
The Dark Side of Resilience - happy-go-lucky
https://hbr.org/2017/08/the-dark-side-of-resilience
======
athenot
> _In America, 75% of employees consider their direct line manager the worst
> part of their job, and 65% would take a pay cut if they could replace their
> boss with someone else._

And _this_ is one of the secret sauces of startups. Excel at valuing your
staff in the midst of a crap-show and they will stick with you even though you
can't match the compensation packages of large corporations.

Corollary: good management is imperative within a startup, or you'll loose an
important value-prop as an employer.

~~~
bowlofpetunias
In my experience (30+ years in all kinds and sizes of companies), the quality
of management is the absolute worst in startups.

The secret sauce of startups is that in the very early phase there is no
management. But once management becomes a necessity (a conclusion that is
usually drawn at least two years too late), the shit show most startups turn
into makes corporate life look attractive. Usually a mix between founders
trying to manage (most entrepreneurs make bad managers) or early employees
falling upward.

One of the main issues is that people who are thrive in the early stages of a
startup tend to lack the #1 quality of a good manager: the drive to _make
other people succeed_.

If you want to work for a good manager, startups are the last place to look.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" In my experience (30+ years in all kinds and sizes of companies), the
quality of management is the absolute worst in startups."_

Another datapoint: my own managers at startups were better by far than those
at larger companies. Generally, the smaller the company, the better.

The absolute best was when it was just me and the company's owner working
together. No corporate bullshit. In that instance, my manager didn't have to
appease any executives above him. He just decided what had to get done and we
did it. Very often I'd have meaningful contributions to make to the decision
making process, and we'd decide what needed to get done together.

Try doing that in a large company where there are N levels of middle
management above you, bullshit corporate policy and compliance to adhere to,
people in different offices and time zones who haven't a clue about who you
are or what you think making your decisions for you, and so on.

I can't even count the number of times when managers in larger companies that
I've worked at have told me that they really want to do the right thing, but
their hands are tied... so we do the wrong, broken thing because we don't have
any choice. At startups there tends to be a lot more freedom, if we make
mistakes, at least they're our mistakes, not ones forced on us by
clueless/insulated upper management.

~~~
Sangermaine
>The absolute best was when it was just me and the company's owner working
together.

You're just reinforcing the parent's point that "[t]he secret sauce of
startups is that in the very early phase there is no management."

------
5trokerac3
The older I get, the more I realize that in most cases it's best to be in the
middle of the bell curve.

That's not to say there's anything wrong with having the single-minded focus
required to be one of the best in the world at something. But you have to
accept that you'll miss out on other enjoyable aspects of life while you
pursue your goal, and know if and when you should move on from it, or you'll
wind up very unhappy.

~~~
marksellers
Each standard deviation of excellence earned along any dimension extracts a
greater toll on all others. It's good to have a specialty along one or two
axes, especially given that you may not care much to be good at the grand lot
of the other available skills you could attain. But to truly excell (3 or more
sigma, let's say) is time-expensive.

~~~
dredmorbius
Gambler's fallacy.

Far more likely to just be regression to the mean.

------
Dowwie
"You should quit your lofty goals and revert to those more practical in
nature.", said no-one who ever accomplished something great

~~~
BeetleB
>"You should quit your lofty goals and revert to those more practical in
nature.", said no-one who ever accomplished something great

"Never quit on your dreams," said most people who never achieve anything.

~~~
shubb
I'm going to dig the biggest hole ever. Is a lofty goal, or at least a deep
one.

You might sit and plan and talk to people and make a buisness plan involving
dump trucks and stay at your day job planning for ever.

You might make viable plans for digging a large hole, but they don't quite
fill the great pit of your vision.

Or you might pick digging as big a hole as possible as a direction, and do the
next thing.

Dig with a space until you get tired then hire a digger and learn to drive it.
End up with a big pile of mud to get rid of and find out you could sell it.
Who knew selling mud could pay for more diggers. Hire good diggers and drivers
because you've done it yourself and know how it's done. Do the next thing, do
the next thing.

