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> If you can't even handle light criticism from the people you employ, you shouldn't be at the top. I ask this in all seriousness: what qualities make for a go

> If you can't even handle light criticism from the people you employ, you shouldn't be at the top. I ask this in all seriousness: what qualities make for a good leader assuming the ideals of capitalism? I understand many people here will say they would prefer to work for a moral leader who can handle criticism and adapt to make sure his employees are taken care of, but do those leaders perform better at growing companies quickly? I guess what I'm asking is for data - are assholes more likely to be successful CEOs? Or maybe they're better at the early stages when growing a company, or perhaps they're better at the later stages when a company needs to deal with regulations, or maybe they're always the worst. What data is there for this apart from anecdotes?

harigov 10y ago
Turning that question around, what sort of a leader do you want to work for? Or folks usually like to work for? This whole idea of growing a company as the only (or most important) thing that matters is something that should die. We want people who we genuinely respect and imitate as our leaders. We want to build products that are genuinely useful and bring about a positive change in the society.
- MegaButts 10y ago
  Yes, that's a personal decision in deciding where to work. But it's easy to come up with specific examples of CEOs that are assholes who grow gigantic companies. I was just using this specific example with Kalanick to raise the question. Perhaps a better example is Steve Jobs, someone who had something of a cult following but from what I've heard was an all around terrible person. If these people truly weren't tolerated, they wouldn't get to the top in the first place.
  - harigov 10y ago
    I guess some of these leaders have strengths that we probably can't easily put into words. For ex., a leader who can bring about the best from people, a leader who has a knack for understanding people, etc., I wonder how much of those other qualities played role more than them being assholes.
  - arthur_pryor 10y ago
    right. i think the point is, we should tolerate them less, so that they get to the top less.
    - MegaButts 10y ago
      I'm not asking what we should do from a moral perspective, which is highly subjective. I'm asking for data. Has anyone done an analysis on the traits of successful CEOs?
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
bearcobra 10y ago
There are studies that have shown that CEOs are more likely to be psychopaths than the general population. If you assume being a psychopath also makes you an asshole, and some level of success is required in order to become a CEO, it wouldn't be unreasonable to claim that being an asshole makes you more successful. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/13/1-in-5-ceos-are-psychopaths-australian-study-finds/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/13/1-in-5-ceos-are-p...
- nickff 10y ago
  That really is an atrocious article; they compared numbers which are loosely correlated at best: >"The study of 261 senior professionals in the United States found that 21 per cent had clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits. The rate of psychopathy in the general population is about one in a hundred." They should have applied the same standard to both groups, but instead used a very loose definition for the professionals, and a very stringent definition for the general population. "The Psychopath Test" is a great book on this subject, and recommended reading on it; all these popular blog posts are just meaningless polemical drivel.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychopath_Test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychopath_Test
  - bearcobra 10y ago
    I can't speak to the methodology of the study in the article, but it appears that the author of The Psychopath Test found that the rate was 4x the general population[1], so I feel like the argument still stands [1] http://www.payscale.com/career-news/2015/04/why-a-disproportionate-number-of-ceos-are-psychopaths http://www.payscale.com/career-news/2015/04/why-a-disproport...
    - nickff 10y ago
      If you're not going to read the entire book, please at least read more of the Wikipedia article. >He considers the book a cautionary tale against diagnosing someone without really knowing them, and about the need to avoid confirmation bias. He thinks that is "part of the reason why there are so many miscarriages of justice in the psychopath-spotting field." He does believe that Hare's construct of psychopathy applies to some people, and that their victims deserve sympathy, but is concerned about the "alarming world of globe-trotting experts, forensic psychologists, criminal profilers, traveling the planet armed with nothing much more than a Certificate of Attendance, just like the one I had.
TheBobinator 10y ago
Great leaders cause their staff to grow personally and professionally; they do this by finding out what keeps the staff from becoming all they can be, and removing those barriers. This causes companies and the industry at large to grow. E.G. We used to have a general manager at where I worked some 30 years ago who handled a time theft case this way; he brought the guy into his office with a manager, laid down the time theft amount and days time theft occurred and gave the guy two options. Walk out the door, or work and pay it back; if you choose to be dishonest we have no use for you, leave. If you choose to be honest, pay it back, show me you can be a moral person, we're even. That person chose to pay it back, and they stayed with that company some 20 additional years. Any other quality is secondary. You don't have to know a library of algorithms or what the latest and greatest API is to be a great leader or even a competent programmer. Those things are distractions from understanding the fundamental theories and best practices of computer science anyway, and a lot of it is technological imperialism delivered through marketing to management already very aware technology needs to be inhibited for them to stay employed. Another very large organization I worked for had a standard software they had deployed all over the organization, and one department, a lab, had a bar-coding requirement for data entry to eliminate very costly problems that traced back to the lab. It wasn't my department's job to build infrastructure for them, and they had budgetary constraints that kept them from updating. I suggested they ask the staff to change the font of the text to a bar-code font which is something after doing 5 minutes of google research, I discovered the app allowed. I closed out the ticket and referenced that as a suggestion, and gave them the ticket to reference later. Lo and behold, 2 months later, they get a estimate for $50,000. This organization is one of the biggest employers in the US, and routinely mergers with another company about once every other year. There is no leadership in their organization, and we all suffer for it.

harigov 10y ago

Turning that question around, what sort of a leader do you want to work for? Or folks usually like to work for? This whole idea of growing a company as the only (or most important) thing that matters is something that should die. We want people who we genuinely respect and imitate as our leaders. We want to build products that are genuinely useful and bring about a positive change in the society.

