Hacker News Reader

I am a consultant, usually not in management, and management is about actually participating and propping up, rationalizing, and preventing the firm from dying confronted with management dictats such as:

> Our firm wasn’t about bureaucratic control and robotic efficiency in the pursuit of profit. It was about love.

As opposed to bursting out in laughter.

I'll admit: I failed on this one.

View on HN

What I found works best is that you assume that successful managers are just lucky. Treat them like an addicted gambler and you will be successful. More of what they think made them successful, never pointing out the odds and the fact that you'd expect people to succeed on occasion with pure randomness.

Treat them like they know best and never pin them down demanding a response from them, because they don't have an answer, just "work" to create an answer. Yes technical people who bubble up are an exception to this for the first few years of being manager but it doesn't last.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com