[kabouseng]

Not to pick a fight, but there is this misconception from salaried employees that the running of a company is mostly calm and relaxed, and there are certainty where next months salary is going to come from. Or at least that good management achieves this.

But in reality, leadership of a company is constant chaos, the image of the dog with room on fire saying everything is fine comes to mind.

Who knows what the right decisions is, everybody has feet of clay.

[ska]

There is some truth in this. In the startup world, we often tend to avoid this framing because it isn't positive - but every startup begins in the process of failing (running out of resources and ceasing to be a going concern, one way or another).

The term "runway" is often interpreted to mean: "We need to get this plane going fast enough to lift off before the end of the road". Reality is more complex, because there isn't a plane yet. You have to design and build that as you go, and if you get it wrong, you crash.

Management is in this position: without action, the company will die. With the wrong actions, the company will die. Many decisions close doors, and it's not exactly clear from the start what sequence of doors will lead to the company not dying.

If you involve the team too much in the sausage-making aspects of this, they will invariably become distracted, lose focus, and the company will die. If you leave them too much in the dark, they will lose trust, and the company will die.

It's not easy, and all of this leads to the duck nature: calm up top, under the water feet are paddling like crazy.

[kabouseng]

"If you involve the team too much in the sausage-making aspects of this, they will invariably become distracted, lose focus, and the company will die. If you leave them too much in the dark, they will lose trust, and the company will die."

Incredible truth in this statement!

[happytiger]

When I was much younger I spent two years trying to run an open company only to be “openly told” that several of my employees didn’t want to know and that it was too stressful for them to go through all of the tribulations.

Some people honestly don’t want to know what’s happening. They just want to do their jobs and get paid. And I came to the conclusion that it’s perfectly acceptable.

Still love the open company concept. But if you love and respect the people you work with you have to think pretty deeply about it and whether it’s actually of service to your employees, investors and team.

[anonacct37]

It's the old "you are not the customer" but applied to management. I really really want to be told what the high level goals are and come up with a solution. So of course when I started managing people I worked really hard to communicate those high level goals and let them decide the how. They told me no thanks please just let me know what tickets to work on.

People are different and motivated by different things and that's ok.

The dictator who listens really seems to be what the majority prefer because they don't actually want to be accountable for those decisions they just want a seat at the table.

[featuregag]

> The dictator who listens really seems to be what the majority prefer because they don't actually want to be accountable for those decisions they just want a seat at the table.

Yes. I would go so far as to say people want to experience the feeling of making decisions, of responsibility, without actually having any.

[salty_biscuits]

I was also incredibly optimistic about this approach in the past but life experience has shifted me away from it. I personally can't understand people not wanting to know. It is weird dynamic. I changed jobs a few years ago and went from management to an IC role for a while. It was nice to focus on technical problems but it also did my head in. I felt incredibly neurotic knowing that stuff was going on but I was in my little bubble of productive calm.

[Jare]

What a fantastic and succinct description. Developing something new, whether you're a startup or an established company, feels like that. In a large company, dying may mean something less dramatic, but it may still lead to a team or division sacked.

[brightball]

Yep. This is why getting people talking about priorities and focus is job one on the product side of things. The conversation will look different depending on size, but it’s still there.

[freilanzer]

> everybody has feet of clay.

Where is that from?

[jfengel]

It goes back to a Biblical reference, book of Daniel:

This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass/His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay/Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces.

It has been used a lot since then, for something that seems impressive but is actually weak at the base. I'm not sure when "iron and clay" got reduced to just "clay", but it was by at least the early 19th century.