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Comment by warent | Hacker News Reader

Leadership is basically just people-engineering and business-engineering. Engineers use tools to build products, and so do leaders.

The immediate assumption is that people are tools/resources to build the product. That's talking like an engineer.

Don't use your team to work on a project/product. Use the project to work on your team. They're not there to build the product. They're there to gain some personal fulfillment. Use the development of the product to grow them.

In my humble opinion, that's talking like a leader. Flip the engineering perspective over and communicate a new set of values with a layer of empathy.

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> The immediate assumption is that people are tools/resources to build the product. That's talking like an engineer.

That's more management-speak than engineer, in my experience. I hate being referred to as a resource.

Agree.

Whenever I get contacted by a recruiter from Tek* .com or * Resource.com, I absolutely cringe.

Who uses these companies? Who entrusts them to negotiate salaries on their behalf?

I think the OP is saying that a good manager does not treat employees as resources

In this case, the boss is telling OP to talk like a leader rather than engineer to him, not necessarily to the engineers below. To the engineers below, you still have to talk like an engineer to some extent, some of the time. That's the virtue/advantage of a manager that is from the engineering background.

> Don't use your team to work on a project/product. Use the project to work on your team. They're not there to build the product. They're there to gain some personal fulfillment. Use the development of the product to grow them.

This is extremely well said and something I’ve been dancing around in my head and couldn’t quite articulate. THANK YOU.

People often say to me “it must be nice not to have a boss.” I explain to them that I have no idea what that’s like, since I have 12 or 13 bosses.

My job is to empower my reports to do their best work, using empathy and engineering the team as a well-oiled system. Sure, they report to me, but my job is to keep them productive.

Sorry if I sound harsh but I disagree extremely strongly with this. If you are evaluating someone's work and you can fire them, then you are their boss.

There is a trend of calling managers "supporters" where I work, and I absolutely can't stand it. It seriously reminds me of "War is Peace" from 1984. I don't mind having a boss; hierarchies are fine. But I feel extremely patronized and condescended to when people try to pretend they don't exist.

> my job is to keep them productive

Well, you could say the same thing about a manager at Wal-Mart or McDonald's. Their job is to make sure their underlings are productive. "Empower my reports too do their best work" is just an unusually nice way to put it.

The thing that sounds nice to most people about not having a boss is exactly that: nobody that you feel is judging whether you are productive.

Another way to put it is building a culture that helps everyone perform better. There are conscious levers that conscious managers can pull to make sure his happen. Have you ever worked in an environment where managers created conflicting goals or perverse incentives? Did that help teamwork, or create frustration? Do frustrated teams perform at their best? How many people have you managed?

Everywhere I've worked from McDonald's to tech companies, managers were trying to help everyone perform better (i.e., make more money for the business per hour).

Ah, you're conflating things here. Bad managers often think making more money for the business per hour is a 'get more work out of the employees per minute' strategy. That doesn't work, due to the off-pay benefits a happy employee provides that a bullied or unhappy one doesn't. Staying a few minutes late to finish up a job, coming on time, not fudging their hours a few minutes here and there, recruiting on your behalf by telling their smart friends about how much they love their job, being willing to come up with new ideas to improve the business, etc.

Many bad managers think short term, and are looking to squeeze every ounce of work out of their employees, which leads to burnout, disillusionment, and resentment. My point is it's far more important to make them happy and have them convinced they want to do their best work, not because they fear losing their job, but because they feel inspired, capable, trusted, well-compensated / rewarded, and like they have autonomy.

If McDonald's had that, their turnover would be a hell of a lot lower, guaranteed.

[edit] Here's an example of what I mean by the unpaid extras I refer to: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/jobs/bullying-bosses-ne...

Maybe this should really be split up? Managers should be relegated to their stated role - being servants and shit umbrellas, not bosses. And since there is a need for a boss over a team, why not create a second job type, Commissar, whose job is to evaluate performance of the underlings and fire underperformers?

Where I work, direct reports evaluate their managers and managers can't arbitrarily fire people. As a manager my job is primarily to help engineers grow and clear obstacles for them and provide air cover when they need it. Not all companies view management this way - I've worked at other companies where the role of a manager was to make sure that every ounce of productivity is being squeezed out of engineers, and at places where growth wasn't even a consideration, but there really are places where managers are supporters, and some managers are better at that than others.

Well where I work is the same way, but presumably it's not the same where the person I was replying to works, since he refers to himself as not having a boss (i.e., presumably he is pretty high up the hierarchy).

And even though managers can't arbitrarily fire you at big/reputable companies, they certainly have a gigantic amount of influence in performance review discussions.

It's not that I'm not their boss; of course I am, pretty much by definition. I'm higher up on the hierarchy (context: I'm a cofounder and CTO)

The point I'm trying to make isn't that I'm not their boss, but that by virtue of great employees being hard to find, it's my job to keep them happy and productive. Not just productive, but happy is important too. It costs the company way more to find a new employee than to keep an existing one. As such, provided an employee is doing a good job (which is a requirement in any role), it's my job to ensure they are as productive and happy as possible. That doesn't mean I don't have the hard conversation or fire if they stop working, but it does mean that my role is to be an effective shit-umbrella and keep them happy, inspired, and excited.

Right, that's the ideal of a good boss, but a boss, nonetheless. I think we agree about more than we disagree about, here. I just think words can be important, and when someone in a position of hierarchical power, no matter how benevolently they wield it, says things like "really, they're MY boss", it might be intended completely harmlessly, but can actually come off as patronizing.

I suspect we agree on the concept as well.

That’s the thing about colloquialisms; they’re not meant to be taken literally.

For example, the phrase “kicked the bucket” does not literally mean a foot had come into contact with a bucket. Similarly, to say that I have 13 bosses does not literally mean that I have 13 people above me in the hierarchy. It is a colloquialism used to describe a feeling and intention, rather than a literal description.

Perhaps it would be patronizing to say that without explaining what I meant, but I do explain that, in the same comment. Lastly, in many ways, they do control their own fate - that is, they can choose to leave if they’re unhappy, and be happier elsewhere. In that way, because they are in no way conscripted (at least in the State of California), you could make the argument that they control my actions. That may be a specious argument. I’m not certain. But one perhaps worth exploring.

> If you are evaluating someone's work and you can fire them, then you are their boss.

At least given the current job market, if an engineer isn't evaluating and at least prepared to "fire" her employer, she's probably misunderstanding the employment dynamics.

If the compensation, freedom to work, and growth expected aren't there, ask for them. If you don't get good answers and actions to back them up, say, "Thanks! I'll see you around."

I recently heard the perspective that a good leader is always thinking about how to bring value to their team, and reviewing how much value they contributed to their team the previous day, and trying to come up with new ways to bring value to their team, and so on. This is paraphrased from my notes that someone else paraphrased for me, but it really struck a cord for me.

This is very wise advice, and I can especially appreciate the layer of empathy: empower engineers to add to their toolchain (mgmt or technical).

To complement this thinking, however, I also expect a leader to align engineers to business priorities. There is a fine line to walk in balancing the growth of engineers with the needs of a business. I expect engineers with certain years of experience to understand that as professionals we are hired to address these needs.

Of course there is also the flip side of this alignment: aligning the business to the real (vs. imagined) capabilities or investment needed.

I love this take.

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