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Perhaps pg and I have a different understanding of the word mean, but I doubt it as the opposing word he uses to describe the founders is "good people". These

Perhaps pg and I have a different understanding of the word mean, but I doubt it as the opposing word he uses to describe the founders is "good people". These are just the ones coming to my head: Apple, Steve Jobs, widely known for being an asshole. Fucked over early employees. Facebook, Zuck, completely fucked over his mates when money appeared. Microsoft, Bill Gates, ruthlessly exterminated opposition and known for bullying staff. Oracle, Larry Ellison Zynga, Marcus Pincus, "I Did Every Horrible Thing In The Book Just To Get Revenues". Uber, acting like complete dicks. Kim Dotcom, nuff said. I think once you've been mean/ruthless/evil in business you may come out the other side and do some nice things, but you have to ask, will it ever be enough? Will Bill Gates ever make up for the billions of damage he caused humanity by using underhand tactics to destroy his opposition? Maybe. But while everyone praises him at the moment, I can't help but think he deliberately held the internet back for 6 or 7 years for his own profit. You almost can't start calculating the damage he caused precisely because it is so mind boggling. Perhaps you don't agree with me, but imho this is the most bizarre essay I've read by pg, and I really don't agree with most of his political leanings, so for me that's saying a lot. The truly great startup founders have to be nice on the outside but when push comes to shove, complete assholes on the inside. And of course investors are going to see the nice side. Edit: And it occurs to me, funnily enough pg seems to be one of the major counterexamples, a good founder, as when he setup YC it was a game changer because here was a rich dude taking time out to help a bunch of young people and then put his money where his mouth was when people started asking him "so where do we get this seed funding". It was so remarkable because he actually took the time. Edit 2: There seems to be some debate on the meaning of "mean". I'd point to pg's own essay on philosophy to dismiss this sophistry. He uses "good" and "benevolent" as the opposites, not "polite" or "diplomatic". I also appreciate BG created trillions of value, so he's definitely an overall net +ve, but he destroyed as well as created.

hnnewguy 12y ago
>I can't help but think he deliberately held the internet back for 6 or 7 years for his own profit. First, the degree to which he "held back" the internet, when contrasted with what Microsoft did positively for home computing and the internet, is debatable. Second, if Bill Gates can't be construed as a good person doing good things in the world-- as "not mean"-- then this debate is mostly pointless.
- jarcane 12y ago
  I think, crucially, the point is that he wasn't 'not mean' when he was actually in charge of things at MS. He was actively horrible from the beginning; there've even been suspicions for years that MS-BASIC, the very thing the company started on, was stolen.
- gnaritas 12y ago
  Bill is good now, in his old age with a wife who apparently had a big effect on that part of him. Previously, he was a ruthless and immoral businessman who saw no problem ruining people and lives to get ahead and illegally and unethically pressing his monopoly advantage to prevent and destroy competition. Don't confuse the nice old guy image you see now with the actual personality that created the worlds largest fortune. There aren't any billionaires that don't have many people who'd like to see them dead for the lives ruined by their ascent.
  - meowface 12y ago
    Whose lives did Gates destroy? Yes, Microsoft was engaged in very anti-competitive business practices, but being beaten in the market is not equivalent to having your life ruined. Also, not that this excuses any actions, but "it's not personal, it's just business" plays a factor here as well.
    - gnaritas 12y ago
      > Yes, Microsoft was engaged in very anti-competitive illegal business practices Fixed that for you. It's just business applies to legal business, not illegal anti-competitive tactics. Competition is beating the other guy, not preventing him from being able to play by locking him off the field. So no, it doesn't play a factor here, not at all.
