The annoying habits of highly effective people • Hacker News Board

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#61

Post by briandear » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 4:48 AM UTC

phakding wrote: post #40

matwood wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that you couldn't become the CTO? Serious question. What qualities are you lacking?

Well I don't even know what a cto does. I have been in many meetings with them, but besides making high level decisions and asking for status, I don't know what they do. Besides I was born in poverty and needed lot of efforts to be able to socialize with people born upper middle class. I can only imagine what else I need to learn to socialize within upper echelons. I can't explain it to you fully. Thanks for asking t…

You need to believe in yourself first. It sounds like you have an inferiority complex. Most CTOs I know aren’t “upper echelon” anything — they just got great at their job and weren’t afraid to take risks (such as joining a tiny startup.) Plenty of non tech founders would love to have someone like you with your experience.

(I don’t mean to be disrespectful; just wanted to implore you to not fall for the self-imposed bigotry of low expectations.)

Just look on Angellist and you could probably find yourself a CTO or role — or one that could quickly lead to one. Just be excellent at your job; learn how to influence and be confident: you know more than most!

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#62

Post by manigandham » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 4:49 AM UTC

phakding wrote: post #3

Never understood people's infatuation with reading CEO biographies. I've read a few and never found anything in it that could relate to. May be I am not meant to be one of those people. Even if I worked hard, got in at work at 5 am every day, I don't think I could go from being a lowely team lead to cto or CEO of a multi billion dollar corporation. I don't think it just works that way. I could be very wrong, but that…

You're focused on the actions rather than the results. Common mistake.

People become leaders by creating and commanding change that positively affects the company. Land a major deal or create a new product line that doubles revenue? You're getting to the top.

Working harder than the others is part of this process, and sometimes that means you come in at 5am, but it's not a requirement nor is it something that anyone in that position actually focuses on as more than just a means to an end.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#63

Post by manigandham » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 4:54 AM UTC

phakding wrote: post #40

matwood wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that you couldn't become the CTO? Serious question. What qualities are you lacking?

Well I don't even know what a cto does. I have been in many meetings with them, but besides making high level decisions and asking for status, I don't know what they do. Besides I was born in poverty and needed lot of efforts to be able to socialize with people born upper middle class. I can only imagine what else I need to learn to socialize within upper echelons. I can't explain it to you fully. Thanks for asking t…

> making high level decisions and asking for status

That's it. Along with hiring the right talent which is the half of the job (and often invisible) so that the work actually gets done. High-level decisions can affect hundreds or thousands of people and many more customers, so fewer but more important decisions is the trade-off, then delegating the rest so that other workers can do what they do best.

This description seems minor but the larger the company, the harder it is to keep things on track for a long-term focused vision. Also people don't do things just because you tell them to and you'd be surprised at just how hard it is to keep people working towards a goal.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#64

Post by briandear » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 4:57 AM UTC

exabrial wrote: post #53

I wouldn't call Tim Cook an effective manager though. He centralizes decisions on himself and had been turning Apple's reputation and Halo-effect into cash rather than innovation.

Have you ever worked for Apple? What you see and reality aren’t always the same.

As far as innovation, have you used Apple Watch? Have you used CoreML? ARkit? Has any other company shipped a 7nm chip? Do you know the products in the pipeline?

It’s pretty easy to snipe when news reports are your only source. It isn’t like Tim Cook publishes meeting minutes or Craig F or Eddy Cue are sitting around discussing Tim’s management style.

iPhone or iPad wouldn’t have been possible without Tim because he created systems to actually produce and ship the thing. Look at the efficiency of Apple’s supply chain — nobody else can come close. That success is the very definition of “effective manager.”

If we want to talk of inept managers, we would have plenty from which to choose, but Cook isn’t one of them.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#65

Post by enraged_camel » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 4:58 AM UTC

sonnyblarney wrote: post #56

jjoonathan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same appeal as any other type of cargo-culting: it's a lot easier to get up at 5am, shake hands firmly, and dress for success than it is to spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct.

" it's a lot easier to get up at 5am, shake hands firmly, and dress for success" Let's not be superfluous. Being a CEO is hard, even the 5 am rising and 'hand shaking' parts.

>>Being a CEO is hard

Not necessarily. It completely depends on the company and the industry.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#66

Post by taurath » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:03 AM UTC

apatters wrote: post #58

toomuchtodo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct. Or be born into money. No amount of self-help is going to tilt the scale towards that.

> spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct. > Or be born into money. No amount of self-help is going to tilt the scale towards that. While there are undoubtedly success stories which resemble both of these caricatures, I think they're in the minority. I can't say I'm hobnobbing with the Forbes billionaires list but I have personal relationships with many people who built successful bus…

I’ll add - “they had the privilege of being able to focus their attention and not be harmed for it”.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#67

Post by sonnyblarney » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:05 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #65

sonnyblarney wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" it's a lot easier to get up at 5am, shake hands firmly, and dress for success" Let's not be superfluous. Being a CEO is hard, even the 5 am rising and 'hand shaking' parts.

>>Being a CEO is hard Not necessarily. It completely depends on the company and the industry.

Yeah, some are harder than others but I can't think of a CEO job that isn't hard. It's always fraught with political risk, changing times, etc. etc.. From the 'inside' we might think it looks easy, we get a paycheque, it's all hunky-dory ... but from that top spot it's almost always hard.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#68

Post by dasil003 » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:29 AM UTC

pandapower2 wrote: post #54

phakding wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I don't even know what a cto does. I have been in many meetings with them, but besides making high level decisions and asking for status, I don't know what they do. Besides I was born in poverty and needed lot of efforts to be able to socialize with people born upper middle class. I can only imagine what else I need to learn to socialize within upper echelons. I can't explain it to you fully. Thanks for asking t…

>I don't know what they do. In my experience all C level executives do a very good job of seeming like they know what they are doing. That seems to be a huge part of the job. Seeming like you know what you are doing, seeming like you know what is going to happen in the future (despite that being fundamentally unknowable) and being vaguely intimidating. Beyond that they select from the set of possible projects that co…

C-suite is about setting the vision and aligning teams and departments. It’s anything but choosing from presented choices and waiting months on end for results; to the contrary it is constant evaluation and communication to steer the ship as well as possible. You are right that projecting confidence is important, but that’s not the main job by a long shot.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#69

Post by dasil003 » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:36 AM UTC

dkarl wrote: post #48

At one time I thought highly successful people would be more like each other than less successful people. I believed it even more when it was explained as the Anna Karenina principle. But my experience hasn't borne it out. There are many things you can point to as advantages or "best practices" but in the end it all seems to dissolve into our penchant for telling stories. One guy is successful because he was born int…

This is exactly right. Setting overly ambitious goals from a young age is likely to prevent one from developing mastery and capitalizing on the serendipity that leads to great opportunities. You can’t manufacture success, but you can set yourself up to get lucky.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#70

Post by rconti » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:41 AM UTC

So the article starts out by saying that you won't be successful just by emulating Tim Cook (rises early) or Jeff Bezos (putters in the morning).

Shouldn't the author have just ended it there by concluding that neither one of these habits is necessary in order to be successful, rather than going on complaining?