6 ms·

Is steve jobs not arrogant? It is a fine line between arrogance and confidence in one-self. I do not know where 37signals stands on that line, but their product

by jbrun 19y ago

Is steve jobs not arrogant? It is a fine line between arrogance and confidence in one-self. I do not know where 37signals stands on that line, but their products are very much like Apple's - simple, elegant and not for everyone.

daniel-cussen 19y ago
You know, I'm starting to think there's no intrinsic difference between self-confidence and arrogance. Both arrogance and self-confidence amount to having balls and the willingness to piss people off because you don't care what they think. Whether you were self-confident or arrogant comes down to whether you used good means to achieve a good end. This replaces the self-confident/arrogant dichotomy with the more familiar good/bad dichotomy. Then, a lot of people are selfish. If you are doing something they don't like, they'll say you're bad, and if you help them out, they'll say you're good. My (probably inaccurate) conclusion is the people you piss off will say you're arrogant, and the people that you helped out will say you're self-confident. Nota bene: this is all pretty tentative. My guesses don't represent my opinions, or those of any startups I start in the future.
- sabat 19y ago
  "I'm starting to think there's no intrinsic difference between self-confidence and arrogance" IMHO, the difference is in attitude. Self-confidence says "I'm OK, I'm pretty good." Arrogance says that, plus "oh, and other people suck."
  - daniel-cussen 19y ago
    There's that, to a degree. But <argument from authority> PG says smart people don't think they're smart, they just can't understand how dumb everyone else is</ argument from authority>. This doesn't mean they go around telling people they suck, but that's generally the attitude at Hacker News. You often hear about criteria being about whether something sucks or doesn't suck. Also, being pretty good implies being better than others. Whether you praise yourself or dis others, you're still saying you're at a high percentile. Being good or sucky is relative.
    - sabat 19y ago
      PG and I are saying the same thing, essentially.
  - jbrun 19y ago
    The difference becomes demonstrable when arrogance makes you ignore emerging threats and opportunities in the market. They say, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall". So, if you let confidence blind you; you are actually being arrogant. I do not think 37signals or Jobs is blinded by their confidence. Though one could easily claim Jobs confidence led to his downfall in 1987. He even explained this at the commencement speech at Stanford (I think).
- pg 19y ago
  Arrogance is self-confidence carried too far. Up to a point self-confidence helps you do better work, but if you have too much you start to do worse.
  - mechanical_fish 19y ago
    Yes. What this means, of course, is that anyone who exhibits even a shred of self-confidence will probably be accused, by someone somewhere, of being arrogant. The symptoms are largely the same. The difference is one of degree, and of results. Arrogance is hard to diagnose without the benefit of hindsight. It is now evident that Marc Andreesen was being arrogant when he proclaimed that Netscape would kill the Microsoft desktop. But Linus Torvalds was apparently not being arrogant when he claimed that he could build a better VC system than CVS in less than a month, because... he did.
    - akkartik 19y ago
      Arrogance is not about actions or statements but attitude. It's not about what you say but how you say it. How good one's predictions of oneself are is irrelevant. I don't understand people who say success justifies arrogance (or worse, makes it not-arrogance altogether). Success just shields you from the consequences of your arrogance.
      - mechanical_fish 19y ago
        Arrogance is not about actions or statements but attitude. Yes, but whose attitude? That of the "arrogant" person, or that of the person who interprets a certain set of actions and statements as "arrogance"? The problem is that there's only one (e.g.) Linus Torvalds, but he has thirty thousand critics, of all shapes and sizes and cultures, with a widely varying range of personalities. Some of his critics are bound to have no sense of humor. Some of them are bound to have a tin ear for dialogue. Some of them are bound to be jealous as hell. Some of them are enemies. Some of them are trolls.