      - mercer 12y ago
        While I'm not saying that Bill Gates is or was 'nice', I take issue with the thought that something that is illegal is by definition something that makes a person 'not nice'. I've known my share of people who were engaged in very illegal practices and still, by my moral standards, nice, and even good. Conflating morality with legality feels a bit easy to me. It's just not always true.
akshatpradhan 12y ago
Just wondering, why do you put Kim Dot Com in there? I don't know anything about his "asshole-ness"
- benologist 12y ago
  He's a career criminal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom#Criminal_investigations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom#Criminal_investigati... And he sold out a bunch of his colleagues: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/04/17/where-kim-dotcom-got-his-start-the-house-of-coolness/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/04/17/where-k... The controversy around House of Coolness went beyond selling access to a site that largely hosted other people's intellectual property. Around 1993, House of Coolness was targeted by Günter Freiherr von Gravenreuth, a German lawyer who made a career of suing copyright infringers. But rather than face legal attacks from Gravenreuth, associates of Schmitz tell me he instead began supplying Gravenreuth with names of other figures in the bulletin board scene involved with pirated content. According to the journalist Lars Sobiraj of the German tech news site Gulli.com, Schmitz was allegedly paid for every pirate bust he helped to facilitate. His cooperation with Gravenreuth was also mentioned in a 1997 lecture at a conference of the German hacker Chaos Computer Club by the group’s former spokesperson Andy Muhler-Maguhn, who labelled him an "agent provocateur" not to be trusted.
  - hobs 12y ago
    Isnt he now bankrupt though?
    - benologist 12y ago
      His assets were frozen during his most recent criminal investigation.
  - akshatpradhan 12y ago
    From your links, Kim Dotcom's "criminal career" seems to involve the Entertainment Industry like the RIAA and MPAA. Those organizations are questionable themselves. Best to be even handed about it and put those organizations on the same list as Kim Dotcom and Bill Gates.
bluedino 12y ago
Sun, Vinod Khosla.
tlogan 12y ago
Maybe the problem with this PG's post is that he did not define the term "mean". I did noticed the pattern: people which have very little empathy have batter chance to succeed as startup founders. Which means that they will inflict harm to other people without any remorse if that make business sense. And they will be extra nice to people with more money then them. So being mean in order to promote your business is called "being ruthless", "growth hacking", "efficient manager", etc. Being mean without any reason is just stupid and, ... really really mean. Also there are plenty of successful founders which do have a lot of empathy and they are successful.
- mreiland 12y ago
  I don't know that it's a lack of remorse or empathy as much as it is good business sense. Decisions have to be made sometimes. I'm not defending assholes, but it's amazing how perceptions can be skewed of people and their intents, especially when it comes to the decisions they make.
legohead 12y ago
When successful people get together, they aren't usually "mean", or bad people. pg is successful, so his claim is naturally immature. For the rest of us, it's pretty obvious that successful people are mean, for the most part. Here's a simple example: politicians.
- tehwalrus 12y ago
  Politicians, by definition, work for fights (arguments), not real things. PG mentions how unproductive fights are in his article, and (I think implicitly) says that fights are proportional to meanness. Not that parent and grandparent are not good points; the hypothesis he presents is quite unlikely given the correlation between psycopathic traits and business leaders (particularly "turn around an unsuccessful enterprise" CEOs.)[1] [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2013/04/25/the-disturbing-link-between-psychopathy-and-leadership/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2013/04/25/the-dist...
