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Ask HN: What are the best articles on managing people?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the best articles on managing people?

#71

Post by cj »

austin-cheney wrote: post #54

Online articles will be insufficient. Instead, find the right people. First understand that management is administrative: accountability, task completion, retention, hiring. Leadership is direction, purpose, and motivation. The concepts are not related. Leaders own things and take risks. Managers balance spreadsheets. If you are an extreme introvert or find it difficult to be assertive you have a tremendous amount of…

> If you are an extreme introvert or find it difficult to be assertive you have a tremendous amount of catching up to do

This can be a good thing. "Natural born leaders" by personality type tend to be overconfident and ignore their blindspots because they've never had a reason to challenge their ability.

Introverts, for example, are acutely aware that leading and managing doesn't come naturally and is a skill that is continually learned and built upon. In the long-run, introverts can be excellent leaders because they're aware of what it takes to be a good leader and they put an emphasis on professional development to get where they need to be.

Not to say extroverts are worse leaders. Both introverts and extroverts can be terrible leaders/managers. The best leaders/managers are the ones who have the self-awareness to reflect on themselves, identify their week points, and constantly improve.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best articles on managing people?

#72

Post by orionsbelt »

thinkingkong wrote: post #57

The Mochary Method is a google doc that has been making its rounds for awhile. It's not the most visually stunning set of guidelines to read but the content is excellent. https://docs.google.com/document/d/18FiJbYn53fTtPmphfdCKT2TM...

Awful advice in the legal section. I hope the other areas are better.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best articles on managing people?

#73

Post by computerdork »

cj wrote: post #71
austin-cheney wrote: post #54

Online articles will be insufficient. Instead, find the right people. First understand that management is administrative: accountability, task completion, retention, hiring. Leadership is direction, purpose, and motivation. The concepts are not related. Leaders own things and take risks. Managers balance spreadsheets. If you are an extreme introvert or find it difficult to be assertive you have a tremendous amount of…

> If you are an extreme introvert or find it difficult to be assertive you have a tremendous amount of catching up to do This can be a good thing. "Natural born leaders" by personality type tend to be overconfident and ignore their blindspots because they've never had a reason to challenge their ability. Introverts, for example, are acutely aware that leading and managing doesn't come naturally and is a skill that is…

Agree with this. Maybe "extreme introverts" will have a tough time as leaders, but moderate ones probably have a lot of advantages. On top of the ones you listed, they tend to be better listeners, reading both people and situations better, having higher empathy (https://thrivedowntown.com/what-is-an-introvert-personality/...)

Re: Ask HN: What are the best articles on managing people?

#74

Post by dilyevsky »

e12e wrote: post #19

I think Peopleware deserves a mention: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Proje...

Peopleware doesn’t get the love it deserves these days. I mentioned tom demarco to my vp of eng at former gig and they clearly didn’t know wtf i was talking about…

When i was picking up some team lead responsibilities for the first time, it was the first book suggested by my then mentor who was an experienced manager.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best articles on managing people?

#75

Post by dilyevsky »

johnfn wrote: post #62
jasode wrote: post #49

Not an article but this oft-linked HN comment from Slava Akhmechet is very accurate about how subordinates' motives can sabotage your intended goals and objectives : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18003253

Haha, wow, I remember reading this when it was written. I do think it's probably a bit too cynical though, probably colored by the author's own world-view and personal experience. I do think that some companies are just filled with BS; don't get me wrong. But I think that there are also a subset of companies who are filled with people trying their best, but who are making mistakes and/or being incompetent in a way th…

> I do think it's probably a bit too cynical though, probably colored by the author's own world-view and personal experience.

That’s the sad part. Once you personally encounter this, as i also have, though not as a founder, you cant help but notice it everywhere and question everything. Like the irl The Thing

Re: Ask HN: What are the best articles on managing people?

#76

Post by neilv »

CharleFKane wrote: post #47

Douglas Southall Freeman, On Leadership , especially the lecture he called “Old Number One”. I can’t find it online now, though the whole book is on archive.org. Here’s a good summary: https://uncomn.com/leadership-part-1-lessons-from-douglas-so...

From the summary of "Old Number One", these are maybe 3 of the top 6 things that I think I learned by osmosis from managers early in my career. The other big ones were humility/thoughtfulness, honesty, and grace under pressure. (Perhaps the original lecture addresses those, as well.)

I don't know the research on this (and would be hesitant to believe anything out of the business press about management). I only have anecdata, intuition, and speculation.

I'm not perfect at any of these, but they seem to be a really good guide.

Note that not everyone has picked up the same influences in the past, so they might not have seen all of these, and they might've learned a lot of other ideas.

For examples of other influences (not just managers, but execs including startups): Many seem to prioritize projecting confidence, over everything else. Others seem wired to persuade, to doing what they want or to having a positive impression of them, at all costs. Others seem to think they must assert authority, first and foremost.

The difference in past experiences, and the reality of industry conventions in practice, means you sometimes have to explain something that seems obvious to you.

One time I failed to communicate well, I was characterizing to a startup CEO how I'd run a forthcoming engineering team, and I added something at the end, "and they'll be my people". I intended it as shorthand for a style of conscientiously looking after their needs, and fostering a culture of loyalty to the team/project/company. Of course that was ambiguous, especially in a business context, where aggressive self-interest is the most likely explanation for any behavior. Later, I realized that he was looking to be the leader of more of a lifestyle company, with the entire company his people in a somewhat different sense (which was an influence he'd seen in his own career). So I'd maybe sounded like I was saying I'd silo off a fiefdom of loyalists to me rather than to him or the company, shape part of the company in my image, or otherwise get between him and the people.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best articles on managing people?

#77

Post by lazyasciiart »

maCDzP wrote: post #16

I really like the work of Gervaise Bushe and his book “clear leadership”. He makes the argument that by putting a lot of effort in understanding your own and other peoples viewpoint you are able to build good relationship. But what I believe sets his work apart from others is his psychological view on why it’s sometimes hard for people to listen to each other. He dissects which anxieties drives our behavior to listen…

I remember some similar content in Crucial Conversations, although it is a while since I read it.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best articles on managing people?

#79

Post by chiefalchemist »

austin-cheney wrote: post #54

Online articles will be insufficient. Instead, find the right people. First understand that management is administrative: accountability, task completion, retention, hiring. Leadership is direction, purpose, and motivation. The concepts are not related. Leaders own things and take risks. Managers balance spreadsheets. If you are an extreme introvert or find it difficult to be assertive you have a tremendous amount of…

> Online articles will be insufficient. Instead, find the right people.

Well, yeah. But if it were *that* easy then everyone would do it. "It's just..." find the right people. Anyone one with experience knows "it's just" is a red flag for "I lack the depth and understanding of the domain so I'll dismiss it as if it's child's play."

This leads to one of my never-fails heuristics: Making it look easy is very very hard.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best articles on managing people?

#80

Post by lazyasciiart »

AJ007 wrote: post #20

I had a lot of trouble with this in my early 20s. Everything I read was bullshit. There are two important distinctions: how you manage mediocre workers you didn't hire, and how you manage good workers. The former will require 98% of the effort of the latter, and will give you a fraction of the same results. If you are running a tech company, the former will probably prevent you from ever running things well or smooth…

Step 0: come to grips with the existence of workers outside those two groups, and the possibility of workers who fit in different groups in different contexts or at different times in their life.
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