5 ms·
It is my observation that most people who object to having a boss in reality only object to having a bad or incompetent boss, and would happily follow someone w
by DenisM 6y ago
It is my observation that most people who object to having a boss in reality only object to having a bad or incompetent boss, and would happily follow someone who is head and shoulder above them. The youthful rebellion is a part of the process of finding a worthy boss, or becoming one in the process if all else fails.
When an industry expands quickly more people have to rise to the challenge of becoming new good bosses because the demand for good bosses outstrips existing supply. In addition, old good bosses retire rich mid-career, depleting the stock. In this situation you may find yourself thinking there are no good bosses at all, and you're the next King Arthur. Which you might be - someone has to be.
When an industry grows slowly the stream of retiring good bosses is matched by the ascenders, maintaining an environment saturated in good bosses.
When an industry stagnates the good bosses retire and their places are taken by the peace-time bosses, people who learned to follow in footsteps of the elders but never learned why. They will mostly be bad bosses due to lack of experience in making errors and for lack of selection pressure that would push them against their own errors to select the best.
- foolmeonce 6y agoI think the sentiment of "better boss" only works for middle management. My boss can be as good as he wants at management, but irregardless of his past, he is never going to get up to date practice in the details of what I do. So in what sense would he be better? For him to be up to date, I am being micromanaged or I am not actually working.
- aripickar 6y agoI’ll push back on that. I currently work as an SDE at a FAANG company known for being pretty demanding. My boss is phenomenal, pretty much everything you could ask for. Shielding us from other teams requesting stuff in an unreasonable time frame, not putting too much pressure to get things done in an unreasonable way, setting us up with mentors in different areas, building out explicit plans to grow to the next level, helping people plan breaks in the day to mentally recoup, the whole nine yards. Despite all that, I still am looking to leave and start my own thing. And it’s mainly because that “I want to be my own boss mentality”. I don’t think that I’m alone in that.
- DenisM 6y agoI can't pick your brain remotely, alas, but there might be something to reconcile our differences. It is of course not just the boss, it's also the entire business structure. Do you believe in the cause you are serving? Do you feel like you contribute well to that cause?
- aripickar 6y agoI think that’s the crux of it. It’s hard to give a shit about making someone else’s product. I like what I’m working on, think it’ll help people at scale, but it’s not my product, so I’m long term ambivalent
- DenisM 6y agoWould you feel different working at SpaceX?
- aripickar 6y agoThat’s an interesting question. I think I would. But at the same time, I think that I would be more interested in building the next spacex than working at the current one.
- deckard1 6y agoOutside of one-man projects, it's never going to be your product. If you start a company, you're going to want to scale. Now you have sales, product, and marketing to deal with. Not to mention more engineers, many of which you will not agree with. If your software turns into a slow buggy mess, you only have high level buttons to mash (or you turn into the micromanaging jerk). These buttons are laggy. Tell upper management that your website is slow dogshit and you might see improvements 6 months from now. Maybe. Assuming the product weenies don't ruin it all with a dozen A/B darts they throw at the wall in the meantime.
- bananaface 6y ago
- tofuahdude 6y agoFor many, it is not about a boss or not but instead having control of how you spend your time.
- nickpinkston 6y agoYea, I think the same. Further, I feel bad for ICs and bosses alike because the bosses likely had poor management training (MBA doesn't count - I mean modern methods and mentoring/coaching) and are managed by other managers who also never had good training. I find that most people actually really want clearly defined work / goals from their manager and for the manager to be pretty hands off unless they need help, more resources, etc. There's also another class of problem which is that, as a corollary to the above: "You weren't meant to have a job" - ie it's not always easy to execute / enjoy work even when the work is interesting and your boss is great. Anything worth doing is probably going to be challenging and that's going involve some measure of stress.