How to be a leader when the vibes are off • Hacker News Board

Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off

#201

Post by scott_w » Fri, Sep 26, 2025, 8:42 AM UTC

atoav wrote: post #199

scott_w wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A good manager gets in a fight with their superior(s) if their superior happens to be wrong. A bad manager will avoid conflict with their superior, nod too unrealistic demands and then badmouth the superior with their team. A catastrophic manager will actively push unrealistic plans towards their superior. You've put forward a false dichotomy between punching my manager in the face and nodding along silently to eve…

> You've put forward a false dichotomy between punching my manager in the face and nodding along silently to everything I'm told. Frankly, both will get me fired pretty quickly. No I did not. I characterized a certain type of person by how they would act at the extremes. Naturally most day to day decisions are not taking part at those extremes. Also these being a false dichotomy would mean you can somehow both nod al…

>> A good manager gets in a fight with their superior(s) if their superior happens to be wrong. A bad manager will avoid conflict with their superior, nod too unrealistic demands and then badmouth the superior with their team.

> I characterized a certain type of person by how they would act at the extremes.

This is literally a false dichotomy.

> Why did you turn what I said into "punch them in the face"?

It's called dramatic effect, I don't literally think that you said it but my comment stands even if you take your literal argument.

> But what if the manager had not said the truth but (trying to please the superior) promised impossible things?

Neither I nor the article argue you should do this, so you threw a strawman on top of your false dichotomy. I don't see how we can have a fruitful discussion when the positions you claim are being taken are positions that exist only in your head.

Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off

#202

Post by tomp » Mon, Sep 29, 2025, 8:25 AM UTC

mfru wrote: post #177

tomp wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marxism is amazing as long as you get to freely choose who to share the spoils with. In fact, this idea is so amazing, we should create a new political philosophy around it! How should we call it? Share-ism? Freedom-ism? Or, maybe just Capital-ism?

Let's just call it Communism and have it.

The basis of Communism is theft (sharing stuff that you take from other people) and murder (killing those that resist).

Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off

#203

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 29, 2025, 8:42 AM UTC

mfru wrote: post #177

tomp wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marxism is amazing as long as you get to freely choose who to share the spoils with. In fact, this idea is so amazing, we should create a new political philosophy around it! How should we call it? Share-ism? Freedom-ism? Or, maybe just Capital-ism?

Let's just call it Communism and have it.

[deleted]

Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off

#204

Post by mfru » Mon, Sep 29, 2025, 8:43 AM UTC

tomp wrote: post #202

mfru wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's just call it Communism and have it.

The basis of Communism is theft (sharing stuff that you take from other people) and murder (killing those that resist).

this is - of course - false.

Communism is not theft (that only computes if you have a neoliberal viewpoint of taxes = theft) and the second point is just a polemic (also: capitalism is directly and indirectly the cause of hundreds of millions of deaths, all the US led color revolutions, anti-communist killings like in Jakarta or Vietnam etc., all the shock doctrine countries that still are not sprawling hubs of capitalist paradise).

Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off

#205

Post by falcor84 » Mon, Sep 29, 2025, 2:02 PM UTC

>This too shall pass

> Things will eventually settle down into a new normal

While I accept the former as a wise axiom, I don't think we can derive the latter in regards to the tech industry. Things have been accelerating, and I'm concerned that we're now fully in "Present Shock" territory and it'll keep being hectic with no ground to stand on until eventually there is no more tech industry as we know it.

Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off

#206

Post by viridian » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 4:59 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #161

jordanb wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've known quite a few people in the military and "efficient" is a word they never use to describe it.

Do you think it would be better to have a democracy during war? (I mean in individual military units, not in a country overall - note that military is controlled by a civilian democratically elected president) "The enemy's forces are shelling us. Do we want to attack back? Who votes for/against?"

US military doctrine does often play out like this in the field. We prefer maneuver warfare strategies and tactics to positional and attrition ones as a general rule, and a key element of maneuver warfare is the units doing the work having the unilateral ability to maneuver or retreat regardless of some greater plan.

The battlefield is not a democracy, nor a top down dictatorship. In proper combined arms maneuver warfare its more akin to a network of syndicates working towards a common goal.