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Comment by jl2718 | Hacker News Reader

In the military, leaders deal with this all the time, but in the corporate world, managers dance around the issue and ignore it like it’s not relevant to the success of the business. Leading your people means being the one person that they can trust in their life. If you want to suck every bit of creativity and value out of your people, you have to rescue their energy from the other parts of their life that are draining your profits. Hire a psychologist or life coach, maybe confront the issues yourself if you have to. Your business is your people. Manager talk is not enough. You have to fight for them. You seem like one of the good ones. Do what you know is right.

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Funnily enough I went to a military sixth form college (16-18) and had a place secured at Sandhurst after graduation (turned it down after some long reflection) - I think my management style (if you can call it that) is influenced in part from the leadership training we received at that college.

> Do what you know is right.

Exploit him for financial gain?

This is actually something I have been thinking about a lot recently because I was considering switching jobs and it led me to reflect on my position in life.

My dad was very similar to the person described. Smart as all get out, just never presented with the right opportunities, and ended up working an assembly line for his entire working life.

The difference between a factory job and a more professional field like software is that in a professional field, your employers benefit from you growing. It is worthwhile for them to invest in you because it makes business sense.

In a factory, you're a cog in a machine. Often the management goes out of their way to ensure you know your place. A lifetime of being put down like that leaves scars that are hard to get past.

"What you know is right" means working to get past that baggage and the other baggage in his life, because the person has the potential to be more than he currently is but has been conditioned their whole life not to see it.

Your dad should've been presented with help because he needed it, not because there was some un-mined surplus value.

If we're going to help people based only on need, there's probably a long queue of folks who need help more than he did.

At least part of the way people manage people is that they perceive that the less they know the better they can be certain they cannot discriminate. Everyone is afraid of being case #1 of firing a guy while his wife is pregnant.

You can sit back and give someone time to improve and mentor them but what if during that time you find out they’re pregnant. Now you can’t fire them without going through an entire process.

Now I’m not saying this is a legitimate fear, but I’m sure at least some people believe this to be one. For my sake, I wish I were able to waive many of the protections employee rights give me so I can guarantee interactions desirable to me.

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