try and build "the community" outside of the effort of one or a few people. This is hard. My example: we've built some quality dirt jumps for bike riders, and while there's a core group of ~10 people, you don't need all - or any - of them to come out for success. The location is the host and either a regularly scheduled or casual event keeps the community going. If people stop, the community will die and we'll move on.
during the pandemic I was exposed to the "Today I learned" comment in slack, and I really liked it because it was usually something interesting (or comical, or painful) and relevant, and also helped me connect with my coworkers. I highly recommend sharing both here and in your group/team message channel random & interesting things you learned today with the #TIL tag.
I've found the best managers are very aware of the "clueless manager" trope and suffer from imposter's syndrome more than most, but use that to make them good managers doing what you said: recognizing & owning where they are blind or lack skill (working on it, asking for help), helping where they can (doing a share of the shit work, or backfilling holes), and trying to be a nice person (building a relationship beyond the manager-employee dynamic). This doesn't mean they are your friend, but most people want to work (and win!) with people they like.
>> highly collaborative teams as opposed to those who prefer to be 10x lone wolves
I was a decent developer and a much better manager, and I think a big part of it was I learned these are different games. By the time we hit multiple dev teams I had good success framing it wtih senior ICs like this: "If you want to get 10% better (better in context of what they are defining) this year, that's really, really hard. But it would be easy for you to make everyone on the team 2-3% better, and our net improvement would be well over 10%." We then talk & plan relatively straight-forward ways to make this happen, and mix in explicit personal improvement/growth components. They're motivated, they make their teammates motivated, they make me motivated. Meanwhile the 10x'er (not sure I've had one of those) keeps grinding it out in the minor leagues.
this makes sense, but can be at odds with the reason you're there. If your manager is not working to align your personal motivations with those of the organization they are failing. I don't believe it's a spectrum of good-bad management and "level of motivational interference". An "average manager" just does a weak job at the individual-organizational alignment.
>> I never got to motivate anybody do anything they didn’t want to.
I'd be willing to bet that as a manager you've gotten people to do the shit work no one wants to though, mostly by explaining why & how it's important, sharing it across the entire team, working to eliminate dumb parts of it and stepping in to do some of it yourself - and yes, occasionally assigning it directly. To me, that's motivation: sustainably coordinating energies in a shared direction for the greater good.
The author seems to lack any sort of understanding of motivation beyond some sort of vague, blackbox "fire in the belly" concept. This is definitely not true. My take aligns with yours: motivation is a vector, having both magnitude and direction. You want individuals with the fire and then somehow need to figure out how to direct the combined heat. In the earlier stages of an externally-funded venture this is the difference between building a jet engine and pouring gasoline on a campfire. I agree you don't need a manager to do this, but also feel strongly that by the time you're at multiple teams your CTO-founder is also the wrong person. They're probably a core developer who earned the title with limited experience; don't make them learn how to manage a dev team's day-to-day while they also learn every aspect of engineering management. I wish every CTO started as a team lead, but in this scenario it's too late. CTOs largely lead the parade, but you're devs need a servant-leader in the trenches who can articulate from the front, constrain the sides and push from behind.
They can, but they're competing with assholes, you can figure out the odds.
Like there's an Olympics where everyone's on drugs but a few good folks decide to compete clean.
Want to win fair? Sure, same here. Now here come the whispers, you can just ignore them, sure, but now your girlfriend's pregnant and your bank account is looking a little thin. Good luck.
forget about murder, you make a terrible comment or single mistake in your young adulthood and you are done for ever. Kids are not allowed to make mistakes anymore.
That's not true though, no one "Has their life ruined forever" because of one off-hand comment. Eventually, social media moves on, and people stop haunting you, if that's what you're encountering.
Great way of avoiding 99% of the harm with that, is literally getting off social media, if that ever happens to you. Most people around you in real-life won't know about it, nor recognize you, or anything else, unless you had a pattern of bad behavior for a longer period of time.
But you can still make mistakes, even online, and eventually people forget about it.
No, it's true if you want to remain a normal person, instead of becoming a celebrity or "celebrity-lite" or whatever we call them today. But yeah, if you try to become a "public figure" or similar, then people will try to find skeletons in your closet, but it's always been like that, and very different from "you make a terrible comment or single mistake in your young adulthood and you are done for ever" which was the initial claim.
People will talk about it, but how much does it really matter? Many actors and other figures credibly accused of sex crimes or whatever just wait a few years and then start getting work again. Kevin Spacey seems to be going alright as an example.
The gap years certainly hurt, but at a sufficient level of money and power you're broadly fine I think. The real risk of cancelling is for people without money and status who could be shunned by family or friend groups mostly.
30 years from today? The army they had in the 80's was such a shadow of post WWII the country was essentially bankrupt, and why Gorbachev let the USSR satellites leave. They had no problem crushing change until they ran out of money. Russia today is much stronger than when the wall came down.
