staysaasy

16 ms·

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by staysaasy 6y ago
OP's co-author here. The biggest difference is that internships are short and low-stakes, so if something goes off the rails it isn't too costly for the managee or manager. Also, at least in tech, hiring is hard enough that intern
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by staysaasy 6y ago
OP's co-author here. This has been my experience in consulting as well. In practice, most consulting projects are led by the partners / seniormost managers in a tribal fashion so this distinction doesn't matter as much.
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by staysaasy 6y ago
OP here - glad that you enjoyed it, thanks for reading! One thing I'll mention is that management is hard and largely a learned skill. I think of it like playing a sport. Some people are better than others due to innate ability, but ev
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by staysaasy 6y ago
Author here - I'd recommend two things. First, per the article, I'd aim to become an expert in whatever your report is doing. Being able to just do the thing yourself is a great release valve. Things can get really hairy when you
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by staysaasy 6y ago
I recommend taking a formal college accounting course online, via any online learning platform. I took accounting in undergrad and found it to be one of the single most valuable and generally applicable courses that I took. Accounting is th
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by staysaasy 6y ago
If you work in SaaS, http://saastr.com/ is invaluable.
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by staysaasy 6y ago
Yup exactly
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by staysaasy 6y ago
100%. Thanks for reading! My partner actually wrote about the second case you described as well: https://staysaasy.com/management/2020/07/01/Dont-Block-Proje...
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by staysaasy 6y ago
(OP - thanks for reading!) Yup, that was exactly the idea ^^. Plans need to change all the time, that's expected and just a part of life. The goal is just to raise red flags in a way that adds clarity and helps people to productively a
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by staysaasy 6y ago
(OP - thanks for reading!) Imo asking questions and figuring out where there are holes in a plan is natural, expected, and part of a responsible person's job. In a sibling post Bjartr describes how to do this really well. The chaos-cre
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by staysaasy 6y ago
That's rough... I think it speaks to the fact that some people unfortunately view causing chaos as a virtue (because it feels like doing "real work").
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by staysaasy 6y ago
Hey, that's us! I'm really passionate about this topic... I think that causing chaos is one of the most dangerous and annoying things that a manager/leader/human can do. On the flip side, the best leaders I've met m
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by staysaasy 6y ago
Yup, I agree with that characterization. I also think that this is why a lot of people feel like PMs do nothing. Ironically it most frequently appears that PM isn't doing much when things are going really well (effortless execution) or
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by staysaasy 6y ago
I always viewed over-communication as akin to "calling your shots." Say what it is that you or others are going to do, so that people can call out if they expect issues or if they see gaps. It isn't necessarily about holding
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by staysaasy 6y ago
Absolutely... but the best PMs I know absolutely hate meetings, and are constantly trying to clear them off of their plates. I've actually had PMs on my team specifically petition to remove meetings and replace them with emails, Slack
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by staysaasy 6y ago
Nice post! Personally, I like to describe the output of a PM team, broadly, as Great Decisions. This goes a bit beyond just communication – it's the role of PMs to force great decisions to be made, in addition to communicating the outp
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by staysaasy 6y ago
Love that post, although the "CEO of the product" title has never really resonated with me. A large difference between being a PM and an actual CEO is that both CEO lead via influence but the CEO has final authority. Day-to-day
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by staysaasy 6y ago
Used to run interviews by putting candidates at a table with a laptop (typically their own). I'd give them a coding question and 45 minutes to solve it, and then spend 10 minutes walking through their solution together. I'd sit ac
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by staysaasy 6y ago
100%, this is also driving capital into the private equity markets (of which VC is a subset that is very relevant to Hacker News readers). Startup funding has remained exceptionally robust, especially for companies with traction at the late
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by staysaasy 6y ago
It's a good point worth a discussion. Enterprise purchasing is more similar to a marriage than it is to buying a latté. Even down to having to get internal stakeholder buy-in (akin to "meeting the parents"). Price matters but
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by staysaasy 6y ago
Exactly, and grandparent post was a great question. Another nasty dimension (in the LBO model referenced) is that by playing crazy financial games the PE firms can often wager very little of their own money AND take money off the table fast
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by staysaasy 6y ago
Many enterprise products have bad design because they need to serve so many complex workflows, not because their design teams completely suck. It's just a hard problem (eg look at Salesforce and tell me how you'd design it well...
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by staysaasy 6y ago
They're very enterprise focused, so you might not be the target customer? (I don't want to presume, however) For a lot of powerful but heavyweight enterprise products, giving people access to pricing isn't worth it because it
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by staysaasy 6y ago
Extreme Ownership is great. I thought at first that it was going to be a pure rah-rah book about the military, but it is actually quite practical and generally applicable.
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by staysaasy 6y ago
Hey @awillen, thanks for reading! The "Head of X" idea is an interesting one that I've seen gain traction recently for the reasons you've described. As with all things, at least half the battle is just managing expectati
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by staysaasy 6y ago
Hey @shostack, thanks for reading! From what I've observed this does not tend to get looked down upon severely, and if anything it's usually the opposite. If someone sees that you took X from 0-100, they'll already be impress
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by staysaasy 6y ago
"A related note is that not every individual thrives at all of these stages. You don't need to "constantly scale yourself" if that isn't what you want to do. Move on when the time is right or join companies at the l
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by staysaasy 6y ago
This is especially tragic given the variation in career opportunities from different colleges. Many of the most highly compensated, high-upside careers are basically only accessible to graduates of top-tier institutions. Particularly in con
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by staysaasy 6y ago
My team went through a major shift a number of years ago, moving most complex discussions to written documents (with commentary!) wherever possible. The outcomes were great and fwiw we had a minimal remote culture pre-pandemic, people would
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by staysaasy 6y ago
Yeah, that's why I love it when companies are named, like, "Computer Business Partners."

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