5 ms·

Totally agree. The idea that was should all strive for some nebulous quality called "leadership" and all talented people should want to be in charge of other pe

by CamTin 8y ago

Totally agree. The idea that was should all strive for some nebulous quality called "leadership" and all talented people should want to be in charge of other people, rather than doing interesting work, drives so much needless workplace suffering. "Leadership" has to be one of the biggest scams in the history of civilization, because it is actually really hard not to buy in, even when you don't want to. Are there great leaders? Maybe, I guess? Or are we all just propagandized (by the shitty leaders we actually have) to think that they exist? I've certainly never met one, and the only examples that seem plausible are far enough in the past (Lincoln, FDR), or so tied up with other, ideological identities (Moses, Martin Luther), wealth and power (any President, CEO, etc), or traumatic/dramatic events (military leaders) that nobody alive can remember them personally or objectively. We're a hagiography-driven species and it gives the impression that you're somehow a failure unless you're one of the lucky apes with enough "leadership" to get one written about you.

aitrean 8y ago
There are plenty of great examples of modern day leaders versus poor ones. I would argue that tech has the best, and most clearly defined spectrum of leadership. This ranges from the moronic, buzzword-driven MBA's to the CEO's cultivating trillion dollar companies. Even a changing of hands for CEO at Microsoft has shown clear, well-defined improvements for the company over the past few years. That said, I'd definitely agree with you about people being a species driven by dominance hierarchies more than capacity or will to lead. Achieving management status is a reward, not a role that requires its own skill sets and ambitions. Which is probably where much of the white collar work place suffering comes from.
- CamTin 8y ago
  > CEO's cultivating trillion dollar companies But do these people posses something called "leadership" though, or are they just in control of a lot of capital (either by the lucky success of their app, or by being crowned by VC firms) and people. I don't know that we, as apes, can really disentangle the two. Even Nadella turning around Microsoft is arguably just down to business strategy, which is a technical skill like anything else, but we imbue it with this aura that defines it as something more valuable than merely coding, building something mechanical, dispatching subway trains, or comforting a sick person. In my view, it's not. There are two categories of business leaders: capitalists who are looking after their own assets, and paid managers. Neither deserves any more respect than any other rich guy or technocrat, respectively.
  - aitrean 8y ago
    People organize themselves into hierarchies. I'd say this isn't because of any biological predisposition, but because hierarchies are the most efficient power structure for decision making among large groups of people. This is only because the alternative of weighing everybody's opinion equally is chaotic, and prone to poor decision making due to lack of education and experience among an entire set of people. Look at any election, and the consequences of letting everybody have a voice become evident (that said, there are other tremendously good qualities of elections that make us keep them around). Leadership is the ability to make decisions on behalf of the group under you that are good. It's seen as being altruistic because it can enhance, or detract from the quality of work, and the quality of life of everybody beneath you. The effect of good decision making is multiplicative based on how great the scope of your 'leadership' is. A good decision maker in charge of 100,000 people will therefore bring a lot more productivity and positivity to society than a good decision maker in charge of only 100 people. Moving forward by replacing 'leadership' with the term 'decision making' - which is really what it is - there are a lot of individuals who have consistent history of good decision making. These individuals exemplify good decision making far too often for it to be a function of luck or random chance. Of course, there are definitely some people who got lucky and were mistakenly labeled as 'good decision makers' (lest we forget November 2016). I'd also say that because we don't live in anything remotely close to a meritocracy, some people achieve leadership and management only because they come from a position of privilege in society. Nevertheless, the concept of good decision makers bearing great importance in society should not be dismissed, because historically the human race has excelled, or completely grinded to a halt based on how, and who we let make decisions.
    - CamTin 8y ago
