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Comment by dsr_ | Hacker News Reader

I have minions who want it to be every two weeks. I have minions who are happier if it is weekly. I have minions who do not want them regularly, but want the option on occasion.

These are all simultaneously fine. When I miss one with a weekly regular, nobody frets. When I miss one with a biweekly, I make sure to reschedule if it makes sense. And I always make time ASAP for someone who doesn't usually want that meeting, when they ask for it.

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Probably avoid calling people minions if you can. Do you want to come across as someone who manages unimportant simpletons, or do you want to be perceived as someone who manages smart and interesting people? Build up those below you, don't knock them down - everyone wins.

I found it refreshingly honest. Most of us aren't landing people on Mars or working on a cure for cancer here. Most of us are, infact, relatively unimportant (including the guy managing minions.)

The people who speak like this in my experience typically use that kind of terminology to highlight their own superiority, not realising that it has the opposite effect.

I condensed "people who see me as their boss and/or mentor and/or intermediator with the company" into the humorous and highly inaccurate "minions".

Feel free to continue to evaluate my performance on the basis of my word-choice here rather than the actual management process I was describing.

I have no idea about your performance, I'm sure you're a great manager. I only noted your word choice because I've seen people talking this way about their reports and it doesn't reflect well on them.

Have you seen people talking about themselves like that? Because that's how "minion" is frequently used humorously, and I was assuming that OP was channeling that.

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