7 ms·

> The problem, as with white geeks, is that Asian-Americans disproportionately aren't learning how to bs, how to promote themselves and their products Actually

> The problem, as with white geeks, is that Asian-Americans disproportionately aren't learning how to bs, how to promote themselves and their products Actually it is the attitude like this -- the attitude that equates self-promotion with bullshit -- that causes problems for people with an engineering mindset. Not only does such attitude (1) show that you consider yourself superior (bravo) to people who are doing the hard and often boring job of marketing/campaigning, but it also underscores (2) that you, at a fundamental level, do not value communicating with other people, and therefore do not value other people (marketing, at its basic, is communication), and (3) that you will not make a good leader because you lack the social intelligence needed to observe others, learn from your observations, and to pay attention to the details of your and your company's public image. Social skills are not bullshit; they are intelligence just like everything else. The fact that you only know how to do math does not show that you are intelligent; it only shows that you are specialized. The fact that women prefer men who are good at socializing is, ironically, direct Darwinian selection for intelligence.

mquander 15y ago
I reject that set of skills not because I don't value communicating, but because I think it's a terrible way of communicating. The world has an unbelievable, enormous, tedious, completely indefensible surplus of self-promotion and marketing. Marketing fills every public space and enters every public discussion. What good is it? Look, you have made entire hard and boring jobs of it. Are you doing something useful? Who is it useful to besides you? Buying into an obnoxiously self-promotional attitude is defecting in a giant Prisoner's Dilemma. It's enriching you only by taking away from others, and at the expense of filling the world with crap. It serves only to make my life and others' a little worse as I filter through "good self-promoters" to find people who are good at ordinary, interesting, non-self-promotional things, who do and say things I actually want to pay attention to. So no, I don't think people who engage in a bunch of self-promotion are stupid or inferior, just selfish and shameful. I will leave money on the table all day in order to not deal with the crap. Hey, it's relevant to the article: Having glimpsed just how unacceptable the world judges my demeanor, could I too strive to make up for my shortcomings? Practice a shit-eating grin until it becomes natural? Love the world twice as hard? I see the appeal of getting with the program. But this is not my choice. Striving to meet others’ expectations may be a necessary cost of assimilation, but I am not going to do it.
- bluekeybox 15y ago
  > It makes my life worse every day as I have to filter through "good self-promoters" to find people who are actually doing interesting things. Or maybe you are setting up a straw man there as the people you find interesting are simply bad at self-promotion? At a party once, I met a graduate student in physics and a guy who worked for an advertising firm. The physicist made a self-deprecating joke about how he sees his occupation as not terribly productive (I guess he saw his own potential for making a big discovery as pretty slim), but then remarked with some relief that at least the fact that he can dedicate his life to research is "a sign of a wealthy society." Immediately after that, he went up in arms against the guy in advertising, confronting him with, "but what do you do that's useful?" I had to interject, telling the physicist, that without people willing to buy stuff including all the plastic toys (chemical engineering) and fancy gadgets (electrical and computer engineering), there would be much less currency floating around in the economy and we wouldn't have the wealthy society he spoke of just a minute ago, in which case the big physics projects like the LHC would not get funded (i.e. we would be back to the 18th century or earlier).
  - mquander 15y ago
    The people I find interesting are all over the board at self-promotion! It's barely correlated. That's the point. The self-promotion is completely unhelpful in directing my attention to anything useful, but it is designed specifically to try to fool me. Nobody needs advertising to be "willing to buy stuff." Advertising shifts demand around from companies that are worse at advertising to companies that are better at it. What do you suppose people would do with their portion of the GDP if there were less advertising? Sit on their hands, because they don't aspire to anything? Would men, their savings accounts bulging with useless money, moan, "I only wish I wanted an iPad more?" Although I admit that it is unavoidable, I find it non-obvious that commercial advertising contributes anything at all to the economy, and supposing it does, I find it completely unbelievable that it is worth the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of labor spent on it.
    - bluekeybox 15y ago
maayank 15y ago
