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Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
- Stronico 13y agoSuch a shame there is no author listed for that - it would be interesting to hear what happened to him in life.
- izzydata 13y agoIt doesn't seem fair to generalize everyone who is supposedly amazing at what they do as being poor workers. Seems like circumstantial evidence that might almost never be the case. Who really knows based on 1 person.
- pdonis 13y agoThere's more than one example given in the article of a "brilliant" person who failed as a businessman. The author's opinion appears to be a considered one, based on multiple experiences, not a snap judgment based on one unfortunate episode.
- TrainedMonkey 13y agoIt appears that men labeled as genius were simply men of high charisma capable of convincing and inspiring others.
- dasil003 13y agoTo put it in HN terms: what every self-described "idea guy" aspires to.
- cbp 13y agoAnd since those qualities are so out of reach for techies they're looked down on.
- aaron-lebo 13y agoThis is an interesting comment. My visceral reaction was that it was a huge generalization, but when I think about it more, I do have a difficult time thinking of people that are both charismatic and tech-savvy. The obvious example is Jobs, but even he wasn't the "tech" guy in a sense, we always associate that with Woz or others. I guess for a lot of people here Musk is maybe an example of it? Is there some left/right brain separation that keeps techies from being charistmatic, is it a historical, cultural thing? Or is it just a stereotype after all? :) It seems like a fascinating topic, though.
- nthj 13y ago> Is there some left/right brain separation that keeps techies from being charistmatic Nah. It's just that most techies are too busy doing brain things to learn soft skills like how to interact with people. — a guy who struggled with being pretty awkward in high school, worked hard at socializing for a few years, and now does very well with business meetings / networking / parties even though he'd prefer to be delivering code P.S.: "So if intelligence in itself is not a factor in popularity, why are smart kids so consistently unpopular? The answer, I think, is that they don't really want to be popular." http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
- pradocchia 13y agomy own charisma is inversely proportional to the hours I spend each day coding. more coding -> less charisma. so I don't think it is just a stereotype at all, but rather an emergent phenomenon of how we spend our time, and where our interests lead us.
- woodchuck64 13y agoI think everyone should be highly suspicious of charisma. Charisma is a skill, not a trait, and it's developed by spending a lifetime practicing on people that one thinks are largely beneath one's self.
- TrainedMonkey 13y ago
- wisty 13y agoAlso, the guy ran a grocery store. Funnily enough, you don't need to be a brilliant person to manage a 1920s grocery store. You need someone who's reliable, honest, and good at keeping minimum wage workers reliable and honest.
- deedubaya 13y agoEvery time I see this, I enjoy reading it. It is a good reminder.
- jey 13y agotl;dr?
- rthomas6 13y agoPeople who are driven by genius and passion never finish anything. This guy finds the best employees and businessmen are just average hard workers who pay attention to detail.
- sukuriant 13y agoand finish. The big thing there, the part that resonated in my mind, was finish. I need to finish more things... The person that started less 'brilliant', through finishing, can usurp the brilliance of the one that started strong. Intelligence is a gift and should be nurtured, not presumed on.
- phillmv 13y agoBeing smart isn't good enough; you need to be able to finish what you've started. It's all about the execution and not the concept. Furthermore, he's found he prefers to select hard workers and promote them up than to pick smart, ambitious kids from good families or good credentials. Hard work is better than sheer brilliance.
- zem 13y agoseriously? it's an excellent piece of writing and not all that long; just go read it.
- samsnelling 13y agoCounter point -- I usually read the comments before the articles themselves (personal preference). The tl;dr above made me go read the article. It is indeed great.
- deedubaya 13y agoIf they're looking for the short way out, I don't know if they'll get any value out of actually reading it.
- zem 13y agothat was fascinating. reminded me a bit of the protagonist in grossmith's "diary of a nobody", but without the petulant self-absorption masquerading as modesty. the author has genuinely sat down and thought long and deeply about who he is, what his strengths and limitations are, and how he can best work with other people, and he's a great writer to boot.
- robobro 13y agoGood ego masturbation for project managers if nothing else. But personally, I don't think hiring dunces for programmers or whatever else would be a right answer for startups. You only want boring, regular people for boring, regular work. For extraordinary tasks, you need those with extraordinary talent. No one else will do. The narrator in this story... how good is he at his work? All that I can gather from it is that he hired the wrong guy and then continued to allow him to make wrong decisions. If anything, he did more harm for the company by trusting someone who hadn't produced results. The character he's speaking down to and writing off is only acting within his ability, his experience, and his competence. It's really quite funny!
- DickingAround 13y agoHe bends the meaning of words like 'brilliant' a bit and clearly lives in a time where there are no such thing as protected classes (e.g. medical) but there's a lot of value in remembering that most people develop wealth by managing risk, knowing our limits, and finishing what we start.
