Comment by senthil_rajasek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by senthil_rajasek | Hacker News Reader

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senthil_rajasek

When I was still a new dev, I had a "superboss" in another city (HQ) managing teams across the country including our little dev team. I was new and did not interact with "superboss"-es from HQ directly.

One day after a major release stuff broke in production. The company was losing customers daily. The "superboss"-es from HQ descended on our little dev team in a small midwestern city and ordered "Code Red".

What it meant to me as a new dev was that I can't go home and the whole team had to stay in the office until the problem was solved... A part of the team had to sleep in the office for a few weeks. (I still don't know if this is against OSHA.)

Many years later while I was watching the movie "A Few Good Men.", I learnt that "Code Red" was a military term. Suddenly, it dawned on me that my "superboss" was also an ex-military person.

Sleeping at work did not fix the issue, after many months of hiring help and bringing in more hands the outage was brought under control.

Did the ex-military "superboss" help the situation? I don't know...

Now I know that Military veterans in their enthusiasm to find work in civilian environments tout their ex-military skills as team building or leadership skills.

Skills learned in the military are for war, learned for conflict situations and applying them to civilian environments and bringing a war mentality or attitude to a workplace is toxic.

I don't have an answer to what makes a good technical leader but I know from experience that ex-military style leadership only adds to the toxicity of a workplace.

The book Extreme Ownership would not condone psychopathic behavior like making people sleep in office for weeks at a time. Nor would any ex-military leader I've ever encountered. Military skills are not purely "for war" any more than college skills are for "writing essays."

Sorry you suffered that experience though, hope you made it out of there.

While for sure not all "ex-military skills" are leadership skills, there are some general leadership skills you can learn in many places, including the military.

The book is in my opinion a distillation of those skills, which -- maybe just so happen to -- come from military background. None of what is presented in the book come anywhere close to the situation you described. I would dare to say, quite the contrary. It is about listening, understanding, trusting and many other things, usually considered positive.

It had a great influence on me, though I have never even thought of joining the military.

I started practicing extreme ownership as a regular developer and made my way up to a team leader in about 6 months time. Now I double down as a fresh (and young) leader.

1. Code Red has been part of broader civilian idiom since, I don't know, the 50s? Use of "Code Red" doesn't indicate anything.

2. Common sense dictates that whenever one transfers skills to a new context, one assess the underlying assumptions and context of those skills to adapt them for use. I'm sure mistakes in that regard will inevitably be made, but I give most people more credit than to assume, a priori, that people will transplant those skills without any thought given to changing contexts. That seems like a very condescending assumption to start with, but maybe I'm misreading you.

Forcing people to sleep in the office asa strategy to fix a complex system is surely a sign that someone was not thinking about context?

I'd be interested to learn more about the technical problem. Any problem that takes months to fix must have been deep. Can you share some details about that?

Did you read the book?

EDIT- Seems the below came from a misreading of the OP text, But i cannot delete it now that I'm downvoted... Please ignore.

> Skills learned in the military are for war, learned for conflict situations and applying them to civilian environments and bringing a war mentality or attitude to a workplace is toxic.

> only adds to the toxicity of a workplace

What exactly was the toxicity besides your choice to overreact (stay overnight) ? Why do you believe that leadership skills for war are not applicable to other domains?

>A part of the team had to sleep in the office for a few weeks.

So it sounds like OP was coerced to do so and it was not a free choice or an "overreaction" as you characterize it.

i see, I didnt read it as a command but as a "We volitionally chose to solve the issue this way"

"Had to" usually implies coercion of a sort. Like you might say "in PE class we had to stand on one leg for 10 minutes".

I've had experiences where "Had to" was like

"If I wanted the outcome I was aiming for I had to.... (workout?)" This is how I took the sentence. A totally volitionally accepted responsibility

>besides your choice to overreact (stay overnight)

It was not a choice. It was an order.

A company can’t “order” you to stay overnight. Unlike the military you can walk away.

People did walk away eventually. But not immediately because when you have a family, for instance, you can't leave a job without making sure you have health insurance etc., People eventually left once they found other jobs.

If you’re otherwise a productive employee you can just say no too, and dare them to fire you.

"daring" your employer is not a wise career advice.

“If you’re otherwise a productive employee”.

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