"Social skills are not bullshit; they are intelligence just like everything else. The fact that you only know how to do math does not show that you are intelligent; it only shows that you are specialized. The fact that women prefer men who are good at socializing is, ironically, direct Darwinian selection for intelligence." You know, I'm tired of smart people apologizing that they're good at math/programming/physics/whatever. True, the fact that you are a math pro shows that you are specialized, but by being able to understand and achieve in this field you showed intelligence. I would define intelligence as the potential of acquiring new skills. "Soft" skills can be learned through books and experiment (i.e. reading How to Win Friends and Influence People, doing a salesmen course, etc.). The fact one didn't "learn" it and shows some seemingly innate ability just shows that s/he either learned unconsciously through imitation or through a lot of experimentation in his/her youth. Life xp and observation just led me to agree with what's presented by pg in http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html . p.s. I'm also tired of this meme that women having some weird darwinian developed methods unlike men for processing relationships. While it may be true on some level people are making too much of it. They are ordinary persons. Just imagine a person that about half of the population is being aggressively nice to her since she's 14. Extrapolate and the rest follows. edit: you can't imitate math. you can't imitate programming. being around people who are good at these (i.e. raised by a couple of professors) might give you some good learning stamina and people to consult with, but you still have to develop an internal understanding. Soft skill are different in that regard - you can make great strides by just imitating people who you think are appealing/confident/good communicators (to a degree). You might not understand why it works, but it will work.
- eropple 15y ago
  Cargo-cult social behaviors don't work any better than cargo-cult programming. People can smell a fake a mile away.
  - leot 15y ago
    There are lots of different kinds of people.
  - 15y ago
delackner 15y ago
I know both totally honest and trustworthy sales people. I also know others that seem trustworthy but actually don't know what they are talking about, lie constantly, yet so far after 10+ years in their respective careers somehow manage to get very far ahead of the game. You may say they are simply effective self-promoters and I should not be envious, but I disagree. If you don't believe in a product, it is wrong to tell others it is great. If you have no idea how to do something, sure, say "No problem, I'll get right on it", but it is wrong to say "I have done that tons of times". With products it is fairly easy to see what the truth is: An advertisement for a product may say it is magical. A reviewer may agree. You try it yourself and find whether it is true or not, for you. With people in the workforce though, especially in fields where the cause of a particular team's success or failure is quite difficult to quantify, detecting the bullshit artist from the solid player can be extremely difficult.
eob 15y ago
If I put aside how I'd prefer the world to be and accept it for how it actually is, I'm inclined to agree with you, bluekeybox. Here's a question for the self-taught self promoters on HN: Is there a good book that coaches you about how to learn to become an effective self promoter? I think a lot of technical people think of themselves as bringing a lot to the table, but are (perhaps too) quiet about it in a group.
- bluekeybox 15y ago
  I learned to accept the world the way it is after I spent some time studying art. Many artists were effective self-promoters, but it is not seen as a bad thing because they were subtle and not pushy about it. When most people think of self-promotion, they think of a pushy, sleazy used-car salesman. That's a very narrow view of the world. There can be beauty and subtlety in image-making, diplomacy, and other "soft" skills just as there can be beauty and subtlety in a well-written piece of code or in a theorem proof. Learn to perceive the world from an impartial point of view of an outside observer (or from a point of view of someone wielding power), not from a narrow resentful point of view of someone trying to spread a hateful message to agitate others for whatever vengeful cause. Consider all possibilities. Unlike what the Tolkien's tale says, it is okay to like power; what's not okay is to misuse for a hateful cause. One can't know what misuse is without diligent observation of others. One can't become alpha by acting like a beta. Recognize that even your claim that you dislike self-promotion is a mere attempt to promote yourself to others who (you hope) are just like yourself. Think again about whether people like yourself are a worthwhile bunch to be around. Strive to be around people better than yourself, not just around ones who are your equals. Read Nietzsche.
  - Psyonic 15y ago
    I could tell you've read some game stuff. Was waiting to see if it'd show itself clearly. Solid comment.
stcredzero 15y ago
Actually it is the attitude like this -- the attitude that equates self-promotion with bullshit -- that causes problems for people with an engineering mindset. The problem is that you have to get your audience to buy into what they don't know enough about to understand. Really, it's not their fault that they don't have your specialist knowledge. This is where, "Sell them what they want, but give them what they need," comes from. You can't sell someone something that they don't understand. But if you can sell them something and get their rave-reviews, they can bridge that gap for you.
sapper2 15y ago
> The fact that women prefer men who are good at socializing is, ironically, direct Darwinian selection for intelligence. Wow... you really made my day! That is the BEST statement ever :-))) My girlfriend is prettier than yours, so I am more intelligent. Of course, as history shows, often the dumbest animals (cockroaches..) are best at survival...