- dasil003 13y agoGiven that it's 90 years old I suspect there's some connotation at play here.
- ilaksh 13y agoGood writing and ok advice for someone who wants to run a grocery business. But it is absolutely untrue that "brilliant" men cannot also be careful, detail-oriented and have good business sense and skills. And certainly innovation and risk taking can be just as critical in business as following proven formulas and paying close attention to the bottom line. It depends on the business and circumstance. Overall I think in the context of high technology, the article is dated.
- wil421 13y agoI think the point he was trying to make was brilliant men arent exactly: >careful, detail-oriented and have good business sense and skills. He was referring to the brilliant man who dress flashy, go to the hottest clubs, befriend people in higher stature, and dont really contribute to goals. They just have flashy ideas and move on to the next without realizing the goals of the first idea.
- chris_mahan 13y agoA lot of Silicon Valley, then.
- paxtonab 13y agoWhile this article can be seen as dated in regards to the definition of success that the author posits (making himself and 20 men rich by the standards of the locality), I think that the path the author lays out to achieving that success is still very relevant to this day. The author was not denigrating "brilliant" men; instead he was explaining a type of "brilliant" person that focuses their energy on coming up with brilliant ideas, but will not stay focused long enough to see it through to finish. Imagine if you are reliant on a co-founder who wants to be pivot every 6 months simply because all of the challenges of the first brilliant idea are solved, and all that remains is the hard work and execution? The outcome of that scenario would likely be the outcome he experienced in his first business venture with his college friend, "[Carroll] is a bad employer for himself, but he could put a lot of ginger into somebody else's business. . ."
- michaelochurch 13y ago
- Tloewald 13y agoIf you include Sir Isaac Newton in a case against employing geniuses, your case is pretty thin.
- pdonis 13y agoWhy? From all I have read about Newton, he would have been the employee from hell. A genius as a mathematician and physicist, yes; but a terrible employee.
- DjangoReinhardt 13y agoC'mon, who wouldn't want an employee who boils a watch and looks at the egg while contemplating the basic nature and equations that make up the physical sciences? ;)
- arethuza 13y agoHe became Warden of the Royal Mint and became rather passionate about his new role - even to the extent of working as an undercover agent and personally leading the prosecution of "coiners" in court. [NB For a fictionalized, but hugely entertaining, account of the relevant time in history I can recommend Neal Stephenson's wonderful "Baroque Cycle" - Newton is a major character.]
- saalweachter 13y agoFor a non-fiction account, "Newton and the Counterfeiter", by Tom Levenson.
- Tloewald 13y agoHe provides Newton as an example of the kind of non genius he would employ. Learn to read.
- d23 13y agoWhat if you aren't a finisher? How can you become one?
- spinlock 13y agoStart finishing things. It sounds trite but it's true. Some of the best advice I've ever been given is: the way you do anything is the way you do everything. So, finish the smallest tasks consistently and that will carry over to the bigger tasks.
- busterarm 13y agoI really need to work at this. I definitely have always fit the "genius but doesn't finish things" description. I've been working at this hard for 8 years because it really has negatively affected my life. I'm making some progress but it's really slow and if I slack off even a little I tend to lose everything. It's hard.
- JabavuAdams 13y agoYup, but it's worth it. Also, allow yourself some blow-out projects. You don't have to finish everything, but you want to become reliable. I.e. if you say you'll do something, then you'll do it.
- chris_mahan 13y agoThe old expression "don't bite more than you can chew" epitomizes this. Don't start what you can't finish. It's in deciding what to start and what not to start that you'll make progress. Read "The Effective Executive" by Peter Drucker, which addresses this in greater detail.
- busterarm 13y agoThanks. I really need to either clear more stuff off my plate or sort out my work situation where I don't have post-workday burnout. Between my job, family commitments and working on my vehicle, I have trouble finding time to start anything now. I get a tremendous amount done when I'm not working. I either have to settle with how things are now or change the work situation I think. I'll look into that book anyway.
- Shorel 13y agoNowadays these same people would be the characters of a 'Why I never hire Marketing people to run a Tech company' article.
- badman_ting 13y agoAlternately, this is the story of a man who hired based on word of mouth, then when that didn't work out, learned the wrong lesson.
- nilkn 13y agoThis was a beautifully written piece, but that's exactly the impression I came away with. It's been written on HN many times that work sample tests are very important in hiring decisions. Perhaps this is just more evidence of that. The good news is that it's much more practical to give such tests in software development than in sales (to my knowledge).
- csomar 13y agoHe's point is valid if you define brilliant men as famous/rockstar. But let's not forget that he lived in different circumstances than today.
- solve 13y agoIndeed, he's definitely talking about SALES people, who use their sales tactics to sell him on themselves. Definitely not talking about "book smarts" brilliance. The author probably intentionally mistitled the story for attention. That said, there's a good lesson - if you hire sales people, their most attractive target will always be selling themselves to the guy who's writing their paycheck. It will not automatically be the actual customers or whatever you think their incentives are "supposed" to be.
