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Comment by alexandercrohde | Hacker News Reader

Well, that very post is criticizing self-proclaimed organization "leaders" for not holding themselves to the same level of basic accountability as a senior engineer would.

I do believe in leadership, in the abstract. But at the end of the day companies do whatever the hell people in power choose to (e.g. Fire Steve jobs, promote their friend, hire somebody sexy) and then come up with fancy meaningless words after the fact.

"Force multiplier" and "cross-team leader" are among those. If you really wanted to promote "leaders" then have engineers vote on who gets promoted...

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You believe there are qualities that good leader would exhibit — in the abstract — but experience has never offered mentor, teacher, motivator you respect thus all promotions must be based on facets unrelated to merit: ignorance, nepotism, and sexism.

You may want to ask yourself if your viewpoints are a case of WYSIATI bias or a generalizable fact about how businesses are run.

You've totally lost me there.

I've had good managers before, I'm not sure why you're saying I haven't, or how that's related to my central claim.

Also "WYSIATI" is a misdirection. You could suggest that to anybody in any argument (I could suggest it to you now). But without providing any evidence of what those unseen factors are it's of no probative value.

I don't think you're trying to understand my point in good faith anymore so I'll leave it here.

Sorry I lost you. I understood you believe titles rarely align with skill and companies disingenuously use "leader" to justify a ratio of employees to managers. A company is as likely to promote on the basis of "hire somebody sexy" as anything else.

This mindset seems corrosive. I assume you had good managers, but I cannot imagine a career in which that was the norm would result in such cynicism.

My point was only this: in my experience, healthy organizations have a better value systems.

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