Item — HN Reader

I don't believe a word of this. It's the usual buzzword-soup that's self-contradictory with even the simplest glance (e.g. claiming a manager's value is both unmeasurable but also the key to promotion? If it's unmeasurable, you're probably getting promoted for something else, like company growth, being well-liked, looking the part)

It reeks of the self-importance of a director who reassures himself, "Well I got this far, so I must be doing things right." Is this author the kind of person who'd fail to buy google for 1bn, while "ensuring alignmnet with managers" and other PHB concerns? We'll never know.

But what we do know is that less that 5% of this article is actually about making the right decisions happen. That to me is a red flag.

2 comments

to use the language of this [1]; I agree, I get a strong sense of "posturetalk"

[1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

Whoever wrote the article were on a heavy dose of corporate cool aid sprinkled with some denial of the "Peter principal"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

> You have to shift your mindset, and focus on building new skills that are often very different from the skills that made you successful in your previous role.

How is that "denial of the Peter Principle"?

Not even mentioning that the Peter Principle can be criticized in itself, as it's based on suppositions that are dubious and do not necessarily hold. For example the fact that you might not end up actually keeping the position at which you become "incompetent".