- billmalarky 13y agoWhich is why you incentivize salesmen via commissions and quickly fire those that are obviously showing up just for the base paycheck.
- solve 13y agoEmployees still optimize for pay / effort, NOT absolute pay. In that respect, commissions are still FAR from perfectly aligning incentives. You can't really be suggesting that commissions are the silver bullet for aligning incentives, as if that hasn't been tried for thousands of years already, with very mixed success :)
- deadfall 13y ago"But if you blunder for words, punctuate incorrectly, spell incorrectly, and express yourself clumsily, I'm sure to believe you mind is cluttered and ill-disciplined." My mind is cluttered and I rely on spelling correction. Hard to say if I would get the position.
- badman_ting 13y agoAh yes, the school of thought that supposes the ability to distinguish between "your" and "you're" is the essence of intelligence.
- pdonis 13y agoThat's not what the author is saying. He's saying that if you are either unable or unwilling to correctly use "your" and "you're", you are probably unable or unwilling to pay attention to the details that matter to success in his business. I agree that there's a fine line between proper attention to detail and nitpicking, but taking the author's statement in context I don't think he's on the wrong side of it.
- badman_ting 13y agoIt makes sense, but that's the danger of it in my opinion. If you think this way, it's worth going back and examining the writings of people you admired. You might be surprised! Or not.
- pdonis 13y agoIt depends on why I admired the people. If I admired them for their success in business, then yes, I would expect their writing to show attention to details like spelling. But if I admired them for something else, I wouldn't necessarily expect that. I'm certainly not saying that anyone who is worth admiring has to spell correctly.
- vacri 13y agoNot 'the essence of intelligence' but 'one indicator of self-discipline'.
- tsunamifury 13y agoIf you want to run a solid, reliable, mediocre business hire solid, reliable, mediocre workers.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoThis works well running a grocery chain, but not so well designing the new iPhone. You'll end up with Windows Mobile.
- tsunamifury 13y agoTrue but only one company makes the new iPhone, many companies design enterprise software that need a simple workflow and a solid working database with reliable uptime.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoAnd we know nothign about those companies because they're not on HN. We suspect that they probably have restrictive workplace policies, helpdesk in India and office politics. Those things OP won't like.
- zhemao 13y agoEven in cutting-edge businesses, big ideas need to be tempered by the discipline to see them through.
- vacri 13y agoIn my experience, mediocre workers are not solid and reliable. It seems strange to string those three terms together.
- UK-AL 13y agoHighly dependent on the job.
- deletes 13y agoWhat if John Carmack is an average programmer, and the rest of us are just lazy in comparison.
- ProAm 13y agoAverage programmers don't drink diet coke.
- snorkel 13y agoCarmack is actually a hard worker and writes code. Too often in the tech industry you bump into people who are "architects" and "strategists" and not hands on at all, or what this article may refer to as a "genius".
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- cia_plant 13y agoFrom the magazine of things that totally happened
- exarch 13y agoVery dated perceptions. We know now, for example, that those who stammer and struggle for words often simply possess brains that are more full of information, rather than possessing less efficient or organized ones. In a knowledge economy built on creativity, I'll take Different Thinkers over Cogs of Constancy any day.
- JabavuAdams 13y agoYeah, but you probably want a mix for your team.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- baxter001 13y agoI'm pretty sure that's a reference to the 12 apostles.
- GoldenMonkey 13y agoJesus choosing his 12 disciples… who founded Christianity.
- kylemathews 13y agoThat would be Christ and his 12 apostles :)
- benjohnson 13y agoThe reference was to the 12 apostles of Jesus - they were low in standing and generally unschooled.
- Detrus 13y agoYea and a curious counterpoint is the church wouldn't be built without Paul, who wasn't in the original 12, was educated and a "brilliant" charmer.
- 3minus1 13y agoThat's an interesting spin, especially in light of the way people talk about how "Romanized" many aspects of Christianity to increase it's adoption. However, I think you could also see Paul as a dedicated manager, frequently writing letters of encouragement and advice to all the churches.
- vacri 13y agoAlso, at the time of it constituting 12 people, it wasn't a great organisation. That would come centuries, perhaps a millenia later. When it was only 12 strong, they didn't even have enough influence to make the local law look the other way.
- ilbe 13y agoThese two are good points: 1. "There are just two grades of commodities in the world: the best -- and the others." 2. "...whether he can talk and write effectively... If you write and speak neatly and accurately, it is because your thinking is orderly; if your expression is forceful, the thought back of it must be forceful. But if you blunder for words, punctuate incorrectly, spell incorrectly, and express yourself clumsily, I'm sure to believe you mind is cluttered and ill-disciplined."