      Exactly. Hierarchies aren't inherently bad (though I think newer forms of organization are increasingly ripe to displace the largest hierarchies. Amazon's success in moving to computer-mediated APIs between departments rather than strict up-the-org-chart, down-the-org-chart communication, "networked" companies like Uber or Bird, etc). My objection, or I guess social critique, is that we have a lot of undue reverence for decision-making. It's important yes, and can have a big impact, but it's just a skill, not fundamentally different from other skills, and isn't especially more difficult than most. The Little Dutch Boy had a huge impact too, because of the leverage of the situation he found himself in, but we don't seem to imbue sticking your thumb in things with any special reverence.
jadedhacker 8y ago
I have been coming around on RMS. When I was younger I thought he was awesome, then I started to think he was unrealistic, now I'm coming back to awesome (if extremely cantankerous).
- spookthesunset 8y ago
  I dunno man. RMS-styled leadership can only work in very narrow markets. And even in his market (free software), I'd argue his success has been hampered by his complete lack of pragmatism. Being an unchanging, unbending visionary has a very high risk of losing relevancy and/or pissing a good swath of people off. RMS is a something, but not exactly what I'd call an excellent role model for leadership. Especially for anything outside of the narrow niche of Free Software. His leadership style would never, ever work in a for-profit company or, especially, a startup. There is no room for unbending, unwavering principled stands in a startup--you'd completely lose your shirt and go bankrupt if you never changed your startup.
  - jadedhacker 8y ago
    I agree with you. I think his style of leadership is as a movement leader, not a corporate leader. Whether he is effective as a movement leader is a question, but I think he is starting to be more relevant again with the kinds of questions we are asking these days about control and privacy. Movement leaders often become unpopular for a time before they become relevant again. For instance, MLK was exceedingly unpopular after his anti-Vietnam speech until his death. I don't mean to put RMS on the same level as MLK, he's just the prominent example of that pattern that springs to mind.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  He's unrealistic, cantankerous, awesome, and more.
C4stor 8y ago
I think we have different views of what leadership, and it'd be interesting to compare them. To begin with, in my opinion, leadership isn't stopping doing, but reaching the point where the interesting work isn't humanly doable by a single person, and at this point deciding the only way to keep going is finding people to do the stuff with you. At no point do I think leaders aren't doers : a CEO takes on a mission of finding money (be it through fundraising, having an actual product, or pretty much any mean), and never ceases doing that, he just gradually stops doing pretty much everything else. A great developer may start leading technical project, and will develop the most complex (and in his mind, interesting) part of the code while trying to delegate the parts he doesn't find as interesting. Cf. the large number of open source projets with "available for beginner bugs" documented, or calling for help with documentation. And this is what, I think, defune find great leaders : some person will at the same time continue their mission, federate people and will make you them great for helping them, because they'll feel adequate at the scale where you're working. And when this happens, they start federate always more people because working for/with them is a rewarding experience. So, I'd contest that : - leaders are people "who want to be in charge of people". There are definitely people who want explicitly that, but they're not what I'd call leaders but rather managers. - everyone who is "in charge of people" is necessarily a leader. And ultimately the shitty "leaders" we have sometimes aren't leaders at all, be they President or w/e. They may very well be here through other means than aligning people wills. But I find there are plenty of people, at all levels of society who just at some point say "I want to go forward, but I can't do it alone, so let's go together and I'll go in front because I'm too damn curious and passionate and I wanna know what's out there, and here's why it's exciting", and it's always great to embark on a journey with them ! TL;DR : the "details" in the original citation I think aren't the intricacies of your core product/mission, but rather everything that's in the end noise disturbing the path forward.
fjsolwmv 8y ago
Leaders are incredibly important. Every household is made up of 20-80% leadership position. Now, maybe having everyone try to be king is bullshit.