waps 12y ago
Most of the people you put in there are not mean. In fact they appear very open and friendly. Which is of course the personality type business rewards : superficial openness, fun and friendliness, but always ready to knife you in the back if the numbers say it should be done, without any delay. There's one other attribute they all have : they're programmers (except Marcus Pincus, Travis Kalanic of Uber was a coder). They technically know what they're doing, or asking others to do, a trait I've found incredibly rare in the corporate world. It seems pg simply left something out of his essay : successful people are not mean outward, yet bastards who fuck over everyone who deals with them, or at the very least, they were willing to abandon anyone and take away all support at the drop of a hat. (So were, to be honest, those famous scientists from hundreds of years ago. You should read more about them) Here's another correction to be made in pg's essay : > It seems quite likely that most successful drug lords are mean. Not at all. They're open, approachable, they laugh and make you feel good. They will help you out at the mere asking. And then, suddenly, they'll make working for them a condition of the relationship. I mean, I've only ever met one, and didn't realize it, but still. There's another archetype personality he seems to be describing : > Why? I think there are several reasons. One is that being mean makes you stupid. Here he points out that most people, in fights, lose control of their calculating nature. That's true. > Another reason mean founders lose is that they can't get the best people to work for them. This is not niceness as such, but merely niceness as observed by others, in casual settings (ie. not long-term). > The startup founders who end up richest are not the ones driven by money. This is a very important attribute. So let's see what we know about our startup founders : 1) There is a large difference between outward appearance and inner feelings/thoughts. Outwardly, they are attractive, nice and helpful. 2) They are able to keep control, and maintain composure and execute plans in the face of high emotions. 3) As the parent poster pointed out, they will backstab others, but only to great effect. This mostly means that they are able to plan conflicts ahead of time (when you see this, it's because they cause the conflicts), others don't see them coming (probably because getting into a conflict with them is impossible unless they plan it), and they nearly always win (they don't just plan, they plan well). 4) They are driven by some sort of external impulse that is not money, nor related things like family and the like, but some sort of abstract goal ("improve the world" but applied to a specific field. So their goal is to, make the products with the best UI, or make the best business software, or ...)
jayvanguard 12y ago
I agree with you. I think the complete opposite is true. Very few successful CEOs aren't assholes are at least on the higher end of aggressive and ruthless. It could be what he intends by the word "mean" is more along the lines of petty and emotionally immature with aspects of small-minded vindictiveness. If so, I think what he is saying is true. That style of "meanness" (think nasty little kid) is very difficult to hide and doesn't garner respect. Aggressive ruthlessness does unfortunately, at least among the types of people that are followers.
- andyl 12y ago
  The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant. Is 'Mean People Fail' playing to people's fantasies? http://48laws-of-power.blogspot.com/2011/05/law-32-play-to-peoples-fantasies.html http://48laws-of-power.blogspot.com/2011/05/law-32-play-to-p...
  - douglasallen 12y ago
    The only way pg's article makes any sense if is you read it as "successful people don't act like internet trolls in real life" Self-control is certainly required to win in business. Only stupid or mentally ill people would ever be overtly "mean" in a situation where they couldn't get away with it (Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Linus, etc know they can get away with it)
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - lenn0x 12y ago
      Do they? I wonder if it just comes natural to them and they aren't thinking about what they can and can't get away with it.
      - _nedR 12y ago
        On the contrary. I have read that Steve Jobs had the best (or worst) of both worlds. Take for example the quality of empathy - It consists of 2 aspects :- 1.The intellectual ability to put oneself in others shoes. 2. Too feel emotional pity/sympathy when something bad happens to them. It is shown that empathy is a key aspect lacking in psychopaths. As PG points out - empathy helps us to navigate the social world. Hence, such people have difficulty handling social situations. Steve Wozniak who is a genuinely nice person had a strong sense of empathy and was motivated by it to help others (eg:- giving significant portion of his own shares to someone who was shortchanged during Apple's IPO) On the other hand Steve Jobs was what you would call a "highly functioning sociopath" - Someone who had strong emotional intelligence which could be used to great success in charming and manipulating people into doing one's bidding while at the same time, having an almost pathological inability to feel any sympathy for others or remorse for one's actions.(Take the same example where he refused to help out said employee or the time when he screwed over Woz). Unless I am mistaken, this aspect of Jobs's character is hinted at in Walter Isaac's biography of Steve. I believe this rare combination of both high emotional intelligence and cold ruthlessness was one of the key factors (among many others) in Steve Job's success. I don't want to over-exaggerate things or to imply that Jobs had absolutely no empathy (As a counter-example Jobs clearly loved his adoptive parents and felt great remorse over a relatively minor incident mentioned in the book) but he does seem to be an unusually mean person (much more than Bill Gate IMO).
gnaritas 12y ago
> Will Bill Gates ever make up for the billions of damage he caused humanity by using underhand tactics to destroy his opposition? Maybe. No he will not and cannot. No amount of good deeds to people X makes up for destroying people Y. I agree, this is a bizarre essay.
