> In other words, the founder doesn't have the qualifications or characteristics that the underlings assume they need to be in a leadership position.
I find this to be an odd take, given context in the article. It sounds like the writer is simply contrasting her own leadership style with her boss's, as an example of how they complement each other.
Hierarchies make us uncomfortable because they challenge our egos. I've noticed this particularly in classic programmer personalities: smart, introverted, highly skilled.
Many of us spend our entire careers as ICs, as leaves on the corporate tree. It's easy to become cynical.
"The VP sits around chatting people up all day and droning about
OKRs while I just shipped a million dollar feature / resolved an expensive outage / built a tool
that will dramatically increase engineering efficiency. What value does _he_ bring to the table?"
Unfortunately this is an enormously unproductive attitude that will kneecap your career. No org is a meritocracy -- but what does meritocracy even mean? We sort everyone by IQ? Or "performance", measured by lines of code committed per week?
On a final note I'll add that hierarchies get things done. Imagine working for a company that functioned as a democracy, with all the attendant discourse, campaigning, checks and balances. I would personally find the inefficiency intolerable. Better to work for a single idiot than a committee of a dozen geniuses.
> It sounds like the writer is simply contrasting her own leadership style with her boss's, as an example of how they complement each other.
I agree, that's likely the author's intention.
> Unfortunately this is an enormously unproductive attitude that will kneecap your career.
You're getting to the heart of the matter, but not in the way that you think. To avoid repeating myself, I'll refer to what I wrote in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36724073
> No org is a meritocracy -- but what does meritocracy even mean?
That was actually my point.
> On a final note I'll add that hierarchies get things done. Imagine working for a company that functioned as a democracy
My comment was not about how companies should be organized. That would be a misinterpretation.
I find this to be an odd take, given context in the article. It sounds like the writer is simply contrasting her own leadership style with her boss's, as an example of how they complement each other.
Hierarchies make us uncomfortable because they challenge our egos. I've noticed this particularly in classic programmer personalities: smart, introverted, highly skilled. Many of us spend our entire careers as ICs, as leaves on the corporate tree. It's easy to become cynical.
"The VP sits around chatting people up all day and droning about OKRs while I just shipped a million dollar feature / resolved an expensive outage / built a tool that will dramatically increase engineering efficiency. What value does _he_ bring to the table?"
Unfortunately this is an enormously unproductive attitude that will kneecap your career. No org is a meritocracy -- but what does meritocracy even mean? We sort everyone by IQ? Or "performance", measured by lines of code committed per week?
On a final note I'll add that hierarchies get things done. Imagine working for a company that functioned as a democracy, with all the attendant discourse, campaigning, checks and balances. I would personally find the inefficiency intolerable. Better to work for a single idiot than a committee of a dozen geniuses.