be when person is being on-boarded.