        akkartik 19y ago
- gruseom 19y ago
  Arrogance comes from a root meaning "demand" (related to prerogative). Confidence comes from a root meaning "trust" (related to fidelity). So self-confidence has to do with trust in one's own ability to deal with a situation while arrogance has to do with demanding status or privilege from others. Based on this, it would seem that either of these qualities can exist without the other. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=arrogance http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=arrogance http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=confidence http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=confidence
  - earthboundkid 19y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy
    - gruseom 19y ago
      Etymologies are irrelevant to understanding words? That can't be right. From your link: The genetic fallacy is a fallacy of irrelevance where a conclusion is suggested based solely on something or someone's origin rather than its current meaning or context. Notice how it says solely? There's no solely about this. To consider a root is not to ignore current meaning; one can do both. That's, uh, what dictionaries do. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/afonedis.html http://www.fallacyfiles.org/afonedis.html There's another point. The genetic fallacy refers to historical origin. The root of a word is certainly that, but it's also a piece (the main piece, in fact) of the word as it is now. If your point were correct, then a botanist examining the roots of a plant would also be committing the genetic fallacy. Happily for botanists and etymologists, the genetic fallacy applies to one sense of "root" but not the other. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ambiguit.html http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ambiguit.html
- mixmax 19y ago
  I think the primary difference between arrogance and self-confidence is success.
- deleted 19y ago
  [deleted]
- tptacek 19y ago
  You can have too much self-confidence, or too little. I know which problem I'd rather have.
  - vlad 19y ago
    I don't know why, but I've seen many good comments on YCombinator this weekend. Yours is one of them. Someone is labeled arrogant when they're successful enough that others have to pay attention to them, yet those same people are jealous it's not the other way around.
webwright 19y ago
Is Jobs arrogant? Look at the evolution of the iPhone-- the SDK and Enterprise features. He essentially did a 180 degree turn on the SDK and embraced a lifelong enemy (MS) to help his customers. Any examples of 37s ever doing anything like this?
- mechanical_fish 19y ago
  I thought about this for a minute. The problem is that, first of all, arrogance doesn't imply ignorance. Data is data: If you believe that an SDK is unnecessary, but the customer feedback data says otherwise, the smart thing to do is to change your mind. Secondly, I see no evidence whatsoever that Apple "did a 180 degree turn" on the SDK. The plan of waiting over a year to release the SDK is working out great. There are good reasons to have done so -- it strings the hype cycle along (if Apple had released everything at once, what do they do for an encore?), it lets the UI designers get some real-world experience, it shakes out the hardware, etc. Embracing MS is also something Apple has done for years -- MS software is a cornerstone of the Mac's success (Excel was a Mac app first!) Finally, it's a mistake to equate the actions of 37s, or the Rails community, or Apple with the actions of individuals. No one person runs these things. Even a tiny company like 37s has more than one person, and Apple is a huge company with lots and lots of smart people.
  - wallflower 19y ago
    Reminds me of the $100 rebate. If that is true, makes me wonder what Apple has already planned for the iPhone. Full IPTV support on 3G iPhone? iPhone only geo-aware social network?
- mixmax 19y ago
  I would fight anyone, verbally, fists, or pistols at dawn claiming that Steve Jobs is not arrogant. Not here though, it'll be fun to write but boring to read.
  - pchristensen 19y ago
    mixmax, you're my new best friend. That was awesome!