- hnnewguy 12y ago
  >No he will not and cannot. Your bar is very high. I hope you practice what you preach. Personally, I think Bill Gates has been a net positive for the world.
  - gnaritas 12y ago
    It's not a high bar at all, it's simple decency. Gates is a net positive for the world, but that's beside the point and doesn't excuse his past wrongs. If I punch you in the face and then apologize to 10 other people for hitting you, it doesn't make me a good person nor have I in any way made up for wronging you.
    - mike_ivanov 12y ago
      > and then apologize .. it doesn't make me a good person That's exactly what will make you a better person. That's how it works.
      - gnaritas 12y ago
        Try reading what I said again, you utterly missed it. In my example, he didn't apologize to the person he hurt, he apologized to others.
        Tenobrus 12y ago
        Change "apologize to 10 people" to "save 10 African children from starvation" and I don't see how you can possibly argue this hypothetical person is "bad". If you honestly think this then you also think Ghandi and MLK are bad people, because they both did "bad" things to people who they didn't directly help. If I kill someone to save 1000 others I'm pretty obviously a good person, but I can never apologize to that person specifically or make it up to them. Your moral philosophy makes no sense.
paulhauggis 12y ago
What does nice really mean? Nice usually means you are a pushover and will go out of your way to make other people happy. I've seen lots of nice people try to start businesses..what usually ends up happening is that someone more aggressive (IE: mean) comes around and either puts them out of business or pushes their way in to take it over. The successful ones are the ones that pushed back or were aggressive in the first place. It's not just a rule in business, it's a rule in life. If you are too nice, eventually someone will take advantage of you.
- Bahamut 12y ago
  Being nice is not antithetical to being competitive or being a pushover. I'd argue that being nice is crucial to being a strong good leader.
- e40 12y ago
  Nice usually means you are a pushover and will go out of your way to make other people happy. Wow. Maybe I'm just cynical, but nice, to me, means being fair, and generally employing The Golden Rule. I've been at forks in the road many times in my business career. I always took the fork that allowed me to sleep, which meant I applied The Golden Rule. I have employees that have worked for me for 20+ years and they seem to like me. I have no doubt that if I were a dick I could be more successful, but the cost of that would be too great for me.
  - ams6110 12y ago
    So let's say you're at this fork in the road: On the left is a [edit: ethicial, i.e. not based on insider info, or other motivations that most people would think of as "cheating"] choice that you think will lead to more success for your business and more certainty of keeping your employees employed and maybe even hiring more. As a consequence, your competitors may lose some business and have to lay off some employees. On the right is a choice that you think will not benefit your business, maybe this choice is just doing nothing, carrying on as before. Your competitors are unharmed, nobody is laid off, but maybe your business will not be able to hire anyone new this year. Which choice "applies the golden rule." If this scenario isn't representative of what you are talking about, I apoligize; I am not trying to find any fault in what you are saying, just trying to clarify what you mean by what "allows you to sleep."
Evolved 12y ago
What these guys who would be considered mean have in common is they all made difficult decisions for the betterment of the company and many of those decisions came with a very high price (eliminating competition meant alienating lots of potential future employees and firing anyone who dared present an opposing viewpoint meant taking away their ability to provide for their family). What would have been the results if they had been nice instead? Perhaps they wouldn't have been nearly as profitable or perhaps revolutionary products never would have existed because they wouldn't have had the drive to push people to their limits to create something great. On the other hand they could very well have done just fine and been more successful but what they do know is what worked for the people before them was working for them so there's no reason to stop doing it.
