Why Fair Bosses Fall Behind | Hacker News Reader

Why Fair Bosses Fall Behind

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101 pointsjkuria48 comments

I've had 3 kinds of bosses:

1. Hardass who pushes everyone to the limit, tends to micro-manage, frequently overrules consensus with his own views.

2. Total pushover who agrees with everything. Constantly seeks consensus and rule by democracy, never pushes anyone and just tries to be everyone's friend.

3. Somewhere in between the two above. Seeks consensus and lets people make mistakes in order to help them learn. Sometimes overrules people in order to make sure things don't get too far off track. Doesn't try to be people's friend, but is sensitive to people's needs and gives a reasonable amount of leeway.

The somewhat counter-intuitive thing is that #2 is by far and away the worst kind of boss to have. It's fun for about a month, and then everything falls apart. The teams never seems to get anything done. All the best people eventually leave because there is never any consequence to incompetence and so tons of people just default to being lazy (think: working in government.)

Although #1 is tough and often unpleasant, he tends to get things done (albeit with higher turnover and more grumbling) and most often at least ensures that the company succeeds (think guys like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who are notorious for being insanely demanding and insensitive.)

Lastly, it's insanely hard to hit the right balance between #1 and #2. Really it's damn near impossible and requires some kind of magic innate talent to be able to inspire and push people to work hard without crushing their spirits.

The thing about #1 is that they probably aren't trying to help the company succeed. It's more likely that they're trying to take the company for a ride to meet their own ends. Any success they have is only going to be in the short term and only in the interests of posturing. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates can get away with this because their companies by and large are theirs.

While #2 isn't a very effective leader, their heart is usually at least in the right place. Plus, given the right people, it's amazing what you can get accomplished by simply leaving them alone and letting them do their job.

But then again, I'm of the opinion that we focus too much on the leadership and not enough on the people. Maybe I'm just naive. Great leaders are like surfers riding a big wave. It's easy to get distracted by the surfer and forget that the wave is really the important part.

"While #2 isn't a very effective leader, their heart is usually at least in the right place"

You know what they say the road to hell is paved with. Lots of people have great motives, but end up achieving nothing but destruction.

Yeah, I definitely agree that for the hardass and the in-between leaders there's a lot of ego involved, and they're trying to "ride" the team to achieve personal ends. The thing is, that frequently tends to work well. It's not necessarily a pleasant environment to work in, but it's kind of like climbing a mountain. It's no fun while you're doing it, but once you've achieved it you can be proud of it for the rest of your life.

I don't think Steve Jobs was trying to make a fun work environment for people - he was trying to push the creation of great products. Conversely, the Michael Scott type boss who tries to be everyone's friend has no personal motives (beyond being liked) and thus no incentive to push for great results.

I guess ultimately building something great is really really hard work, and it can often be really unpleasant.

> their heart is usually at least in the right place

I've normally seen that people in role #2 are just not prepared for the hard conversations that come with being a manager. Sometimes, you have to call people out on poor or below-potential performance. If you do, I've found that most people will either pick up the pace or quit. If you don't, well... things get bad.

The unfortunate chaps in role #2 leave poor performers around to poison the team (most coworkers slack off when they see somebody else slacking, particularly if you have the corporate-standard opaque compensation schemes), avoiding dealing with negative actions until either somebody else comes around and fixes it or the team is killed. I was in this situation once, where a string of #2s had been managing a decently-sized development team I was merging with and it took several months for me to sort through the people, clean house, and build a functional team again.

You know the worst part? There were a few fantastic people who had utterly languished due to being surrounded by mediocrity. On the other hand, that was also the best part, because the "let's talk about how we're going to get you working on bigger and better things" talk is much more enjoyable than the, "concretely, we expect you to be doing X, Y, and Z at your level, none of which you are" talk.

