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Ask HN: Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams?

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Re: Ask HN: Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams?

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must have missed something, seeing extreme ownership praised so much but I stopped reading it after a chapter or so. The whole macho thing didn’t jive and I’m struggling to find parallels to ordinary life. Lives aren’t at stake for 99.9999% of work out there. The whole military hierarchy and all the idealization doesn’t exist in normal contexts. Leaders aren’t trusted implicitly always or “lives are at stake”. So h…

Corporate business leaders here in America tend to be obsessed with trying to apply military-style terminology and doctrines to their business. In their minds, business is war, and "lives are at stake" gets translated to either "jobs are at stake" or "revenue is at stake," depending on the person. There are so many war-isms in business it's impossible to list them all. "In the trenches," "boots on the ground," framin…

> The military demands that soldiers immediately and unquestioningly follow commands given by their superiors (particularly during combat).

I don't think the way you've phrased this is quite accurate, although I understand what you're getting at.

In the book the author discusses how it is the responsibility of leaders to plan missions and to ensure that all voices and concerns are heard during planning. It's also the leader's responsibility to ensure that a decision about how to proceed is reached. Once a decision is reached though the expectation is that it will be carried out without question (I don't have any quotes handy unfortunately).

This sounds awfully similar to Amazon's principle of disagree and commit. I think this principle is congruent with the way the way the book suggests that leaders should operate.

From my own personal experience I think this is actually a really important principle. I find nothing more frustrating in a team environment than when one member of the team disagrees with a decision and decides to take it upon themselves to head off in their own chosen direction. It's very frustrating to have team members not following a plan.

Re: Ask HN: Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams?

#182
There is a nice compilation of articles in a github repo, divided by topic. https://github.com/charlax/engineering-management Leadership is an expansive topic and I don't think it's possible to nail it. "Turn the Ship Around" I think really nails the strategy of Functional Leadership, plus it's a true story. Keep in mind that Leadership and Management are two very different topics that people often conflate.

Re: Ask HN: Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams?

#183

The best book on leadership IMO is the Tao Te Ching, Ch. 17. It's very short, about ten lines, but it contains all that you need to know. The final verse, especially, destroys or subsumes pretty much all concepts of leadership. YMMV: http://taoteching.org.uk/chapter17.html http://www.egreenway.com/taoism/ttclz17.htm https://www.taoistic.com/taoteching-laotzu/taoteching-17.htm https://taoteching.daodejing.org/17.htm h…

The translations were a little tough to get through but here's a transcript of the best one:

"...The best leaders are those the people hardly know exist.

The next best is a leader who is loved and praised.

Next comes the one who is feared.

The worst one is the leader that is despised.

If you don’t trust the people,

they will become untrustworthy.

The best leaders value their words, and use them sparingly.

When she has accomplished her task,

the people say, “Amazing: we did it, all by ourselves!”

- J H McDonald (Trans.)

Re: Ask HN: Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams?

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simon Sinek has never actually led anything and is basically someone who is an expert at marketing himself. His advice doesn’t say anything new and is usually extremely banal. He’s the classic example of fake it till you make it in modern America. A guy who makes flashy viral videos, has zero actual experience of leading organizations or teams, yet someone has acquired some guru like reputation at a genius leader.

Ok, where's your book so I can read and compare?

I've never directed a movie but I'm not allowed to say that Dumb and Dumber 2 is a terrible movie? Your logic makes no sense.

I've read well and deeply across a broad spectrum of classic philosophy and psychology and I think Simon Sinek is a dilettante and basic thinker. I'm allowed to have that opinion regardless of whether I have written books or not.

Re: Ask HN: Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams?

#185
A variant on the OP's question.

What are good books on leadership that are written by people who have actual experience of being great leaders?

Most books on leadership seem to be written by people who have no experience of leadership, they just know how to market their books.

Re: Ask HN: Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams?

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would recommend "The Phoenix Project" and "The Unicorn Project" and "The Goal" to all tech managers. Goldratt's "The Goal" and its sequels are interesting reading, but please, please internalize the principles he was arguing from for the theory of constraints before trying to apply it to software. Otherwise you end up with "The Pheonix Project" (whose author is apparently making a nice living as a snake oil proce…

I'm not really following your criticisms on The Phoenix Project... Can you elaborate?

I didn't attempt to make a detailed criticism. Basically, it's the naive application of Goldratt's "The Goal" to IT. People have been trying to model IT processes on manufacturing for decades. Still doesn't work. The opinion of several engineers that I respect very highly who suffered from the author's consulting services makes me discount his work entirely.

If you read farther in Goldratt, the sequels to "The Goal", he refines the notion of constraints in very interesting ways that leave the factory floor. I don't think the author of the Phoenix Project ever got that.

Re: Ask HN: Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams?

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. Team of Teams is a great intro to leadership for tech. General Chrystal identifies the distinction between complicated and complex areas and shows best practices for dealing with complexity (it's not just a semantic argument but actually something substantial, where tech leaders generally deal with complex problems and not complicated problems).

Is it an easily communicated difference?

Yes. Complicated means lots of moving pieces but predictable. Complex means lots of components that are far less predictable.

https://thearmyleader.co.uk/team-of-teams/

Re: Ask HN: Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams?

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaders Eat Last was one of the best books I read this year. Extreme Ownership was also quite good but Simon really explains the “Why” of leadership that most books are missing. High-Output Management is another classic.

I understand the “why” of leadership very well, but as a high-functioning autistic person, I struggle very much with the “how”, especially around communication. Like - for all possible values of X, if X is what I want someone to do, how do I communicate that so people (a) understand that I want X from them and (b) aren’t offended and understand that it is meant kindly/charitably (which it really is, I often just don’…

"I was going to get it" is past tense. Using past tense for something can imply that it's something that was true in the past, but not now.

This can irritate people because it comes off as trying to claim credit for intent to do the task without actually doing it.

While "Please stop. I've got this" is the best phrasing because its what your wife has requested as well as what the other commenter stated, I imagine you would have still got a fine result if you used present or future tense. "I"m getting it" or "I'll get it".

Tenses, and other grammar on their level, is definitely something you will be able to find scripts for.

Re: Ask HN: Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams?

#190
I've been a team lead for close to four years now in two different companies, both times my teams spanned multiple time zones!

I really enjoy this subject and read a lot about it. My favorite books so far are:

- Radical Candor -- Gives a great framework for candid conversations and empathy which IMO are the most important thing! Clear #1 in my list.

- Leading by Alex Ferguson -- A great successful leader in another area - Soccer - that had many years building effective teams. It's incredible how many concepts can be mapped over, he talks for example on how having "rockstars" in a team that aren't team players isn't worth it.

- Ride of a lifetime by Bob Iger -- It's mostly a biography of Disney's most successful CEO, I thought it was very authentic and gave good advices on how to deal with creative people, empathy, setting goals and navigating hard situations (compartmentalizing)

- Creativity Inc Amy / Ed -- Pixar's president biography on how to manage creative teams, it is a bit repetitive but it is golden! Lots of good ideas and insightful chapters that make you think about how to build a successful culture.

- The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders -- IMO a bit shallow compared to the other books I mentioned but it was a pleasant read.

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