5 ms·

You had me at your first paragraph. But my conclusion was to try to get in the middle of things and figure out if organizing people is really that hard. Yes, i

by pfix 4y ago

You had me at your first paragraph. But my conclusion was to try to get in the middle of things and figure out if organizing people is really that hard. Yes, it is. Not sure what you include in "books and training" but the actual hard stuff is the complexity inherent to each individual that you want to organize. Each one of them has moods, goals, desires and bad days. And the number of parameters is huge and they're all different for each individual. And it takes just one member of the group to be sufficiently aligned in another vector to make it all fall apart. And I am just talking about a team or small department. Figure this at state level and you get why politicians actually don't get anything done.

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
> Yes, it is. Not really. It's a handful of common-sense techniques around communication, architecture, and getting out of people's way. There's 3-5 books that compress most of the necessary knowledge into straightforwardly readable form. Of course, most people haven't read them, let alone applied them. Instead, as an industry, we've converged on having engineering companies led by non-engineers, "scrum masters" galore, and desperate cargo-culting of OKRs instead of having real objectives and real key results. "Top" teams at FAANG companies are routinely having 1980s-style conversations about "staffing projects" while they reassure each other that they don't need to prioritize because "everything is important." (Ask me how I know...) It's all self-inflicted. I don't know about your extrapolation to broader politics, but back here in the office? The simple task of organizing 5, 10, 50, maybe even up to 100 people? That part is perfectly doable without making any major mistakes. We just don't want to do it. At minimum, though, I wish we'd stop sitting around and saying it's too hard. Here's Ben Horowitz, writing in 2011 (twelve years ago!) [1] about it: > If you manage a team of 10 people, it’s quite possible to do so with very few mistakes or bad behaviors. If you manage an organization of 1,000 people it is quite impossible. If we as an industry could hold the bar higher on running companies/teams when they were this small size, personally I think a lot of things would naturally sort themselves out at the 1,000+ person size. Besides, change begins at home — even just improving the running of your local team would go a long way. Then, even if the executives are flailing around with their latest harebrained take on why they don't need to write rigorous OKRs because they need to run off on yet another vacation, at least your team is good. Leading a group of a dozen engineers is a perfectly straightforward and learnable skill. And it doesn't "take just one member... to make it all fall apart," because you can just fire that one member. I'm not claiming all this stuff is trivial, but I wish we'd stop making it sound like some sort of mind-blowing skill of living on the knife's edge and wielding secret, arcane leadership knowledge. (Sorry for the morning rant. I know you meant well, and you're also right to empathize with each person's individual needs. It's certainly a difficult job... it's just not impossibly difficult.) [1]: https://a16z.com/2011/03/31/whats-the-most-difficult-ceo-skill-managing-your-own-psychology/ https://a16z.com/2011/03/31/whats-the-most-difficult-ceo-ski... EDIT: I posted my personal list of 3-5 books below. I'd love to hear others' lists, too.
- staamen 4y ago
  Which 3 - 5 books would that be?
  - rofrol 4y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34790037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34790037
- Gormisdomai 4y ago
  What are the 3-5 books you have in mind?
  - q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
    Off the top of my head: - Peter Drucker - The Effective Executive - Andy Grove - High Output Management - Fred Brooks - The Mythical Man-Month - Marty Cagan - Inspired Folks probably have a few others (and I'd love to hear them), but these are the ones I often recommend (and reread myself).
    - blitz_skull 4y ago
      Add in: - Dale Carnegie - How to win friends and influence people - Jocko Willink - The Dichotomy of Leadership and you've got an MBA in how to lead people.
      - nickelcitymario 4y ago
        Jocko's Extreme Ownership and Leadership Strategies and Tactics are also very good. I would also recommend The Goal by Eliyahu M Goldratt as an excellent primer on the Theory of Constraints as an effective management philosophy. Most people recommend The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and other books in that ilk, but I've found far more value in these three books alone than every other management theory book I've read, combined.
    - throwawaaarrgh 4y ago

by pfix 4y ago

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago

> Yes, it is. Not really. It's a handful of common-sense techniques around communication, architecture, and getting out of people's way. There's 3-5 books that compress most of the necessary knowledge into straightforwardly readable form. Of course, most people haven't read them, let alone applied them. Instead, as an industry, we've converged on having engineering companies led by non-engineers, "scrum masters" galore, and desperate cargo-culting of OKRs instead of having real objectives and real key results. "Top" teams at FAANG companies are routinely having 1980s-style conversations about "staffing projects" while they reassure each other that they don't need to prioritize because "everything is important." (Ask me how I know...) It's all self-inflicted. I don't know about your extrapolation to broader politics, but back here in the office? The simple task of organizing 5, 10, 50, maybe even up to 100 people? That part is perfectly doable without making any major mistakes. We just don't want to do it. At minimum, though, I wish we'd stop sitting around and saying it's too hard. Here's Ben Horowitz, writing in 2011 (twelve years ago!) [1] about it: > If you manage a team of 10 people, it’s quite possible to do so with very few mistakes or bad behaviors. If you manage an organization of 1,000 people it is quite impossible. If we as an industry could hold the bar higher on running companies/teams when they were this small size, personally I think a lot of things would naturally sort themselves out at the 1,000+ person size. Besides, change begins at home — even just improving the running of your local team would go a long way. Then, even if the executives are flailing around with their latest harebrained take on why they don't need to write rigorous OKRs because they need to run off on yet another vacation, at least your team is good. Leading a group of a dozen engineers is a perfectly straightforward and learnable skill. And it doesn't "take just one member... to make it all fall apart," because you can just fire that one member. I'm not claiming all this stuff is trivial, but I wish we'd stop making it sound like some sort of mind-blowing skill of living on the knife's edge and wielding secret, arcane leadership knowledge. (Sorry for the morning rant. I know you meant well, and you're also right to empathize with each person's individual needs. It's certainly a difficult job... it's just not impossibly difficult.) [1]: https://a16z.com/2011/03/31/whats-the-most-difficult-ceo-skill-managing-your-own-psychology/ https://a16z.com/2011/03/31/whats-the-most-difficult-ceo-ski... EDIT: I posted my personal list of 3-5 books below. I'd love to hear others' lists, too.

staamen 4y ago
Which 3 - 5 books would that be?
- rofrol 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34790037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34790037
Gormisdomai 4y ago
What are the 3-5 books you have in mind?
- q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
  Off the top of my head: - Peter Drucker - The Effective Executive - Andy Grove - High Output Management - Fred Brooks - The Mythical Man-Month - Marty Cagan - Inspired Folks probably have a few others (and I'd love to hear them), but these are the ones I often recommend (and reread myself).
  - blitz_skull 4y ago
    Add in: - Dale Carnegie - How to win friends and influence people - Jocko Willink - The Dichotomy of Leadership and you've got an MBA in how to lead people.
    - nickelcitymario 4y ago
      Jocko's Extreme Ownership and Leadership Strategies and Tactics are also very good. I would also recommend The Goal by Eliyahu M Goldratt as an excellent primer on the Theory of Constraints as an effective management philosophy. Most people recommend The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and other books in that ilk, but I've found far more value in these three books alone than every other management theory book I've read, combined.
  - throwawaaarrgh 4y ago