How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team • Hacker News Board

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#231

Post by shadowmint » Fri, Jun 08, 2018, 8:59 AM UTC

bb88 wrote: post #230

shadowmint wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really great advice, thank you. I think it really crystalized the issues I had reading the article; you can do (or try to do...) all the ‘right things’ and still have a terrible result. If it was easy to get right, things would be great... but its not. Its hard. ...and a slide deck of protips doesn’t cut it as a solution.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great resource, but it's not "How to be a manager." Just an example of this, culture is hard to get right. You can't hire yourself to culture. It's something that has to be practiced by all your employees every day. If you have 1000 managers in your corporation, you have 1000 micro-cultures. If a chunk of those managers figure out they can berate their directs on a daily basis witho…

This is quite a fair comment, but I can’t tell if you’re agreeing, disagreeing or just making an unrelated point.

The point I was making is: this article isn’t practically useful, its just ‘how it would be nice if things were’ not ‘how to get there’.

Its got some good ideas, sure... but as you say, reality and ideals aren’t easily matched; so as a step by step guide, its somewhat trivialising what is actually a very hard, entirely unsolved set of problems.

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#232

Post by internetman55 » Fri, Jun 08, 2018, 1:41 PM UTC

Indeed, the way mgmt seems willing to capriciously fire people for "values" conflict or getting caught in the middle of some mess management created is one of the reasons I don't really see the point of investing much in a single job. I can still get fired or laid off at random if I worked two hours extra a day or something (has happened to me). If I spend those two hours making myself marketable and networking it won't matter if you fire me because I'll just bounce to something else. I wish some managers would just learn to interact like humans instead of being insecure tough guys and "playing hardball" with everyone. I've seen that tank projects and set back careers (IC and mgmt).

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#233

Post by lucisferre » Fri, Jun 08, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

For those interested in learning management skills I've found https://www.manager-tools.com/ and their podcasts and resources invaluable.

Also the best book I've read so far on management is the excellent High Output Management by Andy Grove. Still incredibly relevant.

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#234

Post by marcus_holmes » Fri, Jun 08, 2018, 10:34 PM UTC

spyckie2 wrote: post #228

marcus_holmes wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a narrative about how the US works, that's a great story. As an east vs west philosophy debate, it completely fails to recognise that European cultures have also "baked conflict into the system". It also fails to recognise that SE Asian cultures were also colonised by European powers. A better explanation is that the American values were straight-up inherited from European ones because America (and Australia simil…

not sure how Europe got in this, was comparing American values versus Asian values. Conflict is the center of attention in American values (you could say western values, I don't know enough about modern European sentiment to say that). Conflict is indirect in Asian values. Do you mean that American values aren't so anti-European that I depicted, or rather are derived from European values? I think I allude to it with…

This: "The American revolutionists had gone through a lot. The history of western Europe was one where your lives were in the hands of emotional kings who could reward you one day and behead you the next without rhyme or reason. They were under the excessive, unchecked power of Britain, exhibited time and again through taxation without representation. They saw how much control the Bank of England had over the commonwealth. It was a time of rampant monopolies, major powers that had consolidated all control, and where conflict was an affront to power."

this ignores the fact that Britain has also "baked conflict into the system", and that Britain shares an idealogical framework with Europe, that America inherited, but SE Asia did not.

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#235

Post by blub » Sun, Jun 10, 2018, 4:39 PM UTC

mieseratte wrote: post #216

blub wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, then please point me to an authoritative source where this is described, because I can't just take your word for it.

> Ok, then please point me to an authoritative source where this is described There is a brief Reddit thread with sources available[0]. The initial post sources DoD transcripts of a post-exercise interview[1], and although this doesn't go into the missile weight issue it directly mentions that active air defense was turned off on the real-world ships in the simulation and they were unrealistically geographically cons…

Thanks for the references.

The non-reddit reference you have provided points to a transcript from 1999, it looks like it's an incorrect link.

I couldn't examine the reference mentioned in the reddit post either, since the web page doesn't open, but there seems to be some disagreement on reddit regarding the topic itself.

Newspapers quoting van Ripper are one of the best sources we have access to, unless the military published an official account.