Your manager is a gigantic faggot. Tell him to fucking commit suicide.
When he’s finally dead, do as you please. Welcome to, and congratulations on graduating your last and only leadership class.
Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?
101–110 of 218 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?
#102Leadership is basically just people-engineering and business-engineering. Engineers use tools to build products, and so do leaders. The immediate assumption is that people are tools/resources to build the product. That's talking like an engineer. Don't use your team to work on a project/product. Use the project to work on your team. They're not there to build the product. They're there to gain some personal fulfillme…
> The immediate assumption is that people are tools/resources to build the product. That's talking like an engineer. That's more management-speak than engineer, in my experience. I hate being referred to as a resource.
Agree.
Whenever I get contacted by a recruiter from Tek* .com or * Resource.com, I absolutely cringe.
Who uses these companies? Who entrusts them to negotiate salaries on their behalf?
Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
A former Tech leader where I work used to say "Never say you can't do something. Just provide options, cost and consequences. The business/management/client will make the decision for you."
This is super important. Having someone come to the conclusion you care to on their own will solidify it in their own heads as their idea, making it an obvious choice. I’ve even gone so far as to argue against it with a few surface arguments, to cement it in their minds. Is that manipulative? Sometimes. But if it’s for the benefit of the team, you do what has to be done.
This is literally the secret to being successful at business and politics.
Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?
#104Study persuasion and communication. * Robert Cialdini's "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion * Jeff Cannon's "Leadership Lessons of the Navy Seals" * Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" Attend Public Speaking workshops. If there's a ToastMasters club in your area, join it. Improv can be another great way to learn how to get "less rigid" and more open with your communication style. https://ww…
toastmasters - especially the improv "table topics" activities - has been indescribably valuable for me. It helped me go from being too shy to give a presentation in front of one person to giving talks to hundreds of strangers at a time. Pro-tip: you can attend the first one or two meetings of each toastmasters group for free so if you're a broke student like I was at the time, just rotate the groups since there are…
+1 on the table topics.
IMO it's the valuable part of Toastmasters. Toastmasters in general was too much of a cult-like environment for me, I wish there was a toast-masters 'lite' with just the table topics.
Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?
#105As a leader, you should talk differently with your team and with execs. With your team: understand what they are saying quickly, ask good questions, make them think, teach them how to think and work with your principles and wisdom. With execs: understand what they want, "own" and ask what you need (logically) and "get things done". The buck should stop with you.
Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?
#1061. Don't pass technical info up the food chain
2. Executives only wanna know, why and what and who, not how.
3. See Engineers are minions whoes work is to handle complexity for the company in return of payment, if you've to think about the complexity yourself as a manager or executive, your engineers aren't doing a very good job at it and someone must be fired, adopt this view.
4. You and executives are on another level controlling technical resources which are like sheeps, so be a German shepherd and guide them properly.
Pass down only the information essentially to operate. Engineers having more info/control is dangerous.
5. When being asked about a particular hire, use this language. Well Rick is technically sound but doesn't know much about how things work in business (plaster a wicked smile), he has to be tamed then he will be good for the company. You've to express that you've total reality bending mind control over your minions.
Executives like bullying character because they get job done. So think about how you can appear like a bully to your executives.
You need to make executive feel in control, like you are his loyal dog who is like a jail warden/bully to minion working for the company.
Infantize the Engineers in your language when talking to Executives. After all infants can't take of their own food and need on-campus sushi to feed themselves
Stop asking for advise on HN, here Engineers outnumbered executives so good answers will only receive downvotes.
In real life, being politically or ethically or morally correct has nothing to do with the Success.
Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?
#107Think about your Audience. That's all there is to it.
Your team's job is execution, Executives job is prioritisation. Your job as a first level manager is to make sure your teams work is prioritised correctly and that your people visible and valued.
When you're talking to your manager, think about what details he would be interested in and give him ONLY what he wants. In some cases it is about omitting details, and in other cases it's about processing the details into more digestible metrics.
As an example, if your team is spending time on a recurring issue and you want to get executive blessing for a project to develop an automation tool, you would open the dialog by hard-selling the problem. You are loosing a huge amount of productive time, atleast 'x' man-days every week. Your engineers are frustrated by this. Every team in your company is impacted by this, not just yours... and guess what, MY TEAM can solve this.
Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?
#1081. Don't pass technical info up the food chain 2. Executives only wanna know, why and what and who, not how. 3. See Engineers are minions whoes work is to handle complexity for the company in return of payment, if you've to think about the complexity yourself as a manager or executive, your engineers aren't doing a very good job at it and someone must be fired, adopt this view. 4. You and executives are on another le…
Damn that's cynical. I hope you find something better.
Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?
#109> don’t talk like an engineer, talk like a leader
one thing that's important to remember in general is to stay on topic. an executive won't care to a certain extent about the technology choices or the day to day work. figure out his goals within the company and only bring to attention topics that can actually impact those, those might be technical of course but most likely than not they will be about people and resources scheduling, deadlines met and missed or possibilities for raising the team efficiency and other cost savings that might impact the bottom line.
if you bring up a major technical point it must be something that actually impact the company strategy, otherwise if it's within your responsibility to call the shots, then call the shots. for example we are going to change our multi-tenant strategy, now that I had to bring up for consideration because it impacts the running cost per client, each client cost per scalability unit and has wide effects on how we package, deliver and deploy each client customization projects that's on top of our products offering; still you talk about how all of this would enable independence between each other delivery team and what you lose in term of increased costs for parallel development, not about the technicalities of the task per se, that's what you talk with your team, albeit if you want an happy team you let them figure out from a very accurately described problem statement, because that what engineers like to do.
you don't need to drop the engineering lens. you just need to stay on topic and focus on talking about what's important to your other conversation party, and that doesn't just apply to management and it's not "talk like a leader" per se.
Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?
#110Engineers set and impose product/service definitions. Leaders impose people definitions. Set goals, policies, and directives for you people. Make the goals realistic, but don't let your people convinced you to lower the bar. Use your engineering experience to destroy their weak excuses.
When your people meet challenging expectations reward them. When they fail find out why. If there is an opportunity to improve a failing member of your team then fix them. Otherwise get rid of them. usually everybody that is qualified to be there can be improved to meet reasonable expectations. The people who can't are usually not qualified for the position or don't want to achieve your baseline.