alt Hacker Newsco-worker started reading "Extreme Ownership" and it improved his mindset and approach to problems. at the same time became extremely unbearable towards own team. if someone was complaining it was hard to get follow-up on a task from someone external he'd jump in and say "you're not owning it".
the tipping point for me was when he started preaching "Never Split the Difference". he'd gotten so cocky to the point he'd start meetings with "I already know how this is gonna end".
i don't mind these books as long as they come from a place of need, but it seems the main crowd are wannabe master manipulators. also, they can often be distilled to a couple chapters, not sure why they're so long.
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The problem is when someone writes one viral blog post, then decides to pad it out and sell it as a book. If you can find the original post, you get the entire substance for free in ten minutes.
Wow. The book we need should be titled something like "Of Software Teams and Cargo Cults"
"... a book had washed up on the shore... 'Extreme Ownership' ... soon the tribe was worshipping the book"
It happens over and over again in software history. I remember people running around panicking about TDD "But we only have 99.8% test coverage" until eventually it started to get shot down by "Show me the ROI on tests"
Reminds me of my sister doing a course in Nonviolent Communication and then for a while violently forcing all communication with her to follow these principles or she would get really angry.