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> For instance, Steve Jobs was famous for arguing against one position or another, only to decide that you were right, and then come back a month later holding
by asveikau 6y ago
> For instance, Steve Jobs was famous for arguing against one position or another, only to decide that you were right, and then come back a month later holding exactly your opinion, as if it were his all along.
Unrelated to the larger theme of the post, but I absolutely hate it when people do this. I thought it sounded like a silly parable until I saw people do it in real life. At which point I concluded it was some kind of characteristic of narcissism.
To this type of person, an idea isn't good until it's theirs. They will trash your idea, and trash you. When your idea seems convenient they will take credit and fail to cite you as an influence. That's ok, one can suppose, if not for the next part. Likely they have forgotten you gave them that idea in order to help them. They still think you are trash. They will have no qualms trashing your next idea with personal attacks just like the last one.
- ofrzeta 6y agoI have this "theory" that one trait of successful people is forgetfulness. In my experience they tend to forget their mistakes and also forget the source of their successful ideas.
- Pxtl 6y agoThen they should take more notes.
- ukj 6y agoThe whole point of forgetfulness is to have less “memory” to trawl when making decisions. Notes are the worst kind of memory with the highest seek latency. I am in the business of making good choices - not remembering when, where, how and why I learned the lesson.
- RealityVoid 6y agoI tend to suffer from this, only in the _other_ dirrection, in that I forget when I give something or I add something or I help with something or I forget conflicts with people and slights reeal easy. My mistakes and failures, I remember vividly. Does that set me up for anti-success I wonder?
- mercer 6y agoIt can be a recipe for serious anxiety issues, I suppose.
- Pxtl 6y agoHonestly, as somebody who suffers from "strong opinions, weakly held" I make it a point to include names in my notes on design ideas of who first suggested something so when I pivot to "my old plan is stupid we need to go that way" I can say so-and-so's plan.
- didibus 6y agoI'm someone who does that I believe. I don't see it as a bad thing. I'm not going to go and pretend it was my idea, it's just that I take a while to make up my idea of what's right, and I'll discuss edge cases and all kind of issues with others really thoroughly and strongly, I'll do that with many people, about the same thing. And then I'll kind of form my own opinion from that, which could be 90% of person's X, and 10% of person's Y, or any other combo, sometimes mixed in with some of mine as well, but not always, it's very possible I was the most wrong of all initially. In practice, it means that when I commit behind an idea, I'm often right. But the ideas are not necessarily mine. And I don't care. I wouldn't say it's narcissistic, for me, I feel it's actually the opposite. I don't care that I came up with it or you or who did, or even if multiple people contributed to it, I just care that it's the right idea, and once I'm confident that it is, I will strongly upheld it and hold it as my opinion. That's because I've already put it to the test by arguing against it in all possible ways, talking to many others about it, getting their opinions, their alternative ideas, etc.
- thanhhaimai 6y agoIt's not a bad thing if people are careful about giving credits. I have seen both extremes of that: 1) The type who does exactly what the OP said, treat people like trash and think when they commit to an idea, they are often right. When they change their opinion, they don't give credit either, since they want to maintain the image that they are often right. I have seen great teammates left due to those people. I would not want to work with those people either. 2) The second type also hold strong opinions. When they change their view, they attribute it to people who brought it up. They don't care about maintaining an image that they are "often right". They genuinely thanks the people who brought them good arguments that changes their strongly held opinions. It's not about who invented the idea. But they understand it's good to appreciate people from which you get the new idea. I love working with those people. I try to give proper credits to people when they show me new ideas.
- asveikau 6y agoAnd I don't think the worst part is failing to give credit necessarily. People legitimately forget things, and they independently come up with the same ideas. The problem is when it's wrapped in egotism and inability to see that the person who suggested it earlier did so with good intentions, and might be worth listening to in past, present and future.
- xwdv 6y agoI do this with software related things, but what I noticed is that I implement just enough of my own tweaks until I’m comfortable enough taking the credit for the whole idea. My defense when people call me out is to highlight my differences and understate the similarities, even going as far as to say without my features the idea was half baked from the start. Why do I do it? I don’t know, a lot of developers do it. Just how we are I guess. Not Invented Here syndrome.
- bane 6y agoWe have a client who is like this. It's intolerable, but also so predictable that we basically deal with it by just weaponizing it. We know that when we present information to him, we simply work towards building a message that he will take as his own eventually. Initially he'll crap all over the idea, but invariably will return a few weeks later with a "great idea" that will just be what we told him and then we'll basically get to do whatever we wanted to in the first place. It requires some ego squelching but in the end we accomplish what we want and everybody ends up relatively happy. However, even after years of successes, this particular client still treats us like the hired help (which I suppose we are).