Type #2 managers leave a trail of broken teams and wasted potential in their wake. I respect few things as well as working for an upper-manager who can pick up on that behavior and nip it in the bud. At least, I think I would, if I'd ever seen it :-)

I've seen type #1 managers alienate top notch developers due to a lack of being able take constructive criticism, and in general not knowing jack about software development. I've seen fantastic people who were canned due to minor technical disagreements with management while poor performers were left around to cause damage in addition to poisoning moral. I've seen people get the "we expect you to be doing X, Y, and Z at your level, none of which you are" talk, and when they those folks leave, everything falls apart, because either the expectations were bogus, or it really was a personal issue with the boss and the person in question. I've seen junior developers (with talent and potential) languish because they were given zero guidance, yet expected to perform at the level of a senior dev by a type #1 manager without any expectations being presented.

I really don't think you can group managers into these two distinct camps. Maybe you need to have an axis or two extra for rating things like technical competence and interpersonal skills...

That's certainly true, and I apologize if I made it seem like I was encouraging type #1, in particular the "tends to micro-manage, frequently overrules consensus with his own views." Micro-managing your reports is a sign that you're either working on the wrong problems, your organization has span of control issues (i.e. you only have three directs), or you've got too many extremely junior/new-college hires who aren't yet capable of independent work. And if you need to overrule consensus, you failed to be clear about what success would be measured against when you delegated. These are pretty basic issues, but shops can certainly get them wrong.

I guess, if nothing else, I'd argue that managers need training. I'm of course biased, but the training they provided at MSFT, particularly at the manager-of-managers level, was just fantastic. I only wish it had been available to people lower on the hierarchy so they could have learned about these mistakes as their scope grew and not after it had!

Also: > Great leaders are like surfers riding a big wave. > It's easy to get distracted by the surfer and forget that the wave is really the important part.

Erm.. no.. The same wave rolls in for everyone. It's the skilled, hardworking (sometimes lucky) surfer who makes it a world class ride..

"Great leaders are like surfers riding a big wave. It's easy to get distracted by the surfer and forget that the wave is really the important part."

I used to think that. I've recanted. I'm still not 100% sure why leaders are so important, but the evidence I've personally seen over the years is pretty clear.

My best guesses are some combination of:

1. It is true that the performance of a team is given an upper bound by both the quality of the team and the quality of the leadership, but people tend to badly underestimate how much quality and talent there is in the world. The average person is above average in some significant way. I would agree world-class results require a world-class team, but I think in general, for a given "random" [1] selection of team and task, it's a rare time when the core problem is a true lack of talent. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it happens, but I've never personally witnessed it in 15 years. Whereas, I've personally witnessed many teams failing to live up to their obvious potential because of bad leadership. So, in a sort of mathematical sense it is true that neither leadership nor team talent is more important, in practice, leadership is the thing for which demand is much higher than supply, not team talent.

2. It is true the team is who provides the day-to-day progress on a problem, but it's generally the leadership making a lot of little decisions that add up over time; little words that affect morale, small key decisions that affect efficiency by a few percent, that little bit of vision-from-experience that avoids blowing a few days on a bad path, the careful selection of problems to personally take on. It adds up to a lot, and especially when the leadership is blowing these little calls consistently, no team is good enough to undo the damage... especially when the leadership actively prevents it!

I do agree that it's important not to fetishize leadership and never to forget the team gets much credit too, but over the years my estimation of the importance of true leadership has been going consistently up, not down.

[1]: By "random" I don't literally mean five people uniformly randomly chosen from everybody on planet Earth, but something more like, go out to a random company and get a random team working on some problem, and it is unlikely that the most pressing problem the team has is a raw lack of talent to complete the assigned task. Again, totally non-zero of course.

>"I do agree that it's important not to fetishize leadership and never to forget the team gets much credit too, but over the years my estimation of the importance of true leadership has been going consistently up, not down."

Agreed. I've worked with some great teams, but if there's not clear leadership (and specifically, good communication) things fall apart. I understand that certain decisions need to be made by the founders, but when there is no good communication and they are pivoting like an elementary school basketball player, it doesn't turn out well.

in practice, leadership is the thing for which demand is much higher than supply, not team talent.

