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Book Review: The Hard Thing About Doing Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

This is, perhaps unsurprisingly, another book that was part of my MBA’s summer reading list and the last one that I’ll be reviewing (for now? Who knows). I don’t think I’ve read a lot of management books, so this is perhaps the most ‘traditional’ business book that I read.

The Hard Thing About Doing Hard Things is a business memoir with a lot of advice. Horowitz tells the story about his companies – Loudcloud and Opsware – and the lessons that he learnt while growing a startup to a listed IPO and running the company. The focus of the book is on the “hard things” that traditional management books don’t really cover, such as:

  • How to hire an executive
  • When to fire an executive, and how
  • Demoting a loyal friend
  • Can you hire employees from your friend’s company?
  • How to minimise office politics
  • What to do with bad employees
  • How to lead with courage
  • The difference between Peacetime CEOs vs Wartime CEOs
  • How to evaluate a CEO

Each chapter opens with Horowitz recounting his story, and then he goes on to talk about the applicable lessons in smaller subsections. This made the book very easy to follow along and I imagine that it’s easy to find particular pieces of advice.

Like I mentioned at the start of this review, I haven’t read a traditional management book in a very long time, so I can’t really compare this with similar books and say if it’s really covering new topics in management. But I can say that I found this to be an entertaining and educational book, and I felt like I was peeking behind the scenes as Horowitz explains the decisions that he made during the hard times that occur as a company grows.

Featured Image: Photo from Canva

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