Why 90% of Managers Are GARBAGE (The Professional Lie) | Steve Jobs
Why 90% of Managers Are GARBAGE (The Professional Lie) | Steve Jobs on HackerTube: recommended by 2 Hacker News commenters across 2 separate months, 2017–2025.
A short clip of Steve Jobs arguing that the best people are self-managing and that professional managers who cannot do the work add little. He says leadership is about a shared vision.
What HN commenters said
7 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
ChrisCinelliDec 2018Strongly recommends
Completely in agreement. Hire a bad leader when the company is growing and you risk one year later to have the whole company infested by all sort of people that you would not like to have around (managers included). Some companies completely screw up themselves because of this. Startups usually do not think about this early enough and when the founders realize what is going on is too late and the company culture is screwed. My favorite Steve Job's video on the subject: ▶ this video
in “Guide to scaling engineering organizations” · View on HN
mentosDec 2017Recommends
Steve Job's view on management shares similarities to what you have described and I think from my experience I agree with this outlook ▶ this video "The greatest people are self managing, they don't need to be managed. Once they know what to do they will figure out how to do it. What they need is a common vision, and that's what leadership is. Leadership is having a vision, being able to articulate that, so the people around you can understand it, getting a consensus on a common vision." "We were in stage where we went out and thought, Oh! We are going to be a big company, so let's hire professional management. We went and hired a bunch of professional management but it didn't work out all well. Most of them were bozos, they knew how to manage but they didn't how to do anything!" "If you are a great person, why would you want to work with someone you can't learn anything from? You know what's interesting? You know who the best managers are? They are the great individual contributors who never ever want to be a manager but decide they have to be a manager because no one else is gonna do a job as good as them"
in “Why don’t software development methodologies work? (2014)” · View on HN
andaiOct 2025Cites it
"The neatest thing that happens is, when you get a core croup of ten people, it becomes self policing, as to who they let into that group." —Steve Jobs ▶ this video
in “What happened to Apple's legendary attention to detail?” · View on HN
gsf_emergency_2Mar 2025Cites it
Steve Jobs on a related topic, what it means to be a leader: ▶ this video Guess VPs (according to both) are it
in “Career Development: What It Means to Be a Manager, Director, or VP (2015)” · View on HN
thenerdheadMar 2022Cites it
I hate to be that guy, but I believe that many line managers & middle managers aren't honestly needed in knowledge work at a certain level of self-managing ICs with a common vision. It's increasingly rare to find "good" managers among the bad. The good ones tend to find new jobs or get promoted and continue to climb the ladder. The bad ones? They also get promotions to take over the good ones jobs and they stay around forever. They get in the way majority of the time. They try to make decisions for their own self interests rather than empowering their teams to make the best ones possible. They don't say no to things, but rather use it as yet another opportunity for a "quick win". They get offended easily and have fragile egos with blunt feedback. Literally the opposite of every characteristics of a "good manager". Many people in these roles are classic examples of narcissism and nepotism. Nobody has ever humbled them before or questioned their confidence that can easily be seen as an authority figure in most developer teams. I'm sad to be saying this, but I don't think many developers stand their own ground against these types of people and they should. Teams should be able to vote out their bad managers because it is so apparent on certain teams that there's a bad manager. Even with decent managers on a team, you still hardly get anything meaningful done. You can spend years on things that have little to no impact externally, but will be praised internally because of the "ha
in “Why are there so many bad bosses?” · View on HN
29athrowawayMar 2020Cites it
Take a look at the most lasting, highly successful open source projects used by most companies today. They have something in common: - Full-time software engineering managers? 0% - Full-time product managers? 0% - Full-time project managers? 0% - Committed engineers focusing in implementation working on flexible time schedules: 100% The true inefficiencies that managers spend their careers looking for, are right there in front of the mirror. ▶ this video
in “Fixing Scrum (2019)” · View on HN
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maroonblazerDec 2017Cites it
I like his comment at about the 2:06[0] mark where he says "They knew how to manage but they didn't know how to do anything..." However...a dynamic I see happening in my professional world is that the 'how' of doing things is changing so rapidly that managers aren't able to keep up and so might find themselves in a position where when they first started managing they were an expert in their domain but over time the domain has changed so much that their expertise has fallen behind. At that point I think a manager can still have value by performing classically managerial tasks: - setting/reinforcing/communicating the vision (as Jobs notes in the video) - recognizing great work by individuals on the team (both within the team and across the org) - minimizing uncertainty within their span of control/removing 'blockers' - providing autonomy to their staff - facilitating collaboration - striving for fairness and transparency in management decisions [0] ▶ this video
in “Steve Jobs on how to hire, manage, and lead people [video]” · View on HN