Radical Candor
Radical Candor is a simple idea: to be a good boss, you have to Care Personally at the same time that you Challenge Directly. When you challenge without caring it's obnoxious aggression; when you care without challenging it's ruinous empathy. When you do neither it's manipulative insincerity. This simple framework can help you build better relationships at work, and fulfill your three key responsibilities as a leader: creating a culture of feedback (praise and criticism), building a cohesive team, and achieving results you're all proud of. Radical Candor offers a guide to those bewildered or exhausted by management, written for bosses and those who manage bosses. Taken from years of the author's experience, and distilled clearly giving actionable lessons to the reader; it shows managers how to be successful while retaining their humanity, finding meaning in their job, and creating an environment where people both love their work and their colleagues.
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53recommend
83mentions
74people
2015–2026years
72% recommend27% neutral1% critical
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What Hacker News says
- https://www.radicalcandor.com/
The first chapter or two of the book is good for the general principles. I found the later chapters about big org management to be less helpful.
I personally go one step further and mentally adjust radical candor to be winsome candor. I'm explicitly adding some empathy and humanity by doing that, so that I'm more likely to treat others how I'd want to be treated, even when the conversation is hard.
- One that would've helped is "Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days" which is a collection of interviews with startup founders by Jessica Livingston. Even though this was a non-profit it effectively sounds like it was a tech startup (he was building an app that was based on, at the time (late 2000s), cutting edge machine learning technology). I think by hearing other founders' stories building other tech products, he would've learned about how they structured their organizations and led their teams. I liked the book personally, but the interviews will be hit or miss depending on the participant.
Here's the book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3N47TG3
Here's a podcast summary of it: https://businessbooksandco.com/episode/1127af729a0d4aec/foun...
But frankly even just a basic textbook or video course on leadership/management would've helped or something like High Output Management by Andy Grove (Amazon https://amzn.to/3NCAZME, podcast summary https://businessbooksandco.com/episode/095f226633d34496/high...).
In terms of dealing with all of the personal conflict between team members, Radical Candor may have helped (Amazon https://amzn.to/4qNa7bf, podcast summary https://businessbooksandco.com/episode/938d044a/radical-cand...).
- "Business" is so broad it's hard to give you recommendations without knowing what you're looking for. That's kind of the point of my post. But as one example, as I mentioned in my post, I loved Doom Guy. If you're building a business in the video game industry you should definitely check it out.
I would also recommend all of the other books in my post that I mentioned by different sub-genres (Shoe Dog, Radical Candor, etc.).
- I don't think that attitude would help anyone: you are looking for positives, not for negatives. Calling them "not good problem solvers" won't help either — most engineers I know are mostly hampered by trying to appease stakeholders with conflicting requirements (or at least requirements in tension with each other). As I said, you need an honest, no-blame discussion to really bridge the gaps between the teams.
If I may suggest an easy read, look up Radical Candor by Kim Scott.
If "nobody who's been here a while" is ready to open their mind and embrace the new team members either, you are getting nowhere quick: hopefully this is not a battle, and you only come out a winner together.
- You're not alone. Hard conversations are a difficult skill, and not one most people learn or even think about as a skill. Check out radical candor. https://www.radicalcandor.com/blog/what-is-radical-candor/
It gets a bad rap, but for me, it was a really useful way to think about giving people the messages they need to hear.
Good luck! It's not easy, but it's key to leveling up as a professional, and I would argue, as a human being.
- Agreed, you should make a decision on who is the CEO. Eventually this will become clear anyways, so just deal with the awkward situation now. When (if) you go out to raise money, the CEO should be the person doing outreach, pitching the vision, and closing deals - that might clarify who wants to take on the role.
Separately - it sounds like you're having trouble aligning and moving forward. Slapping on a CEO title won't resolve that. You'll have to get comfortable with conflict and a bias for action. The pricing question might not matter unless you have PMF - but your relationship could decline if you can't discuss and move forward without resentment.
A few things that might be helpful to read - (1) Radical Candor by Kim Scott, (2) Stripe's operating principles handbook.