I'm not sure I buy that. I don't have strong evidence against it, but its a gut based on experience. What I've tended to see is that great leaders tend not to be able to replicate their success. But talented people/teams tend to be succesfull, regardless of the leader.

To put it another way, a great leader, moved to a new team often is not a success. In fact, when they are, it is usually somewhat unusual. A great talent moved to a new team is rarely not a success. And when they aren't is somewhat unusual.

And what I've found is that the great leaders who can replicate success are those with huge personalities that draw in great talent. Or their reputation from their first success gives them considerable leverage to use in new ventures.

For example, look at pro basketball coaches. Getting a great head coach almost never drastically changes the record of a team the following year or years, more than chance would. But getting a great player almost always increases a team's record. What a great coach does though is bring in top talent -- but usually slowly, given it has to be done via free agency.

Jobs could go anywhere and get top talent. His ability to lead is also his ability to recruit. I'm not saying he doesn't bring other things to the table, but I'd say that a good percentage of it is recruiting.

Let me put it another way... given two choices, what would you take:

1) Steve Jobs's mind transplanted to some average mid-level manager at HP. No one know him as Jobs, but he would have Jobs's managerial chops.

2) Steve Jobs body and name, but his mind replaced with some mid-level manager at Apple (who of course is aware of the fact that he needs to keep up the charade of being Jobs).

There's a reason why entreprenuers who are successful, but when they leave their domain (go into a completely new field) are no more successful in future endeavors than anyone else. The second hit borrows greatly from the fact that people recognize you have already hit it out the park once.

I'm inclined to agree with you, but the problem with that claim is that it is practically unfalsifiable. Nobody has or is going to try an experiment where they put someone like Jobs elsewhere and deliberately constrain his recruitment access only to average or slightly mediocre people. So, we can assume it's because dynamic, powerful leaders attract good talent, but I don't think there's a solid empirical basis for that without consistently studying what happens when they are specifically denied good talent.

I'm highly unconvinced by your statement that #1 is taking people for a ride. If anything the pushover (#2) is the one doing so: he gets to be people's friend thereby gaining a certain amount of protection from the consequences of his actions.

#1 is probably going to alienate a lot of people and make himself vulnerable to a whisper campaign etc.

Anyway, that's been my experience.

Your example #1 is a destructive narcissist. #2 is a Laissez-faire type in an inappropriate situation.

Corporate cultures tend to produce explicit or cultural incentives that encourage particular leadership styles. Government is a great example -- senior leadership in the bureaucracy tends to attract various types of narcissists (ie political appointees). Mid-level managers tend to be incented to avoid risk at any cost. (ie. don't rock the boat)

I think there are so many number #1s because if they succeed both the boss and team get rewarded and if they fail the boss gets most of the blame. #2s are not really needed because the consensus decision really doesn't need to be managed at all. #3s tend to get pushed in one direction or the other and end up as #1 or #2.

(1) works when you have a constant pool of input and puts "natural selection" to work. If you're Google or Apple you have more DNA to test.

If you're not the top company and you don't pay good salaries people will drop.

The most reasonable option is obviously the balance in (3).

It gets worse. I had the following variations of #1 and #2:

an authoritarian boss that overruled everything - as I came to learn, because he was underqualified and didn't understand what we were proposing, so he tried to stick to the status quo and rule through obscurity of some key components;

and a pushover that agreed with everything - once again, because she didn't know anything. It meant we effectively had no boss (and no direction, and no focus or getting "in the zone"). Both were in the same company (awful HR I guess).

The first time I managed a team, I learned a critical lesson: a managem must manage upwards and sideways as well as down.

I had a great team and I busted my butt for them. They had better hardware than other teams, were better educated (conferences and working with others in the company besides engineering), and had more fun doing their job.

Mostly, this was able to happen because I asked my boss. but due to my sibling managers not being willing to ask, a lot of hostility grew between other teams and me.

