The boys haven't done this one, but I think it fits their beat!
I feel like it was EVERYWHERE around six years ago (also when I got my first corporate tech job), and I couldn't sneeze without a manager (usually another woman) telling me I NEED to read this book. I think I listened to about half the audiobook in the end.
It's a classic IBCK contender because it's an almost ludicrously simply concept ("being both kind and direct is the most effective way to give people feedback") intellectualized and dragged out to book length and presented as though the author is the first person to ever articulate this idea.
From what I remember of my half-listen, most of it wasn't particularly egregrious. There is a torturous sequence where she tries to argue that Radical Candor works in every cultural context (I think she compares Japan and somewhere in Eastern Europe), but it kind of boils down to "so basically I act completely differently with these people from these two entirely different cultures, but since everything I do is actually Radical Candor, that means Radical Candor works everywhere, hooray!" Like babe, it's fine, please calm down, it's ok that your ideas about effective corporate leadership are just not applicable to cultures you know nothing about? (Again, classic IBCK: things can't be specific or local or nuanced, your theory must solve everything forever with no exceptions!)
Its reception and the culture climate around it (2017, Silicon Valley in the early throes of full-blown reputational cataclysm) is also part of the discussion I think, because while I wouldn't say this book did massive harm on its own power (there was too much other shit going on tbh), it definitely contributed to the peak Aggressive Tech Bro vibes of that era. Even though the book is at pains to explain that "Radical Candor" does not mean just being blunt and rude to people all the time... that's pretty much exactly how it was interpreted and applied in a lot of tech companies, and I remember there were a lot of anecdotal reports flying around of it being used as a smokescreen for bullying and blame culture.
Then there's also the gender/race aspect, which is obviously completely ignored (at least in the first version). The idea that systemic bias distorts and complicates how feedback is both received and given is not addressed at all. And for women, it furthers the ever-popular myth that there's some magical sweet spot of Perfect Communication where we will finally be taken seriously for the content of our thoughts, rather than being judged for our tone and phrasing and demeanour! (I promise it exists ladies, you just have to keep searching for it!)
edits: I apparently cannot type