- michaelochurch 13y agoOne of the things I find irksome about the business world (and this won't seem relevant to the OP till I explain it) is that, while it places a premium on "finishing" and "delivery" (by the way, if you use "deliver" intransitively I will punch you in the face) it also makes it really rare that one can finish anything. It claims to have a culture of "shipping" but employs these people called "executives" whose function is usually to get in the way of people trying to do so. The disorganization of his "brilliant men" (which is a conflation of two types of people already-- the charismatic and the creative) seems to be something the corporate world (at least in 2014 technology) creates. The "brilliant" just fall hardest, I'd argue, because highly creative people (one subtype he describes) tend to be most sensitive to context, and highly charismatic people (the other subtype) can usually assume the failure patterns of the highly creative. The not-finishing culture, I think, is a product of the incoherency of the corporate world. It's not uncommon to see people pass years in Corporate America without achieving anything for reasons not their fault: shifting priorities, projects cancelled for stupid political reasons, "re-orgs", unclear direction. At some point, people learn that Corporate Life is survived not by finishing (in fact, that can be harmful, because now you have support responsibilities) but being able to come up with a story when things outside your control stop you from finishing. The muddling effects of subordination compound this decline of executive function. It's rather sad, to tell the truth. I wish it weren't that way. I don't think it's just "brilliant men" who fail, in this way, amid the jarring incoherency of most business. I think they just crash first and hardest. The rest tend to drift downward over time and underperform silently.
- ZenoArrow 13y agoYes, michaelochurch, you are correct that the shifting priorities of the work place often make finishing anything hard. But there is another way, and that is to work in secret, and fit this secret work into natural breaks in your normal work. For example, part of my job is running a suite of reports on a monthly basis. Every time I run these reports I do a little work to make them easier/quicker to run next time. Over the space of a year this kind of work can really pay off, and frees up more time to do more satisfying work, but the key is to improve in secret, it's rarely appreciated at the time.
- corresation 13y ago"The letters you brought spoke in the highest terms of your sales genius. The only question which they did not answer to my satisfaction was why companies which had valued you so highly should ever have allowed you to get away!" This is a truth that holds today (in the form of things like LinkedIn Recommendations): Outside of exceptional circumstances, people seldom talk up the people they need the most, but they will talk up the people they wouldn't mind losing.
- nicholas73 13y agoA corollary to this principle is to respect risk. If you never take on volatility that can ruin you, you will grow slow but steadily. Conversely, if you accept excessive volatility by taking big bets, you can end up broke even if your expected value was positive. Rule #1 according to Buffett: Never lose money. Rule #2: Don't forget Rule #1. I learned this the hard way. Maybe I was brilliant.
- FLUX-YOU 13y agoMan, if only algorithms were that easy. >Rule #1: O(1). Rule #2: You don't need anything else Or maybe Buffet just meant don't misplace your money, as in losing a $20 out of your wallet and finding it in your dryer after the laundry.
- piyush_soni 13y agoWell, I'm available then ;).
- carboncreek 13y ago> You have lived twenty-five or thirty years without making a profit on your life; how can I expect that you will be a profit-maker for me? Well, imagine that I have all your noble qualities, but I just couldn't get the $20,000 that was paid out to you in your sophomore year.
- thebokehwokeh2 13y agoWorking at a startup helmed by a "brilliant" man as mentioned in the article, I wholeheartedly agree. So much hand waving. So little execution. One month, we were doing one thing that "had to be in the app". Another month, something else. Neither would get the actual attention that needed for them to be implemented properly, and nothing of value was produced. Society places too much importance on the buds of ideas. True, an idea can change the world. But what gets lost in the shuffle is the fact that what truly matters is in those ideas being executed and turned into something tangible. The charismatic idea men are a dime a dozen. I'm sure everyone here has worked with some hand-waving, smooth talking salesman who wows investors, then fail hard at meeting promises. It's those who can execute that are truly transformative.
- edraferi 13y agoThis is exactly what I took away from the article. Execution matters.
- bennyg 13y agoSo does the idea. It's almost like they both have to be in tandem or something.
- thebokehwokeh2 13y agoThe any idea will only matter if it is executed upon well.
- jakejake 13y agoI find that the "idea" person must really find a partner who can edit and curate his ideas. At the same time the partner who is doing the editing has to have enough social skill to know how to keep an "idea person" from getting anxious and changing course all the time. If both people have respect and trust for each other I think it's one of the strongest partnerships you can have. If one bullies the other around though, then that's when it usually breaks down.
- aortega 13y ago
- brownbat 13y ago"The continual use of slang expressions is an evidence of mental laziness, and I will not hire a man who depends upon slang to express his meaning. It is a substitute for exact thinking." I found this to be an unusual warning. Is "proper speech" really just a proxy for class in that time period? I'm now very curious about 1920s slang, especially its frequency of use in business settings.
