The Hard Thing About Hard Things

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Ben Horowitz: The Hard Thing About Hard Things

English language

ISBN:
978-0-06-227321-5
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(36 reviews)

2 editions

Review of 'The Hard Thing About Hard Things' on 'Goodreads'

The book shows how difficult it is to run a company. It has no whining, just problems and possible solutions, packed in a story. I’ve read the first paragraph and could not put it down. It’s a masterpiece. Honest and direct.

The first paragraph:

Every time I read a management or self-help book, I find myself saying, “That’s fine, but that wasn’t really the hard thing about the situation.” The hard thing isn’t setting a big, hairy, audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off when you miss the big goal. The hard thing isn’t hiring great people. The hard thing is when those “great people” develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding unreasonable things. The hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you just designed. The hard thing isn’t dreaming big. The hard thing …

Review of 'The Hard Thing About Hard Things' on 'Goodreads'

While preserving a certain douchey style which is endemic to books of this kind, this specific piece is nonetheless a very good source for tips about leadership. It speaks in very sober terms about minimizing the effect of life-draining inner-organizational politics, about how to deal when that "it's lonely at the top" and how to manage moving from warlike to peaceful times and vice versa. All in all it's a thought provoking book.

Review of 'The Hard Thing About Hard Things' on 'Goodreads'

There is some good advice here, though the best is probably something you'd get from leadership training as well. Other than that, if you want to build a toxic white men startup, listen to this book. He really likes to hear himself talking, and heavily endorses unhealthy practices (literally), and seems to not have heard of diversity before. This is a white privileged men-only event, and women don't appear at all, and people of color only insofar as the quotes at the beginning of chapters are appropriated from rappers. Tone-deaf and gratuitous.

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