Instead of addressing that, i said "F it" and kept focusing on my team. By the time I figured out I shouldn't have done that, it really was too late. Seven years busting my butt to make a project successful under very bad conditions with reasonable success, and I leave with few people who know what I accomplished, how i did it or anything, but instead, they have overall negative feelings towards me.

In short, if you are a manager, you're job is much more than just the people on your team. Don't forget it.

Your peers might have been asking for better equipment and a bigger training budget and getting turned down. They wouldn't have admitted it, because it would have made them look weak, and it would explain their resentment toward you and their lack of appreciation for the results you got.

I've had a similar experience. While I had a good relationship with my team, other managers (that worked for my manager), and the business, I had a very poor relationship with the infrastructure team.

If you have worked in an Enterprise, you realize that nearly all deployments have to go through the infrastructure team including DBAs, Unix/Windows teams, and Network.

Instead of trying to work with them, I tried to bypass them at every opportunity. I wanted to get things done faster, but in the long term everything became an uphill battle.

Now I realize that part of being a good manager is also being a good team player with everyone involved. Instead of trying to bypass them, I should have communicated better to come up with mutually benficial solution.

Ouch! You tried to bypass infrastructure? That isn't going to go well! :)

I know the feeling, though. I had a different position that had me strattelling the line between dev and ops. I reported to the dev side, but my team really need to control the servers we were deploying to because ops expected push-button deployments and didn't know much beyond Oracle.

That was the most painful position I've ever been in. It was also the position that ultimately pushed me away from development. Of course, now I'm leading a startup, so if code needs to be written, I'm slinging code. :)

There were some severe problems with our infrastructure team, I felt like I had no choice but to bypass them. I also felt that they should treat me as their client, much like I treated the business. It didn't go very well. :)

Things go way faster in a startup -- really the pinnacle of productivity.

I suspect the etiology is quite simple - if somebody is behaving like an ass and getting away with it, it must be because they are powerful, otherwise somebody else would stop them. And so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Not to mention that if that person is powerful, I need to ally myself with them - no matter how much I dislike them.

You put it better than the article, which was on the fluffy side.

This is easily shut down by anyone with a modicum of introspection: "or maybe he's just a self-important ass?"

Is this asking too much of people?

As a boss you consider many aspects of your action. You can be friendly or aggressive, but every decision in my opinion is based on the individual or the team you are in conversation with.

You don't treat everyone equally even if it sounds unfair.

Some guys are reliable and do their best, some just act like junkies and have to be "regulated".

If you are democratic and friendly you can find yourself in situations where your guys feel they can just overrule your decisions... that is when you turn into a hardass monster. :)

As a boss you are the only one with the pressure to deliver something as a complete product. The team just feels portions of it. This will and should make you act as required in any situation.

Still, no matter what your style is... you have to be consistent and reliable. This is crucial for earning trust.

Machiavelli wrote about this 500 years ago (http://oll.libertyfund.org/simple.php?id=775#chapter_76114), and interestingly enough he could not find any definitive answer one way or the other, maybe these guys are smarter than him, I cannot tell:

> how manlius torquatus by harshness, and valerius corvinus by gentleness, acquired equal glory.

> I conclude, then, that the character and conduct of Valerius is advantageous in a prince, but pernicious in a citizen, not only as regards his country, but also in regard to himself; pernicious for the state, because they prepare the way for a tyranny; and for himself, because in rendering him suspect to his fellow-citizens, it constrains them to take precautions against him that will prove detrimental to him. And, on the other hand, I affirm that the severity of Manlius is dangerous to the interests of a prince, but favorable to a citizen, and above all to the country. And it seldom turns to his prejudice, unless the hatred which it excites should be embittered by the suspicions which his great reputation and other virtues may inspire; as we will show when speaking of Camillus in the next chapter.

