6 ms·

The thing about #1 is that they probably aren't trying to help the company succeed. It's more likely that they're trying to take the company for a ride to meet

by j_baker 15y ago

The thing about #1 is that they probably aren't trying to help the company succeed. It's more likely that they're trying to take the company for a ride to meet their own ends. Any success they have is only going to be in the short term and only in the interests of posturing. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates can get away with this because their companies by and large are theirs. While #2 isn't a very effective leader, their heart is usually at least in the right place. Plus, given the right people, it's amazing what you can get accomplished by simply leaving them alone and letting them do their job. But then again, I'm of the opinion that we focus too much on the leadership and not enough on the people. Maybe I'm just naive. Great leaders are like surfers riding a big wave. It's easy to get distracted by the surfer and forget that the wave is really the important part.

axiom 15y ago
"While #2 isn't a very effective leader, their heart is usually at least in the right place" You know what they say the road to hell is paved with. Lots of people have great motives, but end up achieving nothing but destruction. Yeah, I definitely agree that for the hardass and the in-between leaders there's a lot of ego involved, and they're trying to "ride" the team to achieve personal ends. The thing is, that frequently tends to work well. It's not necessarily a pleasant environment to work in, but it's kind of like climbing a mountain. It's no fun while you're doing it, but once you've achieved it you can be proud of it for the rest of your life. I don't think Steve Jobs was trying to make a fun work environment for people - he was trying to push the creation of great products. Conversely, the Michael Scott type boss who tries to be everyone's friend has no personal motives (beyond being liked) and thus no incentive to push for great results. I guess ultimately building something great is really really hard work, and it can often be really unpleasant.
larsberg 15y ago
> their heart is usually at least in the right place I've normally seen that people in role #2 are just not prepared for the hard conversations that come with being a manager. Sometimes, you have to call people out on poor or below-potential performance. If you do, I've found that most people will either pick up the pace or quit. If you don't, well... things get bad. The unfortunate chaps in role #2 leave poor performers around to poison the team (most coworkers slack off when they see somebody else slacking, particularly if you have the corporate-standard opaque compensation schemes), avoiding dealing with negative actions until either somebody else comes around and fixes it or the team is killed. I was in this situation once, where a string of #2s had been managing a decently-sized development team I was merging with and it took several months for me to sort through the people, clean house, and build a functional team again. You know the worst part? There were a few fantastic people who had utterly languished due to being surrounded by mediocrity. On the other hand, that was also the best part, because the "let's talk about how we're going to get you working on bigger and better things" talk is much more enjoyable than the, "concretely, we expect you to be doing X, Y, and Z at your level, none of which you are" talk. Type #2 managers leave a trail of broken teams and wasted potential in their wake. I respect few things as well as working for an upper-manager who can pick up on that behavior and nip it in the bud. At least, I think I would, if I'd ever seen it :-)
- razzmataz 15y ago
  I've seen type #1 managers alienate top notch developers due to a lack of being able take constructive criticism, and in general not knowing jack about software development. I've seen fantastic people who were canned due to minor technical disagreements with management while poor performers were left around to cause damage in addition to poisoning moral. I've seen people get the "we expect you to be doing X, Y, and Z at your level, none of which you are" talk, and when they those folks leave, everything falls apart, because either the expectations were bogus, or it really was a personal issue with the boss and the person in question. I've seen junior developers (with talent and potential) languish because they were given zero guidance, yet expected to perform at the level of a senior dev by a type #1 manager without any expectations being presented. I really don't think you can group managers into these two distinct camps. Maybe you need to have an axis or two extra for rating things like technical competence and interpersonal skills...
  - larsberg 15y ago
    That's certainly true, and I apologize if I made it seem like I was encouraging type #1, in particular the "tends to micro-manage, frequently overrules consensus with his own views." Micro-managing your reports is a sign that you're either working on the wrong problems, your organization has span of control issues (i.e. you only have three directs), or you've got too many extremely junior/new-college hires who aren't yet capable of independent work. And if you need to overrule consensus, you failed to be clear about what success would be measured against when you delegated. These are pretty basic issues, but shops can certainly get them wrong. I guess, if nothing else, I'd argue that managers need training. I'm of course biased, but the training they provided at MSFT, particularly at the manager-of-managers level, was just fantastic. I only wish it had been available to people lower on the hierarchy so they could have learned about these mistakes as their scope grew and not after it had!
mh_ 15y ago
Also: > Great leaders are like surfers riding a big wave. > It's easy to get distracted by the surfer and forget that the wave is really the important part. Erm.. no.. The same wave rolls in for everyone. It's the skilled, hardworking (sometimes lucky) surfer who makes it a world class ride..
jerf 15y ago
"Great leaders are like surfers riding a big wave. It's easy to get distracted by the surfer and forget that the wave is really the important part." I used to think that. I've recanted. I'm still not 100% sure why leaders are so important, but the evidence I've personally seen over the years is pretty clear. My best guesses are some combination of: 1. It is true that the performance of a team is given an upper bound by both the quality of the team and the quality of the leadership, but people tend to badly underestimate how much quality and talent there is in the world. The average person is above average in some significant way. I would agree world-class results require a world-class team, but I think in general, for a given "random" [1] selection of team and task, it's a rare time when the core problem is a true lack of talent. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it happens, but I've never personally witnessed it in 15 years. Whereas, I've personally witnessed many teams failing to live up to their obvious potential because of bad leadership. So, in a sort of mathematical sense it is true that neither leadership nor team talent is more important, in practice, leadership is the thing for which demand is much higher than supply, not team talent. 2. It is true the team is who provides the day-to-day progress on a problem, but it's generally the leadership making a lot of little decisions that add up over time; little words that affect morale, small key decisions that affect efficiency by a few percent, that little bit of vision-from-experience that avoids blowing a few days on a bad path, the careful selection of problems to personally take on. It adds up to a lot, and especially when the leadership is blowing these little calls consistently, no team is good enough to undo the damage... especially when the leadership actively prevents it! I do agree that it's important not to fetishize leadership and never to forget the team gets much credit too, but over the years my estimation of the importance of true leadership has been going consistently up, not down. [1]: By "random" I don't literally mean five people uniformly randomly chosen from everybody on planet Earth, but something more like, go out to a random company and get a random team working on some problem, and it is unlikely that the most pressing problem the team has is a raw lack of talent to complete the assigned task. Again, totally non-zero of course.
- jamesbkel 15y ago
  >"I do agree that it's important not to fetishize leadership and never to forget the team gets much credit too, but over the years my estimation of the importance of true leadership has been going consistently up, not down." Agreed. I've worked with some great teams, but if there's not clear leadership (and specifically, good communication) things fall apart. I understand that certain decisions need to be made by the founders, but when there is no good communication and they are pivoting like an elementary school basketball player, it doesn't turn out well.
anonymous246 15y ago
I'm highly unconvinced by your statement that #1 is taking people for a ride. If anything the pushover (#2) is the one doing so: he gets to be people's friend thereby gaining a certain amount of protection from the consequences of his actions. #1 is probably going to alienate a lot of people and make himself vulnerable to a whisper campaign etc. Anyway, that's been my experience.

