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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

I was hard working and [more] intelligent than him.

Being more hard working and more intelligent than the competition won't get you very far in anything except purely practical work.

Those definitely aren't things that make a manager successful. Being approachable, being on the side of the people you're managing, willing to pass on the credit for wins and take responsibility for failures, being willing to make hard calls and tell people 'no' when they're unreasonable etc are the nice things that make a manager a good manager. Being selfish, ruthless, and willing to burn bridges to get further up the ladder are often useful skills too, albeit from a slightly nastier perspective.

Management is psychology and politics. Those things don't require much hard work or intelligence. (I'm not calling all managers stupid; managers need 'street knowledge' and savvy judgement.)

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Upvoting this. In my many roles I've had an opportunity to observe and work quite close with executives at several Fortune 100 companies - VPs, CEOs, etc.

I would not rank "hard work" or "intelligence" very high when it comes to common traits of these folks. In fact, I would say maybe half of these folks really stood out in terms of raw intelligence - people who make you say "wow, that person is bright". And we're not talking "Field's medal" smart.

The same characteristics that make for successful politicians makes for successful executive - emotional intelligence, ability to connect with people, confidence, ability to communicate clearly and drive the organization forward. There is a bit of force of personality here - their actions push decision making forward. And that doesn't require a big ego are a silver tongue. I've met quiet, reserved leaders who just have a style that says "I see it like X, so we need to do Y" and everyone else says "of course!" and off they go to do Y.

It's a common trope but "big picture" thinking is a big deal - don't get mired in trivial details, focus on what important, stop people from wasting time on unimportant things. Basically keep the machine well-oiled and moving forward - keep people happy and focused.

I've found that having strong individual contributor skills and having written most of the foundational codebase myself are a dangerous trap as a manager. It's very easy to put yourself on the critical path for delivery, which is really bad for your team. You need to build up those skills on the team instead, trust people who you think might not be ready, and be willing to take the heat when they fail. To the extent I still use my IC skillset, it's to fill in the gaps where I don't have a seasoned developer to lean on. I review a lot of patches. That, and I blow off steam by working on non-critical features.

>Being more hard working and more intelligent than the competition won't get you very far in anything except purely practical work.

Ouch, I really felt that.

Everyone thinks they are more intelligent and hardworking than the people around them.

Not really, lots of people know they aren't the "smartest guy in the room", or "the most specialised" or whatever, but trust their people skills, family connections, visions or simply brute force their way up.

The point is that social skills and networking will get you much much further than being the semi silent, guarded and "honourable" person sitting in the corner of the room - even if you are actually way "smarter" than the socialites or the people with a flair for marketing, social games, politics etc.

Building excellence will always require you following the old adage of "if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room". There is exactly one person in the world to whom that doesn't apply in any given field.

Being "quietly smarter than everybody" is a huge alarm signal that you're stuck at your current level and won't grow much further unless you change circumstances.

It's true. I'm objectively more intelligent than my cofounder. He knows it, I know it. He's the far better manager than I am and grew to lead half the company, almost 5x more reports than me.

It's really all about empathy, structure, but first and foremost the ability to pass on the work to _someone else_ and make them succeed at it.

I tend to nerd snipe myself much more often because I like the technical challenges.

Sounds like you are both smart enough to realize and appreciate that while you each have strengths, you compliment each other.

Many would become envious of each other or allow their egos to get in the way, so good on you.

> Those things don't require much hard work or intelligence

They really do. It's different from the work or intelligence you apply to technical problems, but it's there. What you call 'street knowledge' and savvy judgment is commonly known as 'emotional intelligence'. (Your terms are way cooler, though ;)

The "hard work" part is also often on the emotional side. Everything you need to do includes a "how will that make the person feel, and do I want that" component.

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