from Hacker News

Show HN: Train your leadership skills in 2 min a day [iOS app]

by superzadeh on 11/30/20, 1:11 PM with 46 comments

  • by serjester on 11/30/20, 3:36 PM

    I wish you had something about your background. Leadership is one of the most difficult skills to learn and there's load of BS out there. I learned this the hard way when I was growing my first company. Personally I don't trust anyone to give me "management" advice, unless they've personally successfully been through the grind.

  • by superzadeh on 11/30/20, 1:11 PM

    Like many devs, I somehow ended up managing a small team.

    I’ve had bad bosses before, so I found myself wondering things like:

    - How do I run a 1:1?

    - What do I do when someone has issues?

    - How do I avoid the mistakes I’ve seen made by other managers?

    But the answers tend to be hard to find. So about a year ago, our team at Bunch set out to make it easier.

    Our goal was to combine micro-learning (bite-sized, actionable advice), personalisation (using goal-setting and a content recommender), a leadership competency model (my co-founder is an org. Psychologist), and a bit of gamification to make it more fun (RPG style “leadership personas”).

    We’re hoping this will make leadership skills (aka people skills for managers) more accessible. We have launched it for free on iOS, and working on an Android version.

    Would love to hear thoughts from HN on our approach and this direction! Also would love to hear ideas for improving UX and the content recommendations. Soaking up as much feedback as possible.

    PS: We built it with SwiftUI, if you have questions about how it went, feel free to ask!

  • by fab1an on 11/30/20, 1:16 PM

    The workplace RPG character sheet model is pretty promising I think, great to see more innovation in this space (akin to https://boingboing.net/2004/03/16/ninjas-and-pirates-d.html)

  • by antonio_junior_ on 11/30/20, 3:29 PM

    How do you guys deal with @ObservedObject in iOS 13? I'm having issues with this because every change on state recreates my ViewModels and I can't use @StateObject because it's only available on iOS 14 and I have to support iOS 13 users.

  • by bfung on 11/30/20, 7:52 PM

    I downloaded and went through the first session. A few UX feedback:

    1. During the training part, I didn’t realize that touching the left side went back while the right side is to go next. Some visual cues may help.

    2. Sharing my profile - this part seemed strange as I don’t have others at work on this app yet. The app brought up my personal contacts, which I absolutely don’t care to share this info with. I think making this app somehow get traction at a business will work, but as a consumer app, this sharing is awkward. <— this implies using some way to integrate w/Gsuite or ldap and being able to share w/co-workers, not personal contacts.

    Hope that helps!

  • by MoritzWall on 11/30/20, 1:19 PM

    A beautiful piece of IOS app engineering! How did you make the UIPageViewController in SwiftUI at the beginning of the app? I also tried to use it but have not yet found a way to bridge the UIKit with SwiftUI.

  • by insomniacity on 11/30/20, 9:29 PM

    I was excited to use this, but sign-in is limited to Apple and Google?

    Unless you can provide a straight username/password option I'll have to pass.

    I guess you don't want to handle them, which makes sense, but there are plenty of other services that can handle it for you.

  • by desireco42 on 11/30/20, 4:34 PM

    Why does this need to be IOS app?

    I think it could've just as well be webpage and do the same.

  • by gingerlime on 11/30/20, 8:48 PM

    looks interesting. I installed the app but not sure about the login options... then checked the linked privacy policy and started to get nervous... I know it’s mostly for your website but it mentions google analytics, hotjar, google tag manager, mixpanel, amplitude, intercom, smartlook, facebook pixels, sentry and probably much more... all pretty much based on legitimate interest :-/ feels rather intrusive to me (but I admit I feel like a bit of a privacy freak these days... after all who even reads those privacy policies)

  • by alziarig on 11/30/20, 2:22 PM

    I use this app already actually and love it. Cool to see it mentioned here

  • by jeresuikkila on 11/30/20, 1:20 PM

    Learning something by doing it 2 mins a day seems like a steep promise.

  • by Robin_f on 11/30/20, 2:22 PM

    Would like to try it when it comes out on Android :)

  • by mandeepj on 11/30/20, 7:40 PM

    Just downloaded and completed the onboarding. Is it a side hustle for you or are you looking to establish a business around it?

  • by dsagal on 11/30/20, 4:48 PM

    OK, got far enough through the first tip -- seems useful, although a bit abstract of course.

  • by dx87 on 11/30/20, 4:30 PM

    "Become a world-class leader in just 2 minutes a day".

    Do you honestly believe that?

  • by gregmelson on 12/1/20, 7:23 AM

    I like the app, simple and easy to use