- sliverstorm 13y agoSlang is slang. It was then, it is now, and it should be easy to understand his meaning. Besides, this man professedly runs a grocery store and says his best hires were muscly delivery boys (rather than college students). So I quite doubt he is being elitist and hiring only those of high class.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- akincisor 13y agoI read 'slang' as buzzwords, and I think that statement is equally valid today.
- chris_mahan 13y agoI read slang also as linguistics crutches, like saying "cut to the chase" when you really meant to say "please speak plainly", which itself is a nice version of "just tell me the truth". Linguistics are an interesting thing, especially with geeks. Often, their analytical minds concoct elaborate sentences, which, like algorithms, are abstractions over many little things. I prefer the plain talker, the man who has seen the cathedral of long sentences and has realized only the priests understand him.
- Kluny 13y agoCompare the comments on this site with the ones you see on reddit, where a sarcastic one-liner or a good meme reference can get thousands of upvotes. From my experience of actually writing comments on reddit that have gotten thousands of points - the less thought you put into them the better they'll do. The same is not true on HN where long and well thought out comments do better, and one-liners often get moderated. In my opinion, HN comments are much more valuable as a whole because of that.
- thothamon 13y agoI appreciate the author's intentions, but I think the best outcomes happen when you hire brilliant men (and women) and manage them well. In the case of the sales executive, it sounds like the author allowed his team to basically say "good luck doing this yourself, don't expect help from us." And he allowed the guy to move into an ivory tower far away from where things were happening. If you decide you're moving in a certain direction, you need to make clear to the team, if necessary, that digging in their heels is not a response you're going to tolerate. Some people will probably have to move on. I'm not surprised the article is anonymous. The owner sounds like a problem to me, as much as the "brilliant" sales executive. He's good at making a mediocre business, and his comfort zone is there. Trying to shake that up is a losing game for anyone, brilliant or otherwise.
- calinet6 13y agoBeware of following ancient advice—or you may get ancient practices. "God Almighty, in fashioning his most useful men, often works slowly with quite common stuff. Now and then He turns out a quick job of superfine materials -- a genius who really delivers the goods. But most of His better grade line is ordinary in everything except the extra effort, and dogged determination, which have given it a finer texture and finish." This tells me of a belief in the innate quality of man, of some who are simply born better than others. Surely only half the story. We know better today.
- softbuilder 13y agoI read it more as aspirational.
- darkmighty 13y agoBut I think the arguments are sound and clear-cut nonetheless. I believe the inadequacy of the argument to modern employment rests rather on importance of the set of skills that he willingly neglected: a more significant portion of jobs those days are very intensive on creativity and reliant on risky behavior associated with the former. With a sound internal structure this risk can be controlled and isolated within organizations to get good results -- e.g. spawning research labs, creating "distributed labs" like Google, etc.
- 3minus1 13y ago> belief in the innate quality of man This is not some ancient belief. It's nature as opposed to nurture, and you see the same thing today when people talk about genetics.
- venomsnake 13y agoSome people slack of laziness. Some of boredom. A brilliant guy needs a lot of infrastructure and support to not steer of course. It is much easier for me to do 80 hour workload in 40 hours than 20 hour workload in the same 40. Probably I am not the only one. If I have even ounce of non challenging time at work I am always searching for the next great feature/framework/whatever. And shipping slips. I finally managed to find my stride but a few projects ... lets say they were hard on everyone.
- 3minus1 13y agoFor anyone struck by the modern relevancy of this piece I suggest you check out Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis. It's also from the 1920s and the American culture that it describes (and critiques) is very similar to today.
- Kluny 13y agoI love the fact that the author makes his points without ever putting down the men he talks about or sounding cynical. That make me take him more seriously than I otherwise would.
- notastartup 13y agoWhile I was reading this almost 100 year old article, I felt nervous and anxious because the writer actually [uncanny pictureI fear that I have never been able to finish any of my projects, I get to about 80% and I am completely burnt out and now I know why after reading this article. It doesn't take brilliance or hacker thinking to complete a project. Quite the opposite, resilience, boring and being consistent is what it takes to finish the remaining 20%. This I see as something I need to work on. I always thought that my quick thinking would get me far and it does give me speed and agility in thinking but my mistake was thinking this mentality needs to be for the entire project. It makes sense now, marketing, sales, good software practices, these all take discipline, endurance and the need to apply yourself every single day. It's definitely not a sprint and I've built myself to sprint long distances and burning out at the last remaining mile. If the wisdom is a 100 years old and it still strikes a chord with our modern business environment, it must be important. Great read, I read the whole thing.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- iamwil 13y ago"That criticism may be justifiable, for I am mediocre. But the point I have in mind is this: Business and life are built upon successful mediocrity; and victory comes to companies, not through the employment of brilliant men, but through knowing how to get the most out of ordinary folks." The point of the article. Is this still true? I imagine you do need exceptional people to be able to hit the high notes (10x programmers and all that jazz). Or am I interpreting this wrong, since the way he's using the word "brilliant" is a bit sarcastic, or at least archaic?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- infinity0 13y agoI've seen plenty of stupidly expensive shoes that are only expensive to trick people out of their money, not because they last for a long time. You need a way to judge other than "try it out for x years until it fails".