mquander 15y ago

I reject that set of skills not because I don't value communicating, but because I think it's a terrible way of communicating. The world has an unbelievable, enormous, tedious, completely indefensible surplus of self-promotion and marketing. Marketing fills every public space and enters every public discussion. What good is it? Look, you have made entire hard and boring jobs of it. Are you doing something useful? Who is it useful to besides you? Buying into an obnoxiously self-promotional attitude is defecting in a giant Prisoner's Dilemma. It's enriching you only by taking away from others, and at the expense of filling the world with crap. It serves only to make my life and others' a little worse as I filter through "good self-promoters" to find people who are good at ordinary, interesting, non-self-promotional things, who do and say things I actually want to pay attention to. So no, I don't think people who engage in a bunch of self-promotion are stupid or inferior, just selfish and shameful. I will leave money on the table all day in order to not deal with the crap. Hey, it's relevant to the article: Having glimpsed just how unacceptable the world judges my demeanor, could I too strive to make up for my shortcomings? Practice a shit-eating grin until it becomes natural? Love the world twice as hard? I see the appeal of getting with the program. But this is not my choice. Striving to meet others’ expectations may be a necessary cost of assimilation, but I am not going to do it.

bluekeybox 15y ago
> It makes my life worse every day as I have to filter through "good self-promoters" to find people who are actually doing interesting things. Or maybe you are setting up a straw man there as the people you find interesting are simply bad at self-promotion? At a party once, I met a graduate student in physics and a guy who worked for an advertising firm. The physicist made a self-deprecating joke about how he sees his occupation as not terribly productive (I guess he saw his own potential for making a big discovery as pretty slim), but then remarked with some relief that at least the fact that he can dedicate his life to research is "a sign of a wealthy society." Immediately after that, he went up in arms against the guy in advertising, confronting him with, "but what do you do that's useful?" I had to interject, telling the physicist, that without people willing to buy stuff including all the plastic toys (chemical engineering) and fancy gadgets (electrical and computer engineering), there would be much less currency floating around in the economy and we wouldn't have the wealthy society he spoke of just a minute ago, in which case the big physics projects like the LHC would not get funded (i.e. we would be back to the 18th century or earlier).
- mquander 15y ago
  The people I find interesting are all over the board at self-promotion! It's barely correlated. That's the point. The self-promotion is completely unhelpful in directing my attention to anything useful, but it is designed specifically to try to fool me. Nobody needs advertising to be "willing to buy stuff." Advertising shifts demand around from companies that are worse at advertising to companies that are better at it. What do you suppose people would do with their portion of the GDP if there were less advertising? Sit on their hands, because they don't aspire to anything? Would men, their savings accounts bulging with useless money, moan, "I only wish I wanted an iPad more?" Although I admit that it is unavoidable, I find it non-obvious that commercial advertising contributes anything at all to the economy, and supposing it does, I find it completely unbelievable that it is worth the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of labor spent on it.
  - bluekeybox 15y ago