by j_baker 15y ago

axiom 15y ago

"While #2 isn't a very effective leader, their heart is usually at least in the right place" You know what they say the road to hell is paved with. Lots of people have great motives, but end up achieving nothing but destruction. Yeah, I definitely agree that for the hardass and the in-between leaders there's a lot of ego involved, and they're trying to "ride" the team to achieve personal ends. The thing is, that frequently tends to work well. It's not necessarily a pleasant environment to work in, but it's kind of like climbing a mountain. It's no fun while you're doing it, but once you've achieved it you can be proud of it for the rest of your life. I don't think Steve Jobs was trying to make a fun work environment for people - he was trying to push the creation of great products. Conversely, the Michael Scott type boss who tries to be everyone's friend has no personal motives (beyond being liked) and thus no incentive to push for great results. I guess ultimately building something great is really really hard work, and it can often be really unpleasant.

larsberg 15y ago

> their heart is usually at least in the right place I've normally seen that people in role #2 are just not prepared for the hard conversations that come with being a manager. Sometimes, you have to call people out on poor or below-potential performance. If you do, I've found that most people will either pick up the pace or quit. If you don't, well... things get bad. The unfortunate chaps in role #2 leave poor performers around to poison the team (most coworkers slack off when they see somebody else slacking, particularly if you have the corporate-standard opaque compensation schemes), avoiding dealing with negative actions until either somebody else comes around and fixes it or the team is killed. I was in this situation once, where a string of #2s had been managing a decently-sized development team I was merging with and it took several months for me to sort through the people, clean house, and build a functional team again. You know the worst part? There were a few fantastic people who had utterly languished due to being surrounded by mediocrity. On the other hand, that was also the best part, because the "let's talk about how we're going to get you working on bigger and better things" talk is much more enjoyable than the, "concretely, we expect you to be doing X, Y, and Z at your level, none of which you are" talk. Type #2 managers leave a trail of broken teams and wasted potential in their wake. I respect few things as well as working for an upper-manager who can pick up on that behavior and nip it in the bud. At least, I think I would, if I'd ever seen it :-)

