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Software development topics I've changed my mind on

(chriskiehl.com)
873 points belter | 3 comments | 05 Feb 25 09:50 UTC | HN request time: 0.005s | source
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pjc50 ◴[05 Feb 25 11:24 UTC] No.42946995[source]▶
> Good management is invaluable. (I went most of my career before seeing it done well)

Yes, and: it's difficult to describe, must be led from the top, and extremely difficult to evaluate from above.

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bayindirh ◴[05 Feb 25 11:36 UTC] No.42947099[source]▶
If the person at the top can come down for a coffee with people who endured some bad management, and ask honest, non-loaded three questions, it can be measured qualitatively but with very high accuracy.

The three questions are:

    - What should we start doing?
    - What should we continue doing?
    - What should we stop doing?
This is an immensely powerful tool. Thanks to the awesome person who introduced me this.

Addenda: "Theory X" is something really bad. If you're working with a team which responds positively to Theory X, you have much bigger problems IMHO.

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1. franktankbank ◴[05 Feb 25 14:36 UTC] No.42949005[source]▶
What insight does an IC have on what the person at the top even does? I can basically only comment on my interactions with direct management and I otherwise don't know how they spend their day.
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2. pjc50 ◴[05 Feb 25 15:05 UTC] No.42949433[source]▶
That's not important - you're not discussing how to do their job, but what your own view is of your part of the work and those around you. The leader can then synthesize all these views and see if there are any surprises.

(another case similar to "you should listen to a customer when they say there's something wrong with the design of your product, but you should absolutely not pay attention to what they think the solution should be")

3. cosmosgenius ◴[05 Feb 25 21:17 UTC] No.42955287[source]▶
By having a 5 min group meeting where only the manager speaks. Manager is not allowed to talk about what direction the team should go and what the team should do. Anything else will give instant insights on whats going on at the isolated top.