Typical of most management primers: 2,000 words of hand-wavy
psychobabble, none of it actionable, all of it music to other psychobabblers.
Managing People
71–80 of 98 posts
Re: Managing People
#72> It's hard to get people to own a problem space fully At least in my experience this is because a manager doesn't want to give their reports full ownership over something. That is, responsibility for the outcome and (much more importantly) decision making authority for how they deliver results. Managers (almost) always want people to take responsibility, but don't want to give up authority.
I've come to think that the words "responsibility" and "ownership" usually means "blame" in a corporate setting.
The words only get used when something isn't going well and the managers don't want to look bad.
Re: Managing People
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you find no value in this at all? Let's take this then > Common Sense usually means Big Hairy Ball of Experience-Grounded Implicit Knowledge I don't agree, here's some very straightforward 'common sense' statements that I've seen not followed at so many companies Don't micromanage. Do trust, but verify. Treat your staff like humans, not like crap. If the staff you employed know more than you, listen to them. Focus…
> Treat your staff like humans, not like crap. That statement is vacuous because no decent human being would say: "I want to treat my staff like crap". It is easy to agree with your points because they are universal but don't provide any meaningful way to differentiate, e.g., what is and what isn't "treating your staff like crap".
> because no decent human
The "decent" word is carrying much of the weight in your argument.
Not everyone is a decent person, but if being a decent person is actually a way to become a good manager, then the statement is not vacuous at all. Given the conventional wisdom that CEOs have sociopathic tendencies, the statement may be flat out wrong even. I just don't think it's obviously vacuous.
Re: Managing People
#74I identify with much in this blog post. One novelty argument: Managing is hard because it embodies the dialectic between capital and workers. Therefore a deep understanding of the Marxist critique (and exposé) of capital will help provide an analytical framing around what an effective manager needs to do. You can approach it from other lenses but they all break down due to the two polar forces most strongly at play.…
A difficulty with marxism is that it is thoroughly old fashioned about bucketing people into categories. In a feudal society you were born into a life where you were a serf, or a craftsman, or an aristocrat. Marxism massages the labels but essentially accepts this worldview. The primary handle on each person is a class label, assigned at birth. Talent is irrelevant. One of the challenges of management after feudalism…
> My view is that capital is nearly irrelevant in mainstream technology now beyond achieving bootstrap
Wasn't that true for traditional businesses as well? Beyond bootstrap, the company itself (revenue streams, assets, etc.) is the capital.
I mean, if I wanted to be a landlord in the middle ages the only capital I need is a bag of gold coins to buy enough land and build a fort and "bootstrap" my lordship... (and maybe a fake birth certificate :)
Re: Managing People
#75The author mentions firing people in almost every point. Is firing people in the US so easy that it is a go-to solution to solve these problems?
Yes, most states are "at-will", which means you can be fired for any non-illegal reason at any time, barring any existing contracts.
You don't actually need to give a reason, at-will means you can be fired without cause.
For those abroad, remember that most of the time health insurance is tied to employment in the US... so when you get fired your costs also skyrocket (especially if you're the insurance source for your family).
Re: Managing People
#76If I had a personal API both as an IC and as a manager, it would look something like this. Thank you, this is magnificent.
Re: Managing People
#77>> Expect more from managers that report from you
>> * By default, mistakes are not their team's fault but theirs
As a middle manager I hear this all the time. Unfortunately the "shit flows upwards" mantra seems to stall out before it hits the top of the pyramid, so any talk of "owning fault" leaves me skeptical at best.
Re: Managing People
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Treat your staff like humans, not like crap. That statement is vacuous because no decent human being would say: "I want to treat my staff like crap". It is easy to agree with your points because they are universal but don't provide any meaningful way to differentiate, e.g., what is and what isn't "treating your staff like crap".
> because no decent human being would say: "I want to treat my staff like crap". Go not by what they say but what they do, and I've known plenty who have treated their staff like utter crap, from screaming abuse at them to ignoring them to undervaluing them to psychological bullying and more. I guess all your workplaces must be like heaven compared to what I've seen. I don't understand where you're coming from. To me…
It's not useful because it provides empty universally accepted statements (i.e. you don't have to actually have any managerial experience to come up with this list) with no examples of what each means in the context of a relationship with a direct report.
Re: Managing People
#79There's some good stuff in here, but I feel like a lot of valuable context was left out to accommodate the author's unique formatting style. Not everything needs to be reduced to a one-line zinger.
Re: Managing People
#80I see a lot of comments about firing and chaos, but the single most important point to me is "you manage processes and lead people". So many managers get this wrong that just fixing this one thing probably gets most startups 60% of the way there.
I wonder how much of the "managing processes" part could be delegated to software tools? How many of these processes could be automated, or "managed" by some sort of workflow software. Would it be possible with the right software product to essentially distribute the role of manager across the team/company?