- diltonm 12y ago
  >> they all made difficult decisions for the betterment of the company Irrelevant, if you can agree they were mean then it refutes PG's article. I agree with the parent. I also agree with part of PG's article, fights are often won by out thinking your opponent, transcending the moment to paraphrase PG. Sometimes the little guy does win, perhaps more often than we often recognize.
paul 12y ago
Do you actually know any of those people, or are you simply repeating media noise?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- presty 12y ago
  I'm not the OP, but have any of the accusations of "meanness" against Gates, Jobs, Ellison, Kalanick, Bezos, even Larry/Sergey, etc ever been denied? (And I don't necessarily mean by themselves, but say friends or co-workers.) Because there are several first hand reports from employees about Gates' meanness ("That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard"). Woz said himself how he had to give part of his equity to the employees Jobs screwed over. The whole Uber PR debacle has been going on for months. Zuck's money fight with Saverin is well reported in his gchats. Same thing with the Snapchat guys. And so on... Anyway, I think this is a poor article simply because it seems to depict people as being in extremes (you're either black or white), as if a "good person" won't do mean things and vice versa. There's an old saying that goes something like "the opportunity makes the thief".
  - paul 12y ago
    I'm sure they've all done something mean at some point, but it's a mistake to believe you know someone based on a collection of sensationalized stories. There's no point in arguing though. People will continue to believe what they want to believe regardless of truth or evidence. (e.g. http://www.newsweek.com/why-we-believe-lies-even-when-we-learn-truth-78775 http://www.newsweek.com/why-we-believe-lies-even-when-we-lea...)
    - personZ 12y ago
      So you have truth or evidence otherwise, or are you just waving your hands and implying that you do? I mean if we really want to talk about truth or evidence, the correlation between sociopathic behaviors and business success is very well studied and documented, and lies in absolute contrast with this rather odd essay by PG.
NextPerception 12y ago
In other words, good founders live by Game Theory?
mszyndel 12y ago
I don't know if it's a cultural difference or what else but your examples of meanness don't fit my definition at all. To me being mean is to inflict harm on others without any personal gain, just for the sake of harming. That said most of your examples were indeed harmful but also had a clear personal or corporate goal, which in my eyes makes them not-mean (I'm not talking about ones you didn't give any example, since it's hard to discuss them).
- eCa 12y ago
  So, the ends justify the means?
  - mszyndel 12y ago
    No, I'm just making a point that being harmful or even cruel doesn't make someone mean. It's just a different kind of thing.
jmount 12y ago
I strongly agree with you. It looks like the effect is more "successful people get fans and apologists."
raverbashing 12y ago
And here's the detail: "Another reason mean founders lose is that they can't get the best people to work for them. They can hire people who will put up with them because they need a job. But the best people have other options"" Yes, Steve Jobs was very mean sometimes. But he also knew how to praise, he also knew how to identify and motivate talent. And of course, it's one thing to be a startup founder, another one to begin seeing money in the bank. That changes things usually.
jfmercer 12y ago
A member of my family is a retired psychologist who has treated many CEOs during his career. He once told me that "in [his] experience, most CEOs are sociopaths."
- rahimnathwani 12y ago
  Selection bias? Perhaps the non-sociopaths don't come for treatment?
  - douglasallen 12y ago
    There is rigorous empirical research showing that psychopaths are more prevalent among the successful. "Studies conducted by forensic psychologist Robert Hare indicate that about 1 percent of the general population can be categorized as psychopathic, but the prevalence rate in the financial services industry is 10 percent. These "financial psychopaths" generally lack empathy and interest in what other people feel or think. At the same time, they display an abundance of charm, charisma, intelligence, credentials, an unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation, and a drive for thrill seeking. A financial psychopath can present as a perfect well-rounded job candidate, CEO, manager, co-worker, and team member because their destructive characteristics are practically invisible."
    - sillysaurus3 12y ago
      If they're invisible, how do the characteristics become known?
      - douglasallen 12y ago
        1. Researchers identify psychopaths using the rigorous statistical techniques of forensic psychology 2. Counsellors identify psychopaths based on a pattern of actions that lack empathy. A psychopath might be very "nice" when he meets you, but as soon as he can benefit by throwing you under the bus, he does so with no display of remorse. The lack of empathy is the defining characteristic of the psychopath--a non-psychopath will refrain from throwing someone under the bus because they empathize with that person. Steve Jobs fucked over his colleagues without remorse. Woz then gave them all money because Woz