You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss (2008)
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderSo I'm a manager in a large engineering org (~600 devs) and I've managed from 2 (and was therefore an IC) to ~40 people. I can definitely relate to this blog post and if the author's intent is to say that working in small groups is easier and more natural than working in large ones, then I agree wholeheartedly, but I think there are a few other things to keep in mind. > One is that companies will inevitably slow…
I used to work for a defense company that eventually got bought by a mega defense company. It was ~3000 people in various parts of the country and it was started by a man who deeply believed in the power of the entrepreneurial spirit. It had that free for all structure that PG says he'd never seen in a tech company. It was the wild west. We had different groups competing for the same government contracts. Managers and hackers alike…
You weren't meant to have a boss. You also weren't meant to read, work on computers, drive cars, fly, or even practice agriculture. Its very easy to criticize any modern institution on the grounds of, "Our H. Erectus ancestors didn't do it, so it must be unnatural." Rather than snark about how the phenomenon is bosses is somehow unnatural and antithetical to human existence, why don't we work on creating institutions that preserve the advantages of having a boss while…
Is having a board of directors full of VC big shots to answer to that different from having a boss? I listened to a Changelog podcast the other day featuring Sytse Sijbrandij (GitLab CEO) and he mentioned having to run stuff by his board and I was like woa, even someone as obviously self-made as @sytse has a boss. I'm starting to think that only by bootstrapping (or taking very little investment, at least) you really do work without a…
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 5
- Total points
- 1093
- Total comments
- 761
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008-03-20 | You weren't meant to have a bossFirst breakout | dfranke | 239 | 298 |
| 2008-07-16 | You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss | babul | 1 | 0 |
| 2011-02-02 | You weren't meant to have a boss (rev June 2008) | cwan | 2 | 0 |
| 2011-07-13 | You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss | helwr | 228 | 83 |
| 2015-06-21 | You Weren't Meant to Have a BossHall induction | jeremynixon | 93 | 51 |
| 2019-01-11 | You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss (2008)Best thread | cow9 | 322 | 164 |
| 2020-05-07 | You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss (2008) | happy-go-lucky | 3 | 0 |
| 2020-10-10 | You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)Latest 20+ point return | alexellisuk | 202 | 165 |
| 2023-01-22 | You weren't meant to have a boss (2008) | simonebrunozzi | 3 | 0 |