Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

#231

Post by cannonedhamster » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 1:01 AM UTC

CamTin wrote: post #173

wepple wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious: this reads as if you think there’s a better model. How would that model work?

Directly, democratically provisioning (aka decommodifying) the essentials of life (healthcare, a home, food to eat, education) while letting markets continue to exist for everything else. Then we won't need to have stockholm symdrome and convince ourselves that our boss is the greatest. Instead, we can engage in truly free exchange if we want to, and nobody gets to threaten us with homelessness and destitution. In ot…

What if I want a better home than other people? What if I don't want to eat the food that's provided to me? What if I disagree with the education system? You're trading one system of benefits and downsides for another, in your case you're trading freedom and risk for autocracy and stability. Mind you I'm well aware of the problems with Capitalism, I don't think having a good boss in the same system who can make you a better person, help you learn, etc is antagonistic to your goals of Chinese communism.

Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

#232

Post by CamTin » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 1:46 AM UTC

cannonedhamster wrote: post #231

CamTin wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Directly, democratically provisioning (aka decommodifying) the essentials of life (healthcare, a home, food to eat, education) while letting markets continue to exist for everything else. Then we won't need to have stockholm symdrome and convince ourselves that our boss is the greatest. Instead, we can engage in truly free exchange if we want to, and nobody gets to threaten us with homelessness and destitution. In ot…

What if I want a better home than other people? What if I don't want to eat the food that's provided to me? What if I disagree with the education system? You're trading one system of benefits and downsides for another, in your case you're trading freedom and risk for autocracy and stability. Mind you I'm well aware of the problems with Capitalism, I don't think having a good boss in the same system who can make you a…

If you want a better home than other people, take a job and buy a better one. If you want better food, take a job and buy better food. If your employer at that job pressures you to do something that makes you uncomfortable or is immoral, you then don't need to do the calculus of "Do I compromise my morals, or get kicked out on the street with no health insurance?" because, as a floor, you have the community-provided essentials to tie you over while you find a morally acceptable job that will allow you to continue living in a big house and eating organic lobster.

Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

#233

Post by ospider » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 8:05 AM UTC

stevetursi wrote: post #161

She fought for us, when there was an issue she cared and sought to understand, she understood that family comes first before work (and lived the example), she protected us from the politics of the large organization, and she did whatever she could to obtain the resources we needed to do the job (a nearly impossible task at that company.) She had a 100-200 people on her staff yet she always made time to meet with whoe…

No offense, but I was thinking that does good manger always lead to a better result? I mean, as far as the CEO concerned, good mangers should give better results.

Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

#234

Post by maksa » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 10:23 AM UTC

- He provided high quality input and got quality output in return.

- He removed obstacles.

- He never let shit that was raining on him just fall down on us. He was basically an umbrella.

Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

#235

Post by stevetursi » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 3:36 PM UTC

ospider wrote: post #233

stevetursi wrote: post #161

She fought for us, when there was an issue she cared and sought to understand, she understood that family comes first before work (and lived the example), she protected us from the politics of the large organization, and she did whatever she could to obtain the resources we needed to do the job (a nearly impossible task at that company.) She had a 100-200 people on her staff yet she always made time to meet with whoe…

No offense, but I was thinking that does good manger always lead to a better result? I mean, as far as the CEO concerned, good mangers should give better results.

I don't know if it's always the case, but she believed it was. It's probably no coincidence that her team always did whatever it took to produce exceptional results.

Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

#236

Post by YayamiOmate » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 4:28 PM UTC

quantumhobbit wrote: post #214

Not my direct manager but the tech lead. This was a new team with an early standup which never happened on time because we would always roll in late. The scrum master had the 'great idea' to start a dollar jar. Whoever was late to standup had to put a dollar into the jar. None of us objected because other than the scrum master, tech lead, and manager we were all new to the company and didn't want to rock the boat. Th…

Seems like an armwrestle workaround the issue. Good it got solved but it's poor managing if a star engineer needs to extort his authority to handle managerial problem... I wonder how much of it was display and how much a necessity.

Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

#237

Post by jacobwilliamroy » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

He tricked a fishing boat captain into letting himself and a film crew follow them out to the north pacific to document the destruction caused by dragnet fishing boats. He wined and dined the captain and told him that he was a big shot hollywood producer making a film about large sea creatures. Then my boss filmed them killing seabirds and dolphins and whales, presented that evidence to the UN along with statistical data predicting a complete and total crash of the northern pacific salmon population and got them to outlaw the practice of dragnet fishing.

Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

#238

Post by wepple » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 7:01 PM UTC

CamTin wrote: post #232

cannonedhamster wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I want a better home than other people? What if I don't want to eat the food that's provided to me? What if I disagree with the education system? You're trading one system of benefits and downsides for another, in your case you're trading freedom and risk for autocracy and stability. Mind you I'm well aware of the problems with Capitalism, I don't think having a good boss in the same system who can make you a…

If you want a better home than other people, take a job and buy a better one. If you want better food, take a job and buy better food. If your employer at that job pressures you to do something that makes you uncomfortable or is immoral, you then don't need to do the calculus of "Do I compromise my morals, or get kicked out on the street with no health insurance?" because, as a floor, you have the community-provided…

Ok, that sounds reasonable. But how do you find this model? Do you not suspect that a lot of people would be happy to tell their boss to stick it as the state will take care of them - then who is funding the cost of all the state programs?

Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

#239

Post by meva » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 9:01 PM UTC

rjzzleep wrote: post #215

ambicapter wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I look at him and say: "What do you want, you don't have a clue about this stuff anyway." I know you specified this was 10 years ago, but I can't think of a single situation where this would not be a douchebag move.

It's great making assumptions when you know nothing about the dynamics between two people, their social interactions, their history and basically anything else isn't it? I mean, you could have just asked. But insulting random people you know nothing about is much less of a douchebag way to deal with it I guess.

Your answer is needlessly rude yet again.

Re: Ask HN: What made your favorite manager/supervisor/CEO so great?

#240

Post by TimTheTinker » Thu, Sep 20, 2018, 11:10 PM UTC

alexhutcheson wrote: post #224

JepZ wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correct response would be along the lines: 'Sorry, but you have to ask my boss if we can push it to the top of our task list as she has the overview over the priority queue'. That is different than a 'No, I don't have time for that.', as it teaches how to do it right in the future, and your boss doesn't have to get furious because everything that happened was that the team informed the org about the regular proce…

That assumes that your manager has a reasonable process for prioritizing these kinds of requests, which is often half the battle. It also requires a manager that will go to bat for you and defend that process, even when the requester says "This is critical and time-sensitive, I don't have time for that, so can you just do it?"

Margaret certainly had both of those things. :)