by CamTin 8y ago

aitrean 8y ago

There are plenty of great examples of modern day leaders versus poor ones. I would argue that tech has the best, and most clearly defined spectrum of leadership. This ranges from the moronic, buzzword-driven MBA's to the CEO's cultivating trillion dollar companies. Even a changing of hands for CEO at Microsoft has shown clear, well-defined improvements for the company over the past few years. That said, I'd definitely agree with you about people being a species driven by dominance hierarchies more than capacity or will to lead. Achieving management status is a reward, not a role that requires its own skill sets and ambitions. Which is probably where much of the white collar work place suffering comes from.

CamTin 8y ago
> CEO's cultivating trillion dollar companies But do these people posses something called "leadership" though, or are they just in control of a lot of capital (either by the lucky success of their app, or by being crowned by VC firms) and people. I don't know that we, as apes, can really disentangle the two. Even Nadella turning around Microsoft is arguably just down to business strategy, which is a technical skill like anything else, but we imbue it with this aura that defines it as something more valuable than merely coding, building something mechanical, dispatching subway trains, or comforting a sick person. In my view, it's not. There are two categories of business leaders: capitalists who are looking after their own assets, and paid managers. Neither deserves any more respect than any other rich guy or technocrat, respectively.
- aitrean 8y ago
  People organize themselves into hierarchies. I'd say this isn't because of any biological predisposition, but because hierarchies are the most efficient power structure for decision making among large groups of people. This is only because the alternative of weighing everybody's opinion equally is chaotic, and prone to poor decision making due to lack of education and experience among an entire set of people. Look at any election, and the consequences of letting everybody have a voice become evident (that said, there are other tremendously good qualities of elections that make us keep them around). Leadership is the ability to make decisions on behalf of the group under you that are good. It's seen as being altruistic because it can enhance, or detract from the quality of work, and the quality of life of everybody beneath you. The effect of good decision making is multiplicative based on how great the scope of your 'leadership' is. A good decision maker in charge of 100,000 people will therefore bring a lot more productivity and positivity to society than a good decision maker in charge of only 100 people. Moving forward by replacing 'leadership' with the term 'decision making' - which is really what it is - there are a lot of individuals who have consistent history of good decision making. These individuals exemplify good decision making far too often for it to be a function of luck or random chance. Of course, there are definitely some people who got lucky and were mistakenly labeled as 'good decision makers' (lest we forget November 2016). I'd also say that because we don't live in anything remotely close to a meritocracy, some people achieve leadership and management only because they come from a position of privilege in society. Nevertheless, the concept of good decision makers bearing great importance in society should not be dismissed, because historically the human race has excelled, or completely grinded to a halt based on how, and who we let make decisions.
  - CamTin 8y ago
    Exactly. Hierarchies aren't inherently bad (though I think newer forms of organization are increasingly ripe to displace the largest hierarchies. Amazon's success in moving to computer-mediated APIs between departments rather than strict up-the-org-chart, down-the-org-chart communication, "networked" companies like Uber or Bird, etc). My objection, or I guess social critique, is that we have a lot of undue reverence for decision-making. It's important yes, and can have a big impact, but it's just a skill, not fundamentally different from other skills, and isn't especially more difficult than most. The Little Dutch Boy had a huge impact too, because of the leverage of the situation he found himself in, but we don't seem to imbue sticking your thumb in things with any special reverence.

jadedhacker 8y ago

I have been coming around on RMS. When I was younger I thought he was awesome, then I started to think he was unrealistic, now I'm coming back to awesome (if extremely cantankerous).

spookthesunset 8y ago
I dunno man. RMS-styled leadership can only work in very narrow markets. And even in his market (free software), I'd argue his success has been hampered by his complete lack of pragmatism. Being an unchanging, unbending visionary has a very high risk of losing relevancy and/or pissing a good swath of people off. RMS is a something, but not exactly what I'd call an excellent role model for leadership. Especially for anything outside of the narrow niche of Free Software. His leadership style would never, ever work in a for-profit company or, especially, a startup. There is no room for unbending, unwavering principled stands in a startup--you'd completely lose your shirt and go bankrupt if you never changed your startup.
- jadedhacker 8y ago
  I agree with you. I think his style of leadership is as a movement leader, not a corporate leader. Whether he is effective as a movement leader is a question, but I think he is starting to be more relevant again with the kinds of questions we are asking these days about control and privacy. Movement leaders often become unpopular for a time before they become relevant again. For instance, MLK was exceedingly unpopular after his anti-Vietnam speech until his death. I don't mean to put RMS on the same level as MLK, he's just the prominent example of that pattern that springs to mind.
fjsolwmv 8y ago
He's unrealistic, cantankerous, awesome, and more.

C4stor 8y ago

I think we have different views of what leadership, and it'd be interesting to compare them. To begin with, in my opinion, leadership isn't stopping doing, but reaching the point where the interesting work isn't humanly doable by a single person, and at this point deciding the only way to keep going is finding people to do the stuff with you. At no point do I think leaders aren't doers : a CEO takes on a mission of finding money (be it through fundraising, having an actual product, or pretty much any mean), and never ceases doing that, he just gradually stops doing pretty much everything else. A great developer may start leading technical project, and will develop the most complex (and in his mind, interesting) part of the code while trying to delegate the parts he doesn't find as interesting. Cf. the large number of open source projets with "available for beginner bugs" documented, or calling for help with documentation. And this is what, I think, defune find great leaders : some person will at the same time continue their mission, federate people and will make you them great for helping them, because they'll feel adequate at the scale where you're working. And when this happens, they start federate always more people because working for/with them is a rewarding experience. So, I'd contest that : - leaders are people "who want to be in charge of people". There are definitely people who want explicitly that, but they're not what I'd call leaders but rather managers. - everyone who is "in charge of people" is necessarily a leader. And ultimately the shitty "leaders" we have sometimes aren't leaders at all, be they President or w/e. They may very well be here through other means than aligning people wills. But I find there are plenty of people, at all levels of society who just at some point say "I want to go forward, but I can't do it alone, so let's go together and I'll go in front because I'm too damn curious and passionate and I wanna know what's out there, and here's why it's exciting", and it's always great to embark on a journey with them ! TL;DR : the "details" in the original citation I think aren't the intricacies of your core product/mission, but rather everything that's in the end noise disturbing the path forward.

fjsolwmv 8y ago

Leaders are incredibly important. Every household is made up of 20-80% leadership position. Now, maybe having everyone try to be king is bullshit.