Thread by @perrymetzger

The most important lesson I ever learned as a manager, and the hardest to internalize, is this: you can't actually ever make someone who works for you do *anything*. You can fire them, of course, but that doesn't actually get the thing done, either. 1/

Under normal circumstances, you can convince someone they want to do something, or you can fire them, and that's your available spectrum of options. (If you are a totalitarian dictator, you can of course have them killed, but that still doesn't get the thing done.) 2/

This might seem like a stupid or trivial observation, but it isn't. Getting people to do what you think needs to be done requires their cooperation and good will. In the long run, if you lose that good will, if their morale turns sour, you've lost. 3/

Being a manager is ultimately not a position of high power but rather a position where the main tools you have to make things function well are diplomacy and being organized. You rely on other people to accomplish things, and if they decide they dislike you, you're toast. 4/

You don't need to be *loved* mind you. But if the people working for you view their jobs with the same elation they normally reserve for a colonoscopy, you're slowly but surely going to fail. 5/

At the very least they won't give you much if they hate their jobs, and you can only ask them to do a certain number of things they think are stupid before their productivity will drop. Having the staff on board with what's happening makes everything easier. 6/

This is an observation so mind-numbingly obvious that you would think absolutely everyone in management would understand it intuitively, but I've seen so many cases of failure because people didn't understand that the employee's feelings actually matter. 7/

People who are imperious, or who don't appreciate the work their people do, can survive for quite a while in industries where people can't get other work, and can survive for a bit because of inertia even if their people are in high demand, but they're not going to thrive. 8/

(Another little secret is it turns out to be ever so much more fun doing your job as a manager if your staff don't feel like the world would be better off if a car hit you tomorrow morning. I know, this should be obvious, but it somehow doesn't seem to be to some people.) 9/

Anyway, if you're in high tech these days, everyone working for you can probably turn around and get another job quickly if they want one. Maybe if you're in some other industry you can get away with using a cat-o-nine-tails as your main management tool, but not there. 10/

And especially in high tech, the difference between the work done by people who don't view coming to the office with existential dread and those that do is pretty large. Again, this should be obvious, and yet somehow it isn't. 11/

So to reiterate: you can never make people do _anything_. At most you can stop paying them because they didn't do what you wanted, but that's not the same thing as winning. If you want to win, you need to learn how to persuade. 12/

(And yes, there are famous cases of bullies functioning for years in various positions. Mostly they survive in spite of being bullies, not because of it. Some rare ones survive a long time. You're probably not that lucky, and even if you are, it's a shitty way to live.) 13/13