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Comment by liveinoakland | Hacker News Reader

Lesson #58: Don't always believe your own BS.

There is some good stuff in here, but it's not all right all of the time. The part about firing people is interesting. Maybe there is friction because the manager/CEO is doing something wrong and the employee is merely agitating to make things better for the business? The ability to self-evaluate and take criticism/recognize the difference between "difficult" employees and employees who are trying to fix things you are doing wrong seems important and missing from the "people" section.

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That's what pain in the ass employees who get fired for being pains in the ass always think on their way out the door.

And Marc that's also what really good employees who leave because they're not listened to always think on their way out the door.

Everyone who isn't listened to is, in their own mind, really good ;)

Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE said this recently:

Every idea begins with a constituency of one. There’s probably one or two times a year that I turn to our very top leaders and say, “we’re going to do it my way.” Do that too often and good people will leave. But if you never do it, nothing ever happens.

This is a bit callous, don't you think?

Actually, I don't. Disruptive employees invariably have an internal narrative in their own minds that says they're attempting to speak truth to power. In reality they're using that as an excuse to be disruptive.

Wait, disruptive in the bad sense, right?

I almost had Bingo.

I think that will always be a problem. Subjective actors reading the article: us; and as founders, we're at the stronger end of a power imbalance. This whole list assumes a raft of skills that we had to learn elsewhere. And nothing is certain.

In my personal experience, for each Cassandra who correctly nails the company's errors, there's more self-important kiss-up-kick-down types who think their critiques are gold. (People who punch-up-kiss-down are far more respectable, but tend not to last long...)

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