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y agoSuch good writing somewhat undermines the author's argument about genius.
- gwern 13y agoI wonder if OP's firm collapsed in the Great Depression.
- tokenadult 13y agoAs mathattack has correctly pointed out in a comment an hour ago, this is a parable (a made-up story). The huge salary by that day's standards should make that clear. But the unnamed author makes his hiring methods look stupid, because he should be doing a work-sample test[1] before hiring for such an expensive contract. If he doesn't know what the worker will actually do, he shouldn't put so much money on the line. [1] My FAQ on company hiring procedures as posted earlier on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5227923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5227923 I'm now doing research to update that FAQ for posting on my personal website, a suggestion other HN readers kindly gave me.
- 001sky 13y agoWhen was the last time a CEO was (ever) given a work sample test? Serious Question.
- greesil 13y agoDoes his or her previous company count as a work sample test?
- pekk 13y agoDoes previous work experience count as a work sample test for a programmer? That's not what work sample test means.
- discodave 13y agoAll the CEOs who worked their way up through the company they are CEO of. Eg. Tim Cook.
- sillysaurus3 13y agoThis story is fiction? It's come up so many times as if it was fact. It'd be pretty interesting to compile a list of stories which people generally believe are true, but are actually fiction.
- vacri 13y ago
- loladesoto 13y agotl;dr: look for integrity. some of the most brilliant hackers i know are rightfully afraid of going into business with the kind of "brilliant men" described in this article. just as non-technical founders benefit from learning to code for a myriad of reasons, hackers should do careful due diligence on a potential business partner. ask questions. require them to invest in the relationship. blow away the smoke and mirrors if you see their evidence, until you see that person in a humble light. most of the time, this kind of salesperson is masking deep personality flaws which you can actually live with in exchange for the benefits, on one condition: the existence of abiding integrity. so many of these relationships are predatory but they don't have to be if you find ways to get them to show you their character. see how they treat their friends. travel with them. build something together. something a friend taught me is "H.A.L.T." = hungry, angry, lonely, tired. 1) don't make decisions when you're in any of these states; 2) it applies to choosing a business partner but here, you WANT to see them this way. you can learn a lot about a person when their basic needs are momentarily threatened, including how they treat you and others. so don't be dazzled, find them in a humble light because that's where a person's character is revealed. the ones you want are comfortable with their humility.
- aaren 13y agoI like the acronym! I think HALT is also useful for introspection. Sometimes you are forced to function and make decisions in this state and you can learn a lot about yourself when this happens. You can do this through work but it is probably better outside of that, through some sort of pastime that you can make difficult. Mountains, climbing and cycling are what I think of but there are many ways to induce HALT. Intentionally push yourself out of your comfort zone every now and then and you learn a lot about your personal limits and your character. If you can't get on with yourself in a HALT state then how is anyone else going to? Stress the organism and it grows.
- loladesoto 13y agoright. the best long-term relationships have gone through stages of HALT, which is nothing more than exposing one's vulnerability. that's where a person's character resides. and people who manage to be honest, and generous and courageous in those moments, are the ones to surround yourself with. experience character-building through HALT, in spite of it, and you're on your way to being a better man or woman, i suspect.
- cafard 13y agoI should say that this is interesting chiefly as an example of magazine writing of its time.
- megablast 13y ago> My experience is that it pays to buy the best; and what applies to things applies equally to men. This is true, but price is a poor indicator of how good something is. You need to understand the product or man, before you can judge which is the best.
- hoboerectus 13y agoHe who lives on hope dies farting.
- yetanotherphd 13y agoJealousy is a natural human emotion. It is notable how many stories bashing smart people (not for being smart per se, of course, but for lacking other important qualities) come up on HN. That, and how unfair the interview process is.
- heyadayo 13y agoMost striking to me is how impossible such a direct conversation would be in this day and age. In a similar situation the manager would be pretty worried about HR/litigation possibilities.
- robertoparada 13y ago"But the point I have in mind is this: Business and life are built upon successful mediocrity; and victory comes to companies, not through the employment of brilliant men, but through knowing how to get the most out of ordinary folks." At a high level, I believe that's the essence of the story (whether is real or made-up). Today, in a globalized world economy with saturated markets, we are lured into thinking that "the great next thing" will be a product of "brilliance". I think this is a good reminder that it's not. That in fact, on average, sustainable success is a product of a life's work and dedication to a purpose. That in fact, the Jobs, the Zuckerbergs and the Gates of the world are merely outliers and that we should look beyond the expectation of immediate and flamboyant returns.
