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Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?

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Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?

#141

Post by Delmania »

king_panic wrote: post #138

I am an app developer who interfaces with c-suite executives weekly. Every time I get into the weeds with them I lose their attention. EVERY time. They don't care about the technical aspects of my solutions, they care about what it means to their customers functionality, the price they pay for the solution or the time it takes a product to be delivered. So I put things in those terms. I NEVER get very technical anymo…

In short when communicating with anyone outside of engineering, figure out what they care about and speak to that.

Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?

#142

Post by Dowwie »

Solutions, not problems. Schedule times for your reports up the chain and before you discuss, remove yourself from the details and reflect. Write a summary for yourself with key take aways. Try to avoid real time discussions about "how's it going" with someone who is asking for summary, not detail. Get back by end of day.

Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?

#143

Post by cddotdotslash »

zedgerman wrote: post #69
xkgt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an engineering manager until recently, didn't get much enjoyment out of my role since I had to focus more on whats and whys instead of hows which is what excites my engineering mind. Now I have changed job to an engineering role and having lots of fun building stuff and learning new things. However at times I wonder whether I made the right call, whether my career will stagnate if I am not interested in moving…

[disclaimer: I haven’t been a people manager for too long, so take it with a grain of salt] I block off some time each day to do ‘something technical’. Sometimes it’s making something pretty that was ugly before. Sometimes it’s learning a new tool my team is considering to pick up. Generally these are things that are important, but not urgent. For larger projects, I often attend the design reviews. Sometimes I help o…

I help write unit tests for code my team is working on. It's fairly non-blocking (we won't slip a delivery date if I get pulled into something else for a few days) but still requires me to understand the code base and ask questions of the engineers.

Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?

#144

Post by tixocloud »

As a manager who transitioned from technical to commercial, the biggest shift is speaking concisely and having an opinion on which direction to go and why. Leave the details out and think big picture about how the issue affects the entire organisation and what decisions/actions your manager needs to take. Present solution options, articulate the benefits and costs, offer your opinion and have a discussion.

Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?

#145

Post by rcdmd »

Vagueish advice for a vaguiesh problem-- When presenting issues, I'll almost always fallback on something like this-- 1. Details of the problem with history of other related issues. 2. 1-2 sentence assessment of the problem that helps summarize everything. 3. 1-2 possible solutions.

Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?

#146

Post by jondubois »

I think it's bullshit advice. It sounds like the remnants of a dying mysogynist corporate culture where appearances mattered more than substance.

Working people are smarter now than they were at any point in history. They're just pretending to be stupid in order to fit into existing social power structures. But they can't continue to pretend forever.

The notion of a working class which is smarter and better informed than the ruling class is a new situation which did not exist before and it's going to be interesting to see how it unravels as the intelligence and ambition gap widens.

We are currently in a transition period; a dark age for progress. Smart people are being suppressed and coerced by a powerful class of ruling idiots who are using any means necessary to maintain a highly unstable status quo which is the enemy of progress itself.

Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?

#147

Post by venantius »

jondubois wrote: post #146

I think it's bullshit advice. It sounds like the remnants of a dying mysogynist corporate culture where appearances mattered more than substance. Working people are smarter now than they were at any point in history. They're just pretending to be stupid in order to fit into existing social power structures. But they can't continue to pretend forever. The notion of a working class which is smarter and better informed…

I strongly disagree. Leadership is fundamentally emotional-political-strategic, which are not skills that most engineers invest in. You can argue that more engineers should and do have those skills, but when someone says something like take an executive/leader lens rather than an engineering lens, they're trying to imply that you're only thinking about solving a logic puzzle rather than trying to win sales.

Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?

#148

Post by Theodores »

jondubois wrote: post #146

I think it's bullshit advice. It sounds like the remnants of a dying mysogynist corporate culture where appearances mattered more than substance. Working people are smarter now than they were at any point in history. They're just pretending to be stupid in order to fit into existing social power structures. But they can't continue to pretend forever. The notion of a working class which is smarter and better informed…

It is a capitalist world order that we live in. The masses are not going to rise up and demand worker cooperatives. It is essential to the system of wage slavery that the managers don't know what they are doing. In tech there is this veneer of having some power and ability to negotiate pay due to having the tech skills. Hence nobody in tech thinks of things like collective bargaining, everyone's pay level is secret. People in tech are just skilled craftsmen, the thing about YC is that it is about getting beyond being a hired hand. Get it right and you could be in the capitalist ruling class, hiring managers to keep people in their places so maximal wealth can be extracted from them.

Work all your life to pay off the mortgage to the bank, make your bosses rich and retire quietly is what is expected. Some individual rights are given along the way, you can now have non standard dress codes and ping pong tables at work. But the premise is capitalism. Once people have the mortgage, the car, the two weeks of holiday and some tow word job title they are quite happy. There is no pretending about it, it is a system which is considered normal and the only way.

Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?

#149

Post by mattkrause »

Delmania wrote: post #141
king_panic wrote: post #138

I am an app developer who interfaces with c-suite executives weekly. Every time I get into the weeds with them I lose their attention. EVERY time. They don't care about the technical aspects of my solutions, they care about what it means to their customers functionality, the price they pay for the solution or the time it takes a product to be delivered. So I put things in those terms. I NEVER get very technical anymo…

In short when communicating with anyone outside of engineering, figure out what they care about and speak to that.

That is great advice for anyone, anywhere!

Re: Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?

#150

Post by mjw1007 »

Samon wrote: post #71
nlawalker wrote: post #64

A piece of simple, concrete, implementable advice I read recently that I really like is "communicate in the language of options , not demands, imperatives, requests, or preferences." Imagine yourself having a conversation with your manager or someone in a relatively similar position about a decision or suggestion you have. How often do you say things like "we have to", "we need to", "we really should", "can we", or "…

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."

One place where this can fall down is when the cost is along the lines of "if we do X then we're closing down the option of doing Y" later.

Unless the business/management/client is better than average, there's a large risk that they'll say "fine, whatever, we want X", then a year later ask for Y and be unhappy that it's impossible or very expensive.

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