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Comment by Ididntdothis | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of CEOs don’t recognize when the war is over. What worked for a while may not work forever.

Stack ranking is a classical example. Firing the bottom 10% once or twice may actually be a good thing. But then you have to realize that this was a one off and you should stop or things get weird. Same with crunch time projects. My company recently has had a few high urgency projects with a lot of overtime and stress. Instead of calming down things it seems management has got addicted to permanent panic and not surprisingly people are burning out.

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> management has got addicted to permanent panic

This is a classic red flag. One of the few easily visible from the trenches, too.

The problem with red flags they are easy to find but rarely actionable as long as you need to pay bills.

Assuming you can't move due to family or other reasons, maybe. You certainly won't have as large a pool as in the major cities. But if you're an engineer in a major tech hub, you really have no excuse. It's never been easier to interview and find, if not an obviously better company, at least a different company with a team that has a chance of being better than where you're at.

It's never been easier to interview and find

Indeed. And the overwhelming majority of the interviews ask completely unrelated questions to the actual work being done. I consider that a red flag. Take home tests expected to be done in your free time. Another one. When done jumping through all the hoops people will be presented with a contract that they hope the more egregious clauses are not enforceable, and so on. All this before the first day on the job.

Will people play along? Hell yes, and if asked we love all of that.

I can't really agree with any of that.

Most red flags are actually difficult to see for rank-and-file employees, or at least subtle. Not so this one.

Further, everyone needs to pay bills but it's actually pretty rare to be in a position where it's your current job or nothing. Most people can move, either within their organization or to another one, given a little bit of time and effort.

This applies not just to CEOs, but political leaders too.

Even Churchil, considered a hero in Britain after WWII, lost the next election badly to Atlee, as people were looking for a peacetime leader.

The good thing is Atlee setup the NHS. So I guess peacetime leaders are important after war.

In the end it’s peacetime leaders who build a country for the long term and make it better. War leaders are getting too much respect.

Aren’t the war time leaders the ones that make sure there is something to build on?

Not the ones that start wars.

Its easy to forget that Attlee was Churchill's deputy during the ww2 and that the various labour leaders who led govt departments (Morrison, Gaitskell etc) or in opposition (e.g. Bevan) in ww2 established their legitimacy to govern post-war. Similarly When Churchil was re-elected back to power in 1951 he recognised that Attlee's government key achievements like the National Health service (whch Churchill had originally fiercly opposed) were for the benefit of the country and did not dismantle them. Attlee and Churchill in some respects had combination of both war and peace time leaders that isnt always recognised.

(Edit: clarity and spelling)

I am glad you mentioned Churchill here. I recently read a few biographies about him, and he appears to have had just the leadership capabilities needed to win the war, but those same leadership capabilities didn't make him as successful a leader during peacetime.

I often think that war leadership is much easier than peacetime. You have a clearly defined goal and not too many competing priorities. Peace is much more complex.

Worth noting that in a parliamentary system, the voters does not select the prime minister directly. Churchill was popular as a leader, but he was the head of a wartime coalition which ended towards the end of the war.

This is one benefit of democracies. People can form alternate leadership structures with different strengths and focuses, without them trying to wrest power at unpredictable times.

My company fires the bottom 10% every. damn. year.

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