- channikhabra 13y ago> But if you blunder for words, punctuate incorrectly, spell incorrectly, and express yourself clumsily, I'm sure to believe you mind is cluttered and ill-disciplined. I write and speak pretty well, but am still ill-disciplined as anything. > You conceive a big idea, get the whole organization on tiptoes to carry it out, and then you lose interest and go off on a new tangent. Now that's me. > You are always living, in imagination, about six jumps ahead. Now that's definitely me. > Their active minds can always see two sides to every question; and they stand still while the debate goes on inside. Now that's definitely me. > Does he finish what he starts? Geniuses almost never do. Good news, I am a genius. Moral: In an ideal world I will never get hired or get success in business. Hell I am doomed for sure.
- graycat 13y agoTwo points: First, the OP claimed "Does he finish what he starts? Geniuses almost never do." but gave no evidence. Second, on finishing, we can consider I. Newton, W. Mozart, C. Darwin ('Origin of the Species'), R. Wagner (operas, especially 'The Ring'), J. Maxwell (E&M), A. Einstein (general relativity), J. Oppenheimer (A-bomb), S. Ulam (H-bomb), J. Salk (polio vaccine), D. Henderson (Smallpox eradication), J. Heifetz (violin), W. Gates (Microsoft), A. Wiles (Fermat's last theorem), J. Bezos (Amazon).
- skyshine 13y agoThe problem with the shoe buying story is that a lot of crap is sold as 'the best' and it can be very hard to tell the truth. Shoes are a great example. I used to buy Brasher walking shoes. They were great, but then they sold out and the shoes are now an inferior quality whilst the marketing is the same and the price if anything has gone up.
- nnq 13y agoIt's sad how this sounds so plausible and valid... because even today, we are incredibly bad at managing (or making use of or integrating into a team...) brilliant people and we fail to make use of them and we let them fail because we can only figure out how to make reliable profit by using readily available mediocrity. We should instead learn to recognize human diversity and accept that besides the "well rounded hard worker" that needs to make up at least 50% of any team, we also need to find ways of making use and helping thrive: - the always starters: the guys that always start new things and have new ideas (that actually work!) but maybe never finish anything -- maybe we should stop pressing them to finish, just rotate them from one department to another and then let the rest work to bring his works to completion - the motivation dynamites: the people whose minds go up in fire and also set fire to the minds of people around them -- maybe we should use them by rotating them to projects that lack motivation, or use them to launch viral social media campaigns or something - the distracted geniuses: the thing with the "distracted genius" is that if you teach him how to "focus", he become way more productive but stops being a genius, and you then have another a-little-above-average-chap -- maybe we should use the "ideas volcanos" as a competitive advantage and stop telling them to focus, like encourage them to publish their ideas that cannot be implemented online on a company blog - yeah, the competition will steal some of them, but your company will become uber-attractive and everyone will want to work for "a company from which so many uber-cool ideas come from" ...and then there's the generalization that most of these types of brilliant people are essentially not team players -- they shouldn't be forced to work as part of one team or stick to a team: maybe a corporate environment may just perpetually rotate them from one team/project to another, not even bothering to let them finish what they are doing; maybe a startup should stop trying to get them on-board and just keep them as well paid consultants (and allow them to consult for even a dozen other companies at the same time to keep their minds busy). ...and maybe all the ideas above are wrong, but the point is that we are incredibly bad at making use of brilliant people in business context and focusing on "just use hard working average joes" instead is an avoidance of the problem, not a solution!
- echaozh 13y agoThough I really like your idea, and think that I may fit into 1 or more categories described in your post, I don't think it is a good thing for the brilliant guy. The world only remembers the one who finishes, rather than the one who throws out an idea and then walks off. It may be easy for the brilliant guy to find excuses to not make more commitment and finish, he's just being either lazy or inconfident to implement his own idea. If he never finishes a thing, how can he know if it is good or not? how can he gather more practical experience? It may or may not be good for the employer, it is definitely bad for the employeed to indulge in not having to finish.
- rainmaking 13y agoThis is mostly a testament to chose an industry you are suited for.
- JohnDoe365 13y ago> victory comes to companies, not through the employment of brilliant men, but through knowing how to get the most out of ordinary folks. Definitely my favourite stance. Does that mean Go will succeed, while Rust want? In absolute terms of money, not outstanding iceberg projects??
- glaurent 13y agoAnybody else thinks that the 'Adams' character is the typical bipolar ?
- baldfat 13y agoI come from a HIGH IQ family. My father's IQ is unmeasurable but guesses are between 190-210 my move is over 165 and 3 of my sisters are in MENSA. I graduated Valedictorian in High School and College. I have been the "Jack of All Trades" and can study something and be proficient with it. Did some locally well known good deeds. From my 30+ years of work force experience I have decided that I wish I had an average IQ and that I got a B+ average. My Conclusion: Perceived Intelligence is a curse. I try to hide my academic accomplishments and cringe when someone says I have some above average brain. Can't tell you how many times I hear, "The best _____ isn't necessarily the straight A student." "We don't higher straight A students." People with a higher capacity intellectually can take in more information and see more moves ahead. That way there is a different perception on solution and it causes frustration for everyone.