by jbrun 19y ago

daniel-cussen 19y ago

You know, I'm starting to think there's no intrinsic difference between self-confidence and arrogance. Both arrogance and self-confidence amount to having balls and the willingness to piss people off because you don't care what they think. Whether you were self-confident or arrogant comes down to whether you used good means to achieve a good end. This replaces the self-confident/arrogant dichotomy with the more familiar good/bad dichotomy. Then, a lot of people are selfish. If you are doing something they don't like, they'll say you're bad, and if you help them out, they'll say you're good. My (probably inaccurate) conclusion is the people you piss off will say you're arrogant, and the people that you helped out will say you're self-confident. Nota bene: this is all pretty tentative. My guesses don't represent my opinions, or those of any startups I start in the future.

sabat 19y ago
"I'm starting to think there's no intrinsic difference between self-confidence and arrogance" IMHO, the difference is in attitude. Self-confidence says "I'm OK, I'm pretty good." Arrogance says that, plus "oh, and other people suck."
- daniel-cussen 19y ago
  There's that, to a degree. But <argument from authority> PG says smart people don't think they're smart, they just can't understand how dumb everyone else is</ argument from authority>. This doesn't mean they go around telling people they suck, but that's generally the attitude at Hacker News. You often hear about criteria being about whether something sucks or doesn't suck. Also, being pretty good implies being better than others. Whether you praise yourself or dis others, you're still saying you're at a high percentile. Being good or sucky is relative.
  - sabat 19y ago
    PG and I are saying the same thing, essentially.
- jbrun 19y ago
  The difference becomes demonstrable when arrogance makes you ignore emerging threats and opportunities in the market. They say, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall". So, if you let confidence blind you; you are actually being arrogant. I do not think 37signals or Jobs is blinded by their confidence. Though one could easily claim Jobs confidence led to his downfall in 1987. He even explained this at the commencement speech at Stanford (I think).
pg 19y ago
Arrogance is self-confidence carried too far. Up to a point self-confidence helps you do better work, but if you have too much you start to do worse.
- mechanical_fish 19y ago
  Yes. What this means, of course, is that anyone who exhibits even a shred of self-confidence will probably be accused, by someone somewhere, of being arrogant. The symptoms are largely the same. The difference is one of degree, and of results. Arrogance is hard to diagnose without the benefit of hindsight. It is now evident that Marc Andreesen was being arrogant when he proclaimed that Netscape would kill the Microsoft desktop. But Linus Torvalds was apparently not being arrogant when he claimed that he could build a better VC system than CVS in less than a month, because... he did.
  - akkartik 19y ago
    Arrogance is not about actions or statements but attitude. It's not about what you say but how you say it. How good one's predictions of oneself are is irrelevant. I don't understand people who say success justifies arrogance (or worse, makes it not-arrogance altogether). Success just shields you from the consequences of your arrogance.
    - mechanical_fish 19y ago
      Arrogance is not about actions or statements but attitude. Yes, but whose attitude? That of the "arrogant" person, or that of the person who interprets a certain set of actions and statements as "arrogance"? The problem is that there's only one (e.g.) Linus Torvalds, but he has thirty thousand critics, of all shapes and sizes and cultures, with a widely varying range of personalities. Some of his critics are bound to have no sense of humor. Some of them are bound to have a tin ear for dialogue. Some of them are bound to be jealous as hell. Some of them are enemies. Some of them are trolls.
      - akkartik 19y ago
gruseom 19y ago
Arrogance comes from a root meaning "demand" (related to prerogative). Confidence comes from a root meaning "trust" (related to fidelity). So self-confidence has to do with trust in one's own ability to deal with a situation while arrogance has to do with demanding status or privilege from others. Based on this, it would seem that either of these qualities can exist without the other. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=arrogance http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=arrogance http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=confidence http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=confidence
- earthboundkid 19y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy
  - gruseom 19y ago
    Etymologies are irrelevant to understanding words? That can't be right. From your link: The genetic fallacy is a fallacy of irrelevance where a conclusion is suggested based solely on something or someone's origin rather than its current meaning or context. Notice how it says solely? There's no solely about this. To consider a root is not to ignore current meaning; one can do both. That's, uh, what dictionaries do. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/afonedis.html http://www.fallacyfiles.org/afonedis.html There's another point. The genetic fallacy refers to historical origin. The root of a word is certainly that, but it's also a piece (the main piece, in fact) of the word as it is now. If your point were correct, then a botanist examining the roots of a plant would also be committing the genetic fallacy. Happily for botanists and etymologists, the genetic fallacy applies to one sense of "root" but not the other. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ambiguit.html http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ambiguit.html
mixmax 19y ago
I think the primary difference between arrogance and self-confidence is success.
deleted 19y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 19y ago
You can have too much self-confidence, or too little. I know which problem I'd rather have.
- vlad 19y ago
  I don't know why, but I've seen many good comments on YCombinator this weekend. Yours is one of them. Someone is labeled arrogant when they're successful enough that others have to pay attention to them, yet those same people are jealous it's not the other way around.

webwright 19y ago

Is Jobs arrogant? Look at the evolution of the iPhone-- the SDK and Enterprise features. He essentially did a 180 degree turn on the SDK and embraced a lifelong enemy (MS) to help his customers. Any examples of 37s ever doing anything like this?

mechanical_fish 19y ago
I thought about this for a minute. The problem is that, first of all, arrogance doesn't imply ignorance. Data is data: If you believe that an SDK is unnecessary, but the customer feedback data says otherwise, the smart thing to do is to change your mind. Secondly, I see no evidence whatsoever that Apple "did a 180 degree turn" on the SDK. The plan of waiting over a year to release the SDK is working out great. There are good reasons to have done so -- it strings the hype cycle along (if Apple had released everything at once, what do they do for an encore?), it lets the UI designers get some real-world experience, it shakes out the hardware, etc. Embracing MS is also something Apple has done for years -- MS software is a cornerstone of the Mac's success (Excel was a Mac app first!) Finally, it's a mistake to equate the actions of 37s, or the Rails community, or Apple with the actions of individuals. No one person runs these things. Even a tiny company like 37s has more than one person, and Apple is a huge company with lots and lots of smart people.
- wallflower 19y ago
  Reminds me of the $100 rebate. If that is true, makes me wonder what Apple has already planned for the iPhone. Full IPTV support on 3G iPhone? iPhone only geo-aware social network?
mixmax 19y ago
I would fight anyone, verbally, fists, or pistols at dawn claiming that Steve Jobs is not arrogant. Not here though, it'll be fun to write but boring to read.
- pchristensen 19y ago
  mixmax, you're my new best friend. That was awesome!