MegaButts 10y ago
Yes, that's a personal decision in deciding where to work. But it's easy to come up with specific examples of CEOs that are assholes who grow gigantic companies. I was just using this specific example with Kalanick to raise the question. Perhaps a better example is Steve Jobs, someone who had something of a cult following but from what I've heard was an all around terrible person. If these people truly weren't tolerated, they wouldn't get to the top in the first place.
- harigov 10y ago
  I guess some of these leaders have strengths that we probably can't easily put into words. For ex., a leader who can bring about the best from people, a leader who has a knack for understanding people, etc., I wonder how much of those other qualities played role more than them being assholes.
- arthur_pryor 10y ago
  right. i think the point is, we should tolerate them less, so that they get to the top less.
  - MegaButts 10y ago
    I'm not asking what we should do from a moral perspective, which is highly subjective. I'm asking for data. Has anyone done an analysis on the traits of successful CEOs?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]

bearcobra 10y ago

There are studies that have shown that CEOs are more likely to be psychopaths than the general population. If you assume being a psychopath also makes you an asshole, and some level of success is required in order to become a CEO, it wouldn't be unreasonable to claim that being an asshole makes you more successful. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/13/1-in-5-ceos-are-psychopaths-australian-study-finds/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/13/1-in-5-ceos-are-p...

nickff 10y ago
That really is an atrocious article; they compared numbers which are loosely correlated at best: >"The study of 261 senior professionals in the United States found that 21 per cent had clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits. The rate of psychopathy in the general population is about one in a hundred." They should have applied the same standard to both groups, but instead used a very loose definition for the professionals, and a very stringent definition for the general population. "The Psychopath Test" is a great book on this subject, and recommended reading on it; all these popular blog posts are just meaningless polemical drivel.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychopath_Test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychopath_Test
- bearcobra 10y ago
  I can't speak to the methodology of the study in the article, but it appears that the author of The Psychopath Test found that the rate was 4x the general population[1], so I feel like the argument still stands [1] http://www.payscale.com/career-news/2015/04/why-a-disproportionate-number-of-ceos-are-psychopaths http://www.payscale.com/career-news/2015/04/why-a-disproport...
  - nickff 10y ago
    If you're not going to read the entire book, please at least read more of the Wikipedia article. >He considers the book a cautionary tale against diagnosing someone without really knowing them, and about the need to avoid confirmation bias. He thinks that is "part of the reason why there are so many miscarriages of justice in the psychopath-spotting field." He does believe that Hare's construct of psychopathy applies to some people, and that their victims deserve sympathy, but is concerned about the "alarming world of globe-trotting experts, forensic psychologists, criminal profilers, traveling the planet armed with nothing much more than a Certificate of Attendance, just like the one I had.

TheBobinator 10y ago

Great leaders cause their staff to grow personally and professionally; they do this by finding out what keeps the staff from becoming all they can be, and removing those barriers. This causes companies and the industry at large to grow. E.G. We used to have a general manager at where I worked some 30 years ago who handled a time theft case this way; he brought the guy into his office with a manager, laid down the time theft amount and days time theft occurred and gave the guy two options. Walk out the door, or work and pay it back; if you choose to be dishonest we have no use for you, leave. If you choose to be honest, pay it back, show me you can be a moral person, we're even. That person chose to pay it back, and they stayed with that company some 20 additional years. Any other quality is secondary. You don't have to know a library of algorithms or what the latest and greatest API is to be a great leader or even a competent programmer. Those things are distractions from understanding the fundamental theories and best practices of computer science anyway, and a lot of it is technological imperialism delivered through marketing to management already very aware technology needs to be inhibited for them to stay employed. Another very large organization I worked for had a standard software they had deployed all over the organization, and one department, a lab, had a bar-coding requirement for data entry to eliminate very costly problems that traced back to the lab. It wasn't my department's job to build infrastructure for them, and they had budgetary constraints that kept them from updating. I suggested they ask the staff to change the font of the text to a bar-code font which is something after doing 5 minutes of google research, I discovered the app allowed. I closed out the ticket and referenced that as a suggestion, and gave them the ticket to reference later. Lo and behold, 2 months later, they get a estimate for $50,000. This organization is one of the biggest employers in the US, and routinely mergers with another company about once every other year. There is no leadership in their organization, and we all suffer for it.