- pertinhower 13y agoI think you're right. There are two forces at work: innate ability and social acceptability. Innate ability tends to harm social acceptability. Therefore, to the extent that social acceptability determines a person's overall ability to succeed, high innate ability can actually pose a greater net detriment to success than a lower innate ability does. In a word, being "smart" or even "skillful" may in some cases make you less successful. The optimum, as you point out, is to have high innate ability but to disguise it in order to reduce the social downside. The trouble with this is that it's harder to disguise than it might seem: people tend to "sense" the intelligence of other people. You don't laugh at the right times. You tell jokes that no one gets. You think the big ra-ra push is crazy and you can't help saying so. The path that you find obviously correct is the one everyone else finds silly. I'm convinced that the real solution, to the extent it's possible, is for highly intelligent people to find their way into positions that don't require social acceptance. Academics is obviously one destination (one log-jam, rather) for these types. But by all means avoid management, because that's where the attractiveness of your brilliance to employers and the unacceptability of your brilliance to your reports become a trap.
- ithkuil 13y agoAnother solution is to work in a place where highly intelligent people are the majority.
- bpyne 13y ago"Brilliant" is so broad. Some people are brilliant in a particular subject; some are brilliant in the breadth of their knowledge; some of brilliant socially; some are brilliant analytically; etc. I like the author's anecdotes and agree with some conclusions because I've run into people with the same personality traits. (We all probably have.) But Newton was both brilliant and stubborn as was Einstein. They didn't understand something in the physical world so they continued thinking about it until they were satisfied. Human organizations need a balance of brilliance and plodders. I'd say they need many fewer brilliant people because it takes a large number of plodders to bring their ideas to fulfillment. But the brilliant people are looking to the future while the plodders are dealing with today.
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- VLTyree 13y ago3 21 2014 Thank you for the post. Funny how some things do not change; hard work and persistence. Cordially, Virginia P.S.: A very pleasant day, may you have...
- jqm 13y agoThe modern business world is full of people like the author. People who are asleep. People who are not actually alive. People who are threatened by those who think. These people hate the thinker, but their dreary little lives rest directly on the foundation that the thinkers provide. For example, the radical who first looked at fire and thought, "hey, maybe I could use that".... now THAT GUY was a visionary who puts Musk to shame. Really this type of people are just machines. And they will be the ones machines are easily able to replace.
- jqm 13y agoThat being said... his business advice on who to hire is probably very apt. A predictable machine is more useful to you than an unpredictable human.
- namelezz 13y agoDon't know if this is true story or not. I think the author is trying to cover his incompetence as a hiring manager.
- jfischoff 13y agoI like this article. Something to remember, is you can never finish more things then you start by definition. I would not like to hire someone who always finished everything regardless of how mistaken they were when they started. We will we all finish fewer things then we start. By itself it't not that useful of a metric.
- marcfawzi 13y agoWhy I never Hire Mediocre Men ™
- yomritoyj 13y agoThis story is a cheap attempt to make people with an inferiority complex feel good. There is nothing great about mediocrity. Someone who fails to deliver on their work is not brilliant, appearances to the contrary. But at the top of the world are brilliant people who have delivered, and no amount of self-congratulation for stolid mediocrity can change that.
- ypodeswa 13y agoI think there's decent advice here for CERTAIN TYPES OF BUSINESSES. But this is not universal good advice for all businesses. The business in question, in this story, is a grocery store. It's a business with lots of competition and little innovation, where you're selling exclusively to customers who live very close to you. Furthermore, the fictional business owner isn't interested in taking the risks needed to build a massive chain, he's looking to grow slowly and make small, steady profits. For this business, there's no need for brilliance or big risks, you just need hard workers who are going to execute decently day in, day out. A tech startup (the interest of most people on HN) is pretty much the complete opposite situation. You need brilliant programmers to build an excellent product. If you're B2C, you need those excellent salespeople who are going to dream big and go after massive deals. If you're B2B, you need great growth hackers/biz dev/marketers who can creatively get your product in front of massive numbers of people for minimal cost. When you're trying to grow from nothing to ginormous in 3-5 years, you simply can't do it with the slow grinding approach, the only way is with risk and brilliance. That doesn't mean there won't be grinding, repetitive tasks along the way, there will be TONNES, and you need people who will execute on them (not the pure "idea guys" with zero ability to execute, who I agree are of little use), but you also need to be dreaming big and taking big risks. Always going after small wins just doesn't work for tech startups, you need to regularly go after the big wins.