Interesting link. I took a read of that chapter, and found this paragraph additionally enlightening:

> I say that the conduct of Manlius is more praiseworthy and less perilous for a citizen who lives under the laws of a republic; inasmuch as it operates entirely for the benefit of the state, and can never favor private ambition. For by such conduct a man can never create any partisans for himself; severe towards everybody, and devoted only to the public good, a commander by such means will never gain any particular friends, such as we have called partisans. Thus this course of conduct can only be of the greatest benefit and value in a republic, as it looks only to the public good, and is in no way open to the suspicion of individual usurpation. But with the system of Valerius, quite the contrary is the case; for although it produces the same effects so far as the public service is concerned, yet it is calculated to inspire doubts and mistrust, on account of the special devotion of the soldiers to their chief to which it will give rise, and which might be productive of bad effects against the public liberty, in case of his being continued in command for any length of time.

So Machiavelli is basically saying in the context of a republic, it is better for a commander to rule through terror/harshness (what the article calls power) rather than respect. The reason being is that gaining respect will cause the commander to gain friends (the person commanding via terror will have none/few friends) and make that commander a risk to the state by being a potential tyrant.

Given this, it's not surprising that Machiavelli advocates Manlius over Valerius, since the behavior of Valerius is in the end disadvantageous to everybody else.

However, does this really apply to a company? Most simply aren't run as a republic, but more of a benevolent dictatorship. So even if a if a manager does rise up to be the new CEO (a "tyrant"), it's probably because whoever appoints the CEO (the board?) thought he would make a better CEO than the last guy, so in the end the company is the one that benefits -- not just the individual.

In fact the article later points out (on the second page) that the CEO who ruled through harshness/terror was later kicked out for poor performance. Maybe commanding through respect is better for companies after all?

There is a very simply misunderstanding most people have: Fairness != being nice.

I have to agree. While I prefer both in a boss, it's totally possible to have either one without the other. And I'd prefer fair over nice if I had to pick.

Last year I've been working on an unconventional idea of mine: After a project at which I was the project manager, I get into a project managed by someone else, as a team member. This has several advantages: -It gives me perspective: manager is a function, not a position or a personality obsession. -I get to see things from the other side regularly: sometimes I find that in the previous project I was managing I have been unreasonable. -I lead by example: people become very motivated when they see me coding or testing ( as a bonus, I get to keep my coding skills sharp :-)

Of course, this is Japan and one can still get the credit for doing work behind the scene but I think it is an interesting idea to hack the "soft boss-hard boss" paradigm

I don't follow the logic in the examples at all.

First, we have a comparison between the assertive McKinnell and the respectful Katen. But there is no mention of 'fairness' to be found.

Then we have a study of students that found that ruder people seemed to be more powerful, but I can't figure out how that relates at all to wanting to give more power to less fair people.

I'm not going so far as to say the conclusion is wrong, just that this particular article seems to provide no evidence for it.

I have the same impression - their conclusions must have already been there and they just plugged in a few studies that might sound relevant and they left quite a few gaping holes there.

This almost sounds like a comparison between growth of China and India, where China just gets the things done when it needs to while India lags behind trying to gather people's consensus; and I believe that neither of them are correct. Reasons are pretty simple. If you are a bully, things are bound to fall apart sooner or later while if you are a total pushover, you don't even own what you are doing. I have seen both the approaches working and then failing, at work. As a boss, being a bully can only work when you are sure that you have hired the last pieces of talent who did not have any other option. Well, if that is the case then you better be a bully. Otherwise if you have a got an extremely talented programmer whom you want to run on your terms, then it ain't gonna happen. Pushover - this can only work when the boss has got another talented boss in disguise amongst his own workers who actually works and makes the decisions on behalf of him. It happens; but if everyone is unsure and starts making his own decision then failure is inevitable. In fact, contrary to the article, push over boss has a better chance of sharp success in case he finds a brilliant worker who does not hesitate in taking the lead. Of-course that is not going to work for ever, but might work long enough.

Edit: In fact, as I think about it more, a pushover/fair boss does not have a better but a far better chances of succeeding.