maayank 15y ago

"Social skills are not bullshit; they are intelligence just like everything else. The fact that you only know how to do math does not show that you are intelligent; it only shows that you are specialized. The fact that women prefer men who are good at socializing is, ironically, direct Darwinian selection for intelligence." You know, I'm tired of smart people apologizing that they're good at math/programming/physics/whatever. True, the fact that you are a math pro shows that you are specialized, but by being able to understand and achieve in this field you showed intelligence. I would define intelligence as the potential of acquiring new skills. "Soft" skills can be learned through books and experiment (i.e. reading How to Win Friends and Influence People, doing a salesmen course, etc.). The fact one didn't "learn" it and shows some seemingly innate ability just shows that s/he either learned unconsciously through imitation or through a lot of experimentation in his/her youth. Life xp and observation just led me to agree with what's presented by pg in http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html . p.s. I'm also tired of this meme that women having some weird darwinian developed methods unlike men for processing relationships. While it may be true on some level people are making too much of it. They are ordinary persons. Just imagine a person that about half of the population is being aggressively nice to her since she's 14. Extrapolate and the rest follows. edit: you can't imitate math. you can't imitate programming. being around people who are good at these (i.e. raised by a couple of professors) might give you some good learning stamina and people to consult with, but you still have to develop an internal understanding. Soft skill are different in that regard - you can make great strides by just imitating people who you think are appealing/confident/good communicators (to a degree). You might not understand why it works, but it will work.

eropple 15y ago
Cargo-cult social behaviors don't work any better than cargo-cult programming. People can smell a fake a mile away.
- leot 15y ago
  There are lots of different kinds of people.
- 15y ago

delackner 15y ago

I know both totally honest and trustworthy sales people. I also know others that seem trustworthy but actually don't know what they are talking about, lie constantly, yet so far after 10+ years in their respective careers somehow manage to get very far ahead of the game. You may say they are simply effective self-promoters and I should not be envious, but I disagree. If you don't believe in a product, it is wrong to tell others it is great. If you have no idea how to do something, sure, say "No problem, I'll get right on it", but it is wrong to say "I have done that tons of times". With products it is fairly easy to see what the truth is: An advertisement for a product may say it is magical. A reviewer may agree. You try it yourself and find whether it is true or not, for you. With people in the workforce though, especially in fields where the cause of a particular team's success or failure is quite difficult to quantify, detecting the bullshit artist from the solid player can be extremely difficult.

eob 15y ago

If I put aside how I'd prefer the world to be and accept it for how it actually is, I'm inclined to agree with you, bluekeybox. Here's a question for the self-taught self promoters on HN: Is there a good book that coaches you about how to learn to become an effective self promoter? I think a lot of technical people think of themselves as bringing a lot to the table, but are (perhaps too) quiet about it in a group.

bluekeybox 15y ago
I learned to accept the world the way it is after I spent some time studying art. Many artists were effective self-promoters, but it is not seen as a bad thing because they were subtle and not pushy about it. When most people think of self-promotion, they think of a pushy, sleazy used-car salesman. That's a very narrow view of the world. There can be beauty and subtlety in image-making, diplomacy, and other "soft" skills just as there can be beauty and subtlety in a well-written piece of code or in a theorem proof. Learn to perceive the world from an impartial point of view of an outside observer (or from a point of view of someone wielding power), not from a narrow resentful point of view of someone trying to spread a hateful message to agitate others for whatever vengeful cause. Consider all possibilities. Unlike what the Tolkien's tale says, it is okay to like power; what's not okay is to misuse for a hateful cause. One can't know what misuse is without diligent observation of others. One can't become alpha by acting like a beta. Recognize that even your claim that you dislike self-promotion is a mere attempt to promote yourself to others who (you hope) are just like yourself. Think again about whether people like yourself are a worthwhile bunch to be around. Strive to be around people better than yourself, not just around ones who are your equals. Read Nietzsche.
- Psyonic 15y ago
  I could tell you've read some game stuff. Was waiting to see if it'd show itself clearly. Solid comment.

stcredzero 15y ago

Actually it is the attitude like this -- the attitude that equates self-promotion with bullshit -- that causes problems for people with an engineering mindset. The problem is that you have to get your audience to buy into what they don't know enough about to understand. Really, it's not their fault that they don't have your specialist knowledge. This is where, "Sell them what they want, but give them what they need," comes from. You can't sell someone something that they don't understand. But if you can sell them something and get their rave-reviews, they can bridge that gap for you.

sapper2 15y ago

> The fact that women prefer men who are good at socializing is, ironically, direct Darwinian selection for intelligence. Wow... you really made my day! That is the BEST statement ever :-))) My girlfriend is prettier than yours, so I am more intelligent. Of course, as history shows, often the dumbest animals (cockroaches..) are best at survival...