TL;DR "yes men" middle managers keep their jobs.
How to be a leader when the vibes are off
71–80 of 206 posts
Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off
#72A lot of this I think is interest rate driven rather than AI driven.
Definitely plays a huge part in expectations and burnout when the roadmap flips halfway through a quarter because suddenly we need to court VCs or trim staff or whatever the fed/gov decides.
The snip-snapping is wreaking havoc on products and you see it everywhere from price hikes to low-quality ux and bug-filled code as teams adjust and pivot constantly.
Even worse this leads to less enthusiasm and focus as teams expect it more so they buy-in less.
Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Lie through your teeth, but not so much people quit? I didn't get this message from the blog post at all. Let me summarize for you: In public toe the company line, if you don't, you will be fired. In private, be honest about your opinions so your team knows you are on their side and understand their plight (and most likely you suffer from the bad leadership as well). Protect the team from bad consequences by not be…
> In public toe the company line, if you don't, you will be fired. In private, be honest about your opinions so your team knows you are on their side and understand their plight This person is not on the side of the team. This person is simply supporting that policy. There is no "protecting the team from consequences" if what you do is enforcing new other, just in a sane way. Well, ok, it is that persons job, but it…
> Well, ok, it is that persons job
This is the key. If they don't do it, it's not their job anymore. The team won't just revolt in unison, but the lead will be replaced with someone more complacent. The only option is to comply, but let the team know in private that you don't like the new vibes.
Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off
#74The capital class didn't like the power employees had during covid. They hated pretending that they care about employee health or well-being. So now they are vindictively sticking it to everyone. This phase, too, will pass. AI (LLM's) is like cloud - the promise of lowered costs to incentivize organizations to migrate, then a few years later your business is paying double what your Colo and skeleton IT costed. AI wil…
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Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off
#75The capital class didn't like the power employees had during covid. They hated pretending that they care about employee health or well-being. So now they are vindictively sticking it to everyone. This phase, too, will pass. AI (LLM's) is like cloud - the promise of lowered costs to incentivize organizations to migrate, then a few years later your business is paying double what your Colo and skeleton IT costed. AI wil…
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Racism didn't end in 1964, but people sure have gotten better at dog whistling about it.
(Just earlier this year, the first words out of the mouth of the political right about a fatal aircraft crash was to... Question the credentials of its black pilot. Because no matter how much a black person will ever achieve in this country, some mouth breather who hasn't done a day of honest work in their lives will insist that those achievements were all a sham, they don't deserve any of them, they can't do the job, their out-of-work cousin with a meth habbit can do it better, etc.)
And if you call the pricks and nepobabies who are doing that out on it, they start hand waving it as 'we're just asking questions' and 'well, he could have been unqualified', or raise some other nonsense deflection of their vulgar, unacceptably racist behavior.
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All that judgement was made before any of the facts besides the pilot's skin color were out. If your first reaction to 'aircraft flown by pilot crashes' is 'clearly, that's because they were an unqualified AA hire', you are, unfortunately, a racist. Own it, or stop it.
And, sadly, quite a number of people were very happy to out themselves as such. What is sadder is that others are happy to play cover for them.
Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> AI (LLM's) is like cloud - the promise of lowered costs to incentivize organizations to migrate, then a few years later your business is paying double what your Colo and skeleton IT costed. There's some ignorance in this comment, which turns your comment into a pointless jab at pet peeves. I'll explain you why. The value proposition of cloud providers for business perspectives is a) turning capex into open, b) lowe…
The last couple of companies I worked for were only still in business because they avoided the cloud completely, and their competitors didn't. Paying 4x the cost for something isn't a competitive advantage unless the capabilities the cloud provides are significant. While they are nice, unless you are a very specific type of business, they aren't going to make up for the increased costs. In fact, the last company I wo…
What sector of the Econ were those failures in?
Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Paying 2x as much per server means you need to drop well below half just to break even. But you always need a server or you can’t handle new requests. So at small scale there’s zero benefit from dynamic loads.
> you always need a server or you can’t handle new requests You don’t always need a server, you could also just go serverless, get charged 10x while you make your architecture a distributed, slow, hard to debug mess.
Yea, just don’t ask what’s listening for those requests.
Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off
#78So basically, leadership is coping? No thanks.
Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off
#79I can't over-emphasize the role line managers play in decoupling the delusion expectations of leadership and the ground truth of employees' lives. I think a lot of CEOs would burst into flames if they saw an average IC's day, but those ICs can still be high performers and achieve the goals of the business. Having automonomy and flexibility is huge for ICs. The role of the line manager is to provide plausible deniabil…
Her manager probably did her a huge favor
Yeah, navigating disability leave can be a little rough
Not as rough as being PIPed out though, which was probably the other most likely path in front of your friend
Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off
#80> part of your job is representing and facilitating those decisions with full alignment this is not chaotic good, this is lawful neutral. and really bad leadership.
Out of genuine curiosity, what about this do you think is bad leadership? And, if I may, what would good look like?
because we must, above all else, keep an ethical backbone in our decision-making that respects both the welfare of the people we lead and the task at hand.
if c suite is demanding people RTO to a toxic work environment, I'm not going to require my team to meet the exact requirements - wanna use your lunch break to drive to the office, tap your badge, then drive back home? sounds good to me. I'd also be asking for data to substantiate claims made regarding productivity gains or morale improvements.
or if newly appointed partisan hacks start programs for employees to snitch on LGBTQ+ people, you should channel chaotic good and not fulfill their request, and actively work against others fulfilling it, too. I know of at least one government organization in which this has taken place.
good leadership is about doing the right thing, and getting the job done. the right thing means leading by example with a high degree of proficiency, teaching others to be competent and confident, and growing yourself as an individual and as part of a larger community.
committing yourself to always carrying out the orders of leadership is a hella slipppery slope dude - especially when the "vibes are off".
maybe my examples are a bit pessimistic, but I just feel the author really missed the mark and left me (and others) scratching my head. maybe I'll give it another read later and try to steel man some of the positions. good and fair questions, by the way :)