1. A pushover boss earns respect because he listens to everyone - Win

2. The probability of finding an extremely talented worker is equal for both kind of bosses - Win

3. The chance of retaining a talent is higher just because he does not interfere much in the work - Win

4. The chance of succeeding the project is higher because he lets other (might be better) people in team make/alter the decision - Win

Number 4 has a big caveat in that it requires really good communication skills to make certain everyone understand what the purpose and use case of the product is.

Why put the comparison between two countries in our point about leadership styles. Countries are not people , a leader in a corporate setup has a fairly definitive goals (increase revenue) and can hire/fire people. But countries are to be governed so that every one has a equitable choice.

"At Pfizer, a cohort of promising executives associated with Katen resigned after McKinnell took over. He himself was pushed into retirement by the board in 2006 because of the company’s disappointing performance. Shareholder outrage over his rich retirement package followed."

sounds like the real problem here is the board valuing the perception of power over actual managerial competence.

I think this problem is endemic; the thing is, business is hard. Most people give up on trying to find the best person for the job and go with the best-looking person, or the person who other people think is the best.

The thing is, "the wisdom of the crowd" works fairly well if all members of the crowd make up their own mind independently. But that's not how it works; nearly everyone decides largely based on what they think other people think, which breaks the whole system.

I think the rise of mutual funds, index funds, and other vehicles to invest without thinking about the companies you are buying are making this problem worse. People are giving their money to people who make money as long as they don't do anything wildly divergent from the herd.

Is the question really whether someone is fair or unfair, or is it simply being the type that can cut thru the crap and be blunt... don't try to sugar coat, don't try to let people down softly, just tell it like it is in as few words as possible?

To me that's the fairest supervisor you could possibly have. I had a supervisor like that once... he had a reputation for being a hardass, but everyone loved him.

These types of studies are flawed in that they assume the same technique works with different people in different situations. The best managers, bosses, founders, etc realize you have to treat different people and situations differently, it's constant adaptation to the situation at hand. Doing that is hard and more art than science.

This does not take into account the company they work for. Bosses at a company that pay 40% more than average have more options that bosses that work at companies that pay 10% less than average.

to make people work for 10% less than average is a real managerial art.

they use irrelevant motivations (like 'are you a man', 'you gave a word'), deceive people, flatter, promote jerks to make tension in the team and so forth.

and even make some bullshit (rarely good things, i think) done. at least what i see here in my city/country.

it's easy to have power based on money, but sometimes not that efficient, they think.

You're describing a bully.

As long as compensation is enough to afford whatever you need to live, bullying is generally the worst motivator. Employees learn quickly that they can produce just enough to not get fired -- then they do so.

Leading, managing & administering are 3 different aspects.

Our society is built upon capitalist competition. Being fair doesn't count unless you can see its impact on the bottom-line and unfortunately it's difficult to quantify something that's qualitative. Also, fair leaders are rarely shown in tv, propaganda, etc. which makes it harder for people to see them as having power.

Interesting experiment which suffers from the problem that all psychology experiments have: based upon observations of college students. I've been around the block a few times and I definitely don't now perceive respectful people as weak.

Our research, which included lab studies and responses from hundreds of corporate decision makers and employees...

That doesn't seem to be the case to me.

FTA: "The same bias was exhibited by students in a laboratory setting."

The GP was talking specifically about the experiment design. Surveys are also notoriously unreliable as sources of meaningful data. Not that either point discounts the value of the research, of course.

The CEO decision at Pfizer is a horrible example, if you ask me. All we know is that one manager was perceived as assertive and occasionally "abrasive" while the other one was "fair" and then when the abrasive guy was picked, they conclude it was because of his "toughness" because some random analyst said so.

There could be a million different reasons why he was picked over her. For one, it might simply be discrimination from the owners and/or share holders or one particularly influential share holder. Or he was better connected and/or was playing politics better than she did. Or for many other reasons...

And the other study just showed how a first impression will influence how we perceive people. They have absolutely nothing backing up the theory that a "fair" manager will lose to an "unfair, tough" manager in promotions.

If you ask me, they are missing quite a few links and connections in their theory and are mixing correlation with causation.

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