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Ask HN: Great Non-Hackers?
Many people have said that it's impossible to tell a great hacker from a bad one unless you're a hacker yourself (e.g., in PG's "Great Hackers").
As a hacker, however, I feel that this is equally true about non-hackers -- I can't tell the difference between great marketers/salesmen/"business people"/etc. and bad ones. And because some of these people are polished and smooth, I always feel really nervous that I'm going to be smooth-talked into working with someone who's not great.
Is there a way to figure this out?
- tokenadult 17y agoIs there a way to figure this out? Empirically, most forms of human greatness ("expertise") are defined as RELIABLY superior performance in the defined domain. See http://mit.edu/6.969/www/readings/expertise.pdf http://mit.edu/6.969/www/readings/expertise.pdf for a discussion of this by scientists who literally wrote the book on the subject of expert performance. Bear in mind that some domains, notably choosing common stocks in which to invest, have no experts, that is no one who is reliably superior in performance over time.
- jacquesm 17y agoTricky... what I've gotten weary of over the years is people that approach too aggressively, that's a big red flag for me. Another one is people that do their best to worm their way into your private live even though your relationship is purely business. That doesn't mean that it isn't possible to know people both privately and professionally but if they're actively trying to gain a foothold in your private affairs that would make me think twice. Good salespeople are always in 'sales' mode, they can't really help it, whether they're talking about their holidays or the next deal, it is always the biggest thing since sliced bread to them. And in their world that's a good thing. I've been had once really bad by some guy that approached me online and took more than a year to gain my confidence against strong skepticism but bit by bit he wore it away and then he used one of my associates to get what he wanted. We managed to reverse the whole thing but it cost us dearly and it definitely made me much more careful when strangers approach me out of the blue. Not paranoid, just more careful.
- iterationx 17y agoIf you know psychological manipulation then you can detect if people are doing it to you, http://www.amazon.com/Introducing-NLP-Psychological-Understanding-Influencing/dp/1855383446 http://www.amazon.com/Introducing-NLP-Psychological-Understa... that should handle the smooth-talking part, but it seems like you'll still need some domain knowledge to figure out if someone is good at their job.