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Comment by dylan604

10 months ago

> A good leader is someone who can deliver hard messages while still keeping your team inspired.

Do you have examples of this? The only "good" leaders that are strong and opinionated I can think of always comes across as leans towards being an asshole.

> Same message, but completely different impact on your team.

Let's change it from "you're a fucking idiot" to "this code is fucking trash". It's not insulting to the specific person, but it definitely gets the point across that the code is no good and much less ambiguous to "it's not up to standards".

A few public ones off the top of my head: Satya Nadella (Microsoft) and Ed Catmull (Pixar) are both folks who I consider to be strongly opinionated and effective leaders but who don't come across as jerks.

I'm not sure how "this code is not up to standards, try again" is ambiguous? That seems pretty direct to me.

Ultimately it's about showing empathy. Especially when you're dealing with employees who are struggling with anxiety, impostor syndrome, or burnout - all of which seem to be overrepresented in tech.