Until one day out have a really big hole. Not the biggest, but pretty big.

------
logall
"In America, 75% of employees consider their direct line manager the worst
part of their job, and 65% would take a pay cut if they could replace their
boss with someone else."

It is happening because every company is super exploiting the workers to
increase the profits, because we have a capitalist crisis

~~~
meri_dian
>"It is happening because every company is super exploiting the workers to
increase the profits, because we have a capitalist crisis"

Eh, the statistics are better explained by the fact that most people (adults
especially) don't like being told what to do. They'll be bitter about anyone
handing them orders on a daily basis, especially if their manager isn't gentle
or subtle in their managing. If a manager has enough emotional intelligence
and empathy then they should be able to set direction and delegate without
being disliked, but that ability is reserved for an elite few. Hence the
statistics.

~~~
delazeur
The problem is that, in most cases, managers are people who were good workers
(and good at office politics) and who then got promoted into supervisory roles
with little, if any, additional training.

~~~
boomzilla
Peter's principle and whatnot, but I think there is something deeper. The
manager positions are designed, by definition of the word, to manage, and the
top goal is to extract values from workers. Managers (and product managers in
tech companies) are encouraged to create a `healthy` tension with line workers
(software engineers included) in work estimation and commitments. This is
supposed to make the work challenging enough, but not so demanding that burn
out the workers. The best managers can do that by providing the intellectual
challenges and motivational goals. Most resort to processes and plain OKRs
though (reflected in the worst ever software tool, JIRA. Also any line manager
who's got any clue, meaning who can provide technical/business directions,
would be quickly promoted to directors (where they are supposed to direct :-).

Protip for frontline managers: The percentage of time you spend on JIRA is
negatively correlated to the chance of being promoted to the director level.

------
gwern
> If you think something's supposed to hurt, you're less likely to notice if
> you're doing it wrong. That about sums up my experience of graduate school.

[http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html)

------
thanatropism
This article is impressively thinly-argued for the usual standards of the
Harvard Business Review.

Think of physical endurance. Focusing on physical endurance could lead you to
pointless ultramarathons, or even trying to fly off buildings, but this is as
a defficiency in goal selection. A man with the same physical endurance may
choose to do something entirely different with it.

(My physical endurance right now is so much lower than it was two years ago
that I take buses for city stretches across which I used to walk briskly. It
takes more time, more money and is vaguely humiliating, at least to my own
eyes.)

~~~
stretchwithme
The situations described involve other character defects that can do more
damage because of how resilient the person. You could say the same thing about
flexibility or a good work ethic or conscientiousness. Anything can have a
dark side if you package it with something bad.

The other character defects are the problem. You can be very resilient and
empathetic and a good leader.

And we don't call a salad covered with sugary dressing "the dark side of
lettuce."

------
FilterSweep
> "Yet there is no indication that people actually act on these attitudes,
> with job tenure remaining stable over the years despite ubiquitous access to
> career opportunities and the rise of passive recruitment introduced by the
> digital revolution. "

I have never seen a more grandiose, idealized view used to describe the modern
job market than this blurb. Even in our very hirable field in tech we see a
market rife with inefficiency.

I almost spit out my coffee reading "ubiquitous access" and then had to stifle
a laugh at "passive recruitment".

------
linksnapzz
A bumper sticker I'd like, made from a Lily Tomlin quote: "I used to say that
when I grew up, I was going to be somebody; now I realize I should've been
more specific."

------
cryoshon
this article's conflation of "resilience" with "well fit with corporate values
even when those values become disfiguringly distorted" is a bit disturbing

------
auggierose
There is no such thing as "too much resilience". What a ridiculous article.
Stopped reading it when they mentioned that people staying in their jobs
despite hating it are "resilient". That's not the word I would use for it.

~~~
silverbax88
I agree with that, I think _resilient_ is not the correct term for what is
described in the article, but rather _accommodation_ or possibly
_rationalization_.

People will adapt to their circumstances in both directions: if things become
worse, people can adapt to rationalize it as normal, whereas if things become
better, people will become eventually complacent and want things to improve,
even though things have already improved.

