Profound CTO Learnings of 2021

(theventury.com)

37 points | by DerCommodore 819 days ago

7 comments

  • segaboy81 819 days ago
    Drivel. The whole purpose of this is for Jakob Reiter, whoever that is, to highlight what a great leader he is. It's all about upward mobility, and having a showpiece like this is all part of the act. I don't know Jakob, but I know from reading this he is probably untrustworthy and will do whatever is necessary to succeed. These types have evolved over the years... in the 80s, they were sharp and cutthroat. Afterall, that's what was in vogue. Now they've adapted to today's cultural zietgeist, making sure that everyone knows how forward-thinking they are, how hip they are to inclusivity, yadda-yadda.. It's just a game that these inauthentic types are very good at playing. Well, we all share the same dirt in the end, my friend.
    • Wavelets 819 days ago
      Great summary. This article was probably put together by HR/Comms. So much of this crap on LinkedIn. “#leadership”.
      • nmca 818 days ago
        This is satire, no?
    • MarcelOlsz 819 days ago
      Reminds me of the soylent founders blog where it was something about buying cheap clothing from Taiwan that he only wears once a day, powers everything with some balcony solar panel, etc. Wish I could find it again.
    • tonyjstark 819 days ago
      Pretty much what I was thinking. This post is as deep as a bunch of motivational quotes on Insta, one platitude after another.
    • tedmiston 818 days ago
      It's a 43-person company and the author is already a Partner — what kind of upward mobility would he need or be after in the first place?

      IMO the main issue is the HN title having been edited to Profound CTO Learnings of 2021 while the actual post is titled Leadership Learnings of 2021. Two misused terms I don't think HN takes lightly are profound and CTO.

    • riskycodes 819 days ago
      undefined
      • meepmorp 819 days ago
        > I hope that you find happiness, segaboy81.

        This is some passive aggressive bullshit, fam.

        • riskycodes 818 days ago
          I mean it. Criticising the content of article is fine. However, making mean and baseless pop-psych ad hominem assumptions about someone you've never met? That's unnecessary. I hope that segaboy81 finds a balance in their life where they don't feel the need to do that.
          • dominotw 818 days ago
            > baseless pop-psych ad hominem assumptions about someone you've never met?

            > I hope that segaboy81 finds a balance in their life

            i guess its ok for you to make 'ad hominem assumptions' about segaboy81 that he is 'unbalanced in life' (whatever that means).

            I hope that you find happiness, riskycodes.

            • riskycodes 818 days ago
              Yup, I’ll take the L here. I guess I did do that.

              I thought it was different because I wasn’t really making assumptions about segaboy81’s character, but I can see how it’s similar enough.

              Thanks.

            • riskycodes 818 days ago
              Thanks, I hope I do too. The last two years have been tough for a lot of people, but I’m a work in progress.

              I hope you find happiness, dominotw.

          • meepmorp 818 days ago
            Now I feel like I missed a joke or something.
      • ThrowForASocio 818 days ago
        The only positions Jakob has held have been intern positions.

        Did you work with him at LinkedIn or Hulu?

        • riskycodes 818 days ago
          I think you have the wrong person.

          The big giveaway is that this is posted on TheVentury.com and he references being CTO of TheVentury.

  • jackblemming 819 days ago
    >With that, we remind ourselves that if we repeat part of the source code it should be abstracted and not repeated. We do this because we hope that by that we later have a central place to change things in case something happens. We want to reduce redundancy.

    This doesn't demonstrate a deep understanding of DRY to me, which is not a great sign for a CTO.

    • tedmiston 818 days ago
      I would have said refactored over abstracted, admittedly a nit, and I don't get the impression that this post's intended technical audience is super technical.
  • chroem- 818 days ago
    While I acknowledge that English is a living language and subject to change over time, I refuse to accept that "learnings" is a real word.
    • nescioquid 818 days ago
      I've wondered why people favor a pluralized gerund over the perfectly good alternative "lessons". Probably people who use this word are just mimicking a speech affect, or signalling a verbal register (dynamic manager-of-action)?

      "Learnings" will probably become as unremarkable as using "impact" to mean influence or effect.

      > While I acknowledge that English is a living language...

      We can be both descriptivist and cultivate good style (whatever that means to each of us).

    • spaetzleesser 818 days ago
      What do you think about “asks”?
  • tedmiston 818 days ago
    I'm going to go against the grain of the comments so far: (1) the title on HN is misstated / way too lofty but there is some [non-technical] substance here, (2) the title on HN says "CTO" while this person's title in the article is "Partner & Head of IT", (3) "Profound" is nowhere to be found in the title or article itself.

    A more fitting title for HN might be: Some zen-inspired reflections on 2021 from a leader of an incubator / agency.

    That said, I think the post could have benefitted from editing. It's a bit stuff and wordy... and could have probably communicated the same info more effectively at ~1/3 of its current length.

    • itsdrewmiller 818 days ago
      You're supposed to use the actual article title on HN unless there is a good reason you can't. I agree with everything else about your take.
  • spaetzleesser 818 days ago
    I don’t know about this guy but I think it should be required that if one of these “leaders” writes about “leadership” to also hear from the people they are leading. I have been in several presentations where some manager would brag about their leadership secrets where I knew that reality was completely different.

    Seems to me that “leadership” is full of self promoters and it doesn’t really matter if their stuff actually works as long it’s written nicely.

    • rramadass 818 days ago
      Very True. The whole Leadership/Management "Industry" has since long ago become inauthentic. Nobody trusts and takes them at face value anymore.

      Checkout the works of Jeffrey Pfeffer for some honest criticisms.

  • itsdrewmiller 818 days ago
    The actual title of the article is "Leadership Learnings of 2021" - I don't know if the poster was being sarcastic or not in the editorialization of the title, but it definitely comes off that way and I think is leading to some of the mean-spirited comments. @dang
  • ThrowForASocio 818 days ago
    undefined