razzmataz 15y ago
I've seen type #1 managers alienate top notch developers due to a lack of being able take constructive criticism, and in general not knowing jack about software development. I've seen fantastic people who were canned due to minor technical disagreements with management while poor performers were left around to cause damage in addition to poisoning moral. I've seen people get the "we expect you to be doing X, Y, and Z at your level, none of which you are" talk, and when they those folks leave, everything falls apart, because either the expectations were bogus, or it really was a personal issue with the boss and the person in question. I've seen junior developers (with talent and potential) languish because they were given zero guidance, yet expected to perform at the level of a senior dev by a type #1 manager without any expectations being presented. I really don't think you can group managers into these two distinct camps. Maybe you need to have an axis or two extra for rating things like technical competence and interpersonal skills...
- larsberg 15y ago
  That's certainly true, and I apologize if I made it seem like I was encouraging type #1, in particular the "tends to micro-manage, frequently overrules consensus with his own views." Micro-managing your reports is a sign that you're either working on the wrong problems, your organization has span of control issues (i.e. you only have three directs), or you've got too many extremely junior/new-college hires who aren't yet capable of independent work. And if you need to overrule consensus, you failed to be clear about what success would be measured against when you delegated. These are pretty basic issues, but shops can certainly get them wrong. I guess, if nothing else, I'd argue that managers need training. I'm of course biased, but the training they provided at MSFT, particularly at the manager-of-managers level, was just fantastic. I only wish it had been available to people lower on the hierarchy so they could have learned about these mistakes as their scope grew and not after it had!

mh_ 15y ago

Also: > Great leaders are like surfers riding a big wave. > It's easy to get distracted by the surfer and forget that the wave is really the important part. Erm.. no.. The same wave rolls in for everyone. It's the skilled, hardworking (sometimes lucky) surfer who makes it a world class ride..

jerf 15y ago

"Great leaders are like surfers riding a big wave. It's easy to get distracted by the surfer and forget that the wave is really the important part." I used to think that. I've recanted. I'm still not 100% sure why leaders are so important, but the evidence I've personally seen over the years is pretty clear. My best guesses are some combination of: 1. It is true that the performance of a team is given an upper bound by both the quality of the team and the quality of the leadership, but people tend to badly underestimate how much quality and talent there is in the world. The average person is above average in some significant way. I would agree world-class results require a world-class team, but I think in general, for a given "random" [1] selection of team and task, it's a rare time when the core problem is a true lack of talent. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it happens, but I've never personally witnessed it in 15 years. Whereas, I've personally witnessed many teams failing to live up to their obvious potential because of bad leadership. So, in a sort of mathematical sense it is true that neither leadership nor team talent is more important, in practice, leadership is the thing for which demand is much higher than supply, not team talent. 2. It is true the team is who provides the day-to-day progress on a problem, but it's generally the leadership making a lot of little decisions that add up over time; little words that affect morale, small key decisions that affect efficiency by a few percent, that little bit of vision-from-experience that avoids blowing a few days on a bad path, the careful selection of problems to personally take on. It adds up to a lot, and especially when the leadership is blowing these little calls consistently, no team is good enough to undo the damage... especially when the leadership actively prevents it! I do agree that it's important not to fetishize leadership and never to forget the team gets much credit too, but over the years my estimation of the importance of true leadership has been going consistently up, not down. [1]: By "random" I don't literally mean five people uniformly randomly chosen from everybody on planet Earth, but something more like, go out to a random company and get a random team working on some problem, and it is unlikely that the most pressing problem the team has is a raw lack of talent to complete the assigned task. Again, totally non-zero of course.

jamesbkel 15y ago
>"I do agree that it's important not to fetishize leadership and never to forget the team gets much credit too, but over the years my estimation of the importance of true leadership has been going consistently up, not down." Agreed. I've worked with some great teams, but if there's not clear leadership (and specifically, good communication) things fall apart. I understand that certain decisions need to be made by the founders, but when there is no good communication and they are pivoting like an elementary school basketball player, it doesn't turn out well.

anonymous246 15y ago

I'm highly unconvinced by your statement that #1 is taking people for a ride. If anything the pushover (#2) is the one doing so: he gets to be people's friend thereby gaining a certain amount of protection from the consequences of his actions. #1 is probably going to alienate a lot of people and make himself vulnerable to a whisper campaign etc. Anyway, that's been my experience.