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Interview Learnings from Former CIA Intelligence Officer
- attemptone 2y agoJust the first few notes conjure an image of a slimebag. That kind of person that is only attentive if there is a personal gain to be made. Sometimes they're astoundingly obvious and oblivious to the obviousness. I wonder why that is?
- yial 2y agoI kind of agree with your assessment, and realize you’re making it off the very limited information of the blog post. (As in, it brings to mind, not that the author is necessarily). I wonder if the answer to why they behave like you are wondering, is that the people who aren’t very good at it, behave that way because they’re so focused on trying to get something. There’s an interview with Jim Lawler where he touches upon those same techniques. While I do think there’s still a level of … trying to get something (I think it comes across as sociopathy to some people ), I think the people who are more skilled try to get nothing (or appear to initially) and build social connection seemingly for the sake of social connection. Where it becomes hard (even for them?) to distinguish the difference.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- beardedwizard 2y agoI totally agree, it's the intent with which you engage in influence that dictates this. The best find a real reason to have a personal connection and then genuinely try to help the other person within the reasonable constraints of the relationship (example: salesperson & customer). It can be difficult because almost everyone has an agenda, but you can choose to put it on the back burner.
- zmgsabst 2y agoI don’t think you need the seemingly. Good sales people simply get to know and have relationships with a lot of people. Eg, a salesman from LPKF happily traded emails with me after a decade of not speaking and only meeting a few times about a project idea I had… and when it became clear their product wasn’t a fit, offered to connect me with someone else in his network that would be better able to help. I don’t think he seemingly was interested, but rather, LPKF chose to hire someone who is actually interested in getting to know people and helping their projects succeed. LPKF would have easily closed a sale with me, had their product been a fit — because if you’re someone people want to do business with, good products sell themselves. And people like doing business with people who help them. I’m not saying there aren’t manipulative and fake sales people; but I am saying there are sales people who genuinely are just trying to make friends and do good business.
- yial 2y agoI agree entirely with what you’re saying. When I think of the people who I know who are excellent at sales, what they’re really excellent at is relationship building, and they’re always pass on trying to sell something if they know it isn’t the right fit for the person/ business. Going so far as to recommend / build other connections. The seemingly I had added was in my mind in the hypothetical context of someone working on behalf of a nation state actor. However, even then the seemingly might be incorrect… reading interviews from people who seem to have been top in their field, the “trick” seemed to be that there was no coercion involved with the most effective outcomes.
- meowfly 2y agoI'm very much bought into this framing. Deceased billionaire Jon Huntsman claimed in his book "Winners Never Cheat" that if you scam or lie as an exec you'll eventually get found out. He argues that it will always be easier for an honest person to be honest than a dishonest person to feign honesty. But... I think it's more game-theory-esque where when you are playing many games you can't afford to defect or cooperate all the time. So the ideal strategy is to convince yourself your an honest person, focused on the customer, doing the right thing, but actually you just let your cognitive dissonance provide excuses for the handful of situations where you don't do that. If you cooperate in the majority of your interactions but defect rarely, that's likely the optimal pattern. Also, i don't really think you can train yourself into this pattern. It requires actually wanting to do the good thing, but sometimes not doing it, but still convincing yourself it is the good thing without being conscious of it.
- yial 2y agoIt’s interesting, I’ve always seen RICE as MICE. But I suppose reward makes more sense then just money https://spyauthor.medium.com/mice-the-4-pillars-of-cia-spy-recruitment-61d3f5cf9d3c https://spyauthor.medium.com/mice-the-4-pillars-of-cia-spy-r...
- notinmykernel 2y agoMissing is the repeated attempts to describe algorithms, and how social media platforms like Tiktok "actually" work. It's one thing to talk from experience, it's another to talk about experience. On second thought, maybe it was inferred from the section Detecting Lies.
- avazhi 2y agoSorting society into consumerist pawns that are ‘used’ by some sort of first mover elite is intellectually convenient (albeit inaccurate) but in a ‘2005ish Pre-incel pickup artist’ self help website kind of way, which is to say it creates a dichotomy that is intellectually lazy and trite.
- beaglesss 2y agoThis guy perfectly exhibits the two main kind of ex-mil you see. Type #1 people who fall victim to the military industrial complex and think their allegiance is anything other than a convenient quid-pro-quo to the elite,they go on to become CIA shitbags and other pawns. The other are those who after seeing the belly of the beast,want nothing to do with it other than be left alone or help people escape the horrible beast the federal government has become. They have seen the murders first hand, and rejected the premise.
- forgot-im-old 2y agoElon wishes he could leave... https://www.reddit.com/r/KamalaHarris/comments/1eunob4/elon_musk_is_the_star_of_project_2025/ https://www.reddit.com/r/KamalaHarris/comments/1eunob4/elon_...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- GJim 2y ago> This guy perfectly exhibits the two main kind of ex-mil you see "I think you will find it's a bit more complicated than that".
- s_dev 2y agoI find it upsetting the word 'learnings' is replacing 'lessons' in corporate speak. The term is ugly and uncouth to me and lessons is far more suitable and appropriate in this context. It would be like if school was starting to be spelled with a k.
- hugh-avherald 2y agoI like it. It's an excellent way to identify people who use the word 'learnings'.
- authorfly 2y agoSame. Just like "[we need to ] unpack [this issue]". It was a big grass roots political Shibboleth from 2015, and from 2021, indicated a silicon valley elite type. I think the opposite equivalent is the word "enterprise".
- theanonymousone 2y agoI had somewhat of a similar feeling when I saw "ready" being used as a verb to mean prepare. I'm non-native though; I may be wrong of course.
- jkaplowitz 2y agoAs a native speaker, that sounds natural to me even outside of any business-specific lexicon, unlike the other examples being discussed.
- theanonymousone 2y agoI see. As I said, it could be just because of me being non-native and living in a non-English-speaking country. But it was interesting anyway; after decades of reading in English and years of working and daily communicating in English, I thought I had seen it all :D
- yobbo 2y ago
- rswail 2y agoI hate the Verbing of Nouns. There's a perfectly cromulent word for things people have learned, they're called "lessons".
- alganet 2y agoThis honestly sounds like early 90s NLP (neuro-linguistic programming, a pseudoscience, not the modern-day NLP which means something else) self-help books. Repackaged stuff for cartomancers and cold readers. I would guess the real CIA loves these guys. This kind of talk would be the perfect misdirection for the real thing.
- danpalmer 2y agoI read as far as this being based on an interview with the Diary of a CEO guy. No thanks. He’s a terrible interviewer who doesn’t care about the topics, he asks questions just relevant enough give the appearance of him being at all interested but there’s nothing of substance. Similar to his career it seems. I’d rather listen to ChatGPT interview someone.
- lopatamd 2y ago[dead]
- pipes 2y ago"there are two kinds of people..." "For you to be a step ahead of everyone else just do an action, any action, and you’ll already be ahead of everyone. " This sounds like it was taken from the episode of the office.