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

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

#141

Post by kubami »

johnchristopher wrote: post #119
takeda wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, that describes exactly my last job (which wasn't bad, I liked my coworkers, but my last manager made it a horrible experience), worst job I had so far. He wasn't bad as an engineer, but he had this crazy OCD to a point that even keys in YAML file should be ordered alphabetically. He had his vision how things should be, and how he would implement them. First, he was not happy that my solutions were done differentl…

> He wasn't bad as an engineer, but he had this crazy OCD to a point that even keys in YAML file should be ordered alphabetically. Eh, I am guilty of that (for myself, I don't run around other people's code). I don't know if it's OCD but I clearly remember the moment I decided to order keys (in yaml, json, etc.): after a debugging session where I lost time because I was scanning whole lists with my eyes, looking for…

IMHO having this as a rule that keys in dictionaries are sorted alphabetically can be a valid rule. But this should be enforced in tooling, not "rules", and not through micromanagement. Much like using opinionated code formatters - like `prettier` you mention. It makes lives of everyone easier down the line.

Sometimes this comes from years of experience (mostly pain ;)). Some leaders, while coming from a good place - I want to help you, and others, avoid pain in the future - communicate it very badly - do it like that... because I say so!

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

#142

Post by seer »

m_st wrote: post #139
seer wrote: post #135

I was climbing up the ranks as a dev of a web agency. The owner just got into the startup scene abroad and wanted to be part of it. So he spun up a separate company, and I ended up as a lead dev there. And as the senior dev I ended up with the CTO role. No experience with that whatsoever, and no support structure to lean on as we were basically one of first gen IT startups in my country. No established processes and…

Thanks for sharing your story. I‘ve had/have a similar experience. No seniors here to learn from but got it up to top performance with reading (joelonsoftware was a great inspiration back then), investing lots of time (but rarely overtime) and being ambitious. I believe you also learned that you shouldn‘t be the single point of failure. I‘m still actively working on that. Though it‘s hard to relay to others if they j…

This is what I also think Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince was after.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up your men to collect wood and give orders and distribute the work,” he said. “Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

Heard that recently in Julia Galef’s TED talk which I think was awesome.

But I also struggle with that last one myself too. At least now I know inspiration is more about emotions than rational arguments.

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

#143

Post by psds2 »

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.

I didn't see any discussion of blind trust. The first point was about focusing on looking at the trust and figuring out how it could be built up.

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

#144

Post by hagy »

cutemonster wrote: post #94
trs8080 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and truth be told I wasn’t exactly a saint either lmao. rich people are hilarious. this isn't a "leadership challenge." this is you almost facing the consequences of your actions and then getting out of it and being successful despite the fact that you (by your own admission) were probably guilty. too bad you weren't caught -- then you may have actually learned something.

> almost facing the consequences of your actions No, but the consequences of a seemingly sociopath CEO's actions. Your reply was one of the worst things I've read here on HN the last weeks. Saying such things to someone who was, back at the time, thinking about suicide.

I think we'll all reading too much into this. Without knowing the details of what specifically the CEO, CTO, and others did, I don't think any of us can express much judgement.

This anonymous poster stayed on topic and told us about a leadership challenges and the personal trials and tribulations of dealing with the challenge. Personally, I'm glad to have read this tidbit and thankful they shared it. They likely can't provide more details for legal reasons and they certainly don't want to bring attention to this part of their career.

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

#145

Post by jawns »

seneca wrote: post #11
xmprt wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What reason did HR give for you not being able to fire him? I think at least some members of the team would be understanding. Also, I'm not sure if you tried this, but I've heard in cases where you can't fire someone, you recommend them for internal transfer and give the other manager good reviews of them. It's a bit scummy but it's the most positive outcome for the team.

> What reason did HR give for you not being able to fire him? I don't want to ignore the question, but it's a sensitive topic and I'm not sure bringing it up would add to the conversation. > Also, I'm not sure if you tried this, but I've heard in cases where you can't fire someone, you recommend them for internal transfer and give the other manager good reviews of them. Yes, I actually had a peer recommended this as…

I don't think you need to divulge any sensitive details, but unless this is a "one in a million" occurrence, it's possible that others might be faced with a similar situation in the future, so it might be useful to share at least some broad details. Was HR concerned that it would lead to legal problems, e.g. an ADA violation or a claim of discrimination against a protected category? Or was it more like a nepotism issue? As a manager, I would likely handle those in different ways.

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

#146

Post by jawns »

jonathankoren wrote: post #77
brobinson wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at a company in the US where HR would not let us fire an employee who was viciously attacking other employees in public. The employee in question had a medical condition covered under the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). Perhaps OP's case was similar.

This sounds like HR is falling down on the job there. ADA accommodations don’t include attacking someone. That’s easily a for-cause reason.

Indeed. And in such a case, the greater risk, legally speaking, is a lawsuit from the employees who are victims of such attacks. The employer can't just claim, as a defense, that their hands were tied because of the ADA.

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

#147

Post by anotheryou »

You asked for the hardest, no good solutions to those:

- dev with low self-esteem causing social issues: problem ongoing, helping though: speaking about it, more focused tasks he can take ownership over and finish without that much communication and trouble.

- dev generally not nice to people (and not that compenent): people started avoiding him and he quit... Should not have come through the probation period, but I wasn't in change of that (see next point).

(it's also not that easy firing someone in germany btw)

- ownership of product and progress, but no say in direction (which changed every 2nd week) and not officially team lead: I quit.

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

#148

Post by tluyben2 »

giantg2 wrote: post #60
tluyben2 wrote: post #22

Having to tell my team that our product, their baby, had to be rewritten (because our competitors were gaining on us and we had accrued too much tech debt: new features took forever and the result was slow performance wise) and then motivating them to work on that rewrite with the same enthusiasm as the old product. There were over 200 people working on it and it almost went wrong because a lot of people kept trying…

How did you get people to listen to your suggestion to rewrite, or did you have that authority? I made similar suggestions to my boss about a system once. They basically told me it would never happen and to stop thinking about stuff like that so I could focus on the day to day stuff. Well, 2 years later and they outsourced that entire group to a company who will end up rewriting the system...

I was the CTO.

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

#149

Post by uchiga »

giantg2 wrote: post #60
tluyben2 wrote: post #22

Having to tell my team that our product, their baby, had to be rewritten (because our competitors were gaining on us and we had accrued too much tech debt: new features took forever and the result was slow performance wise) and then motivating them to work on that rewrite with the same enthusiasm as the old product. There were over 200 people working on it and it almost went wrong because a lot of people kept trying…

How did you get people to listen to your suggestion to rewrite, or did you have that authority? I made similar suggestions to my boss about a system once. They basically told me it would never happen and to stop thinking about stuff like that so I could focus on the day to day stuff. Well, 2 years later and they outsourced that entire group to a company who will end up rewriting the system...

Its cheaper to have an external group do the rewrite since they can maintain the code going forward.

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

#150

Post by jawns »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #23
andrew_v4 wrote: post #10

"Non-contrubuting ideation" - people from other groups without real skin in the game who don't want to take responsibility for anything but insist on providing input on how it's done, and often have some political standing to do so. This has come up again and again in many roles. For me personally, I am really bad at handling this. Sometimes it's fine just to meet with people an hear their ideas (which can obviously…

Is political capital a real thing for managers?

Absolutely -- although it's less manipulative than the phrase implies. It just refers to building up some level of trust, respect, and goodwill over time by being an honest, decent, and caring person. Then, when you find yourself having to make a decision that you know is the right call, but might not be well received, that trust and respect you've built up can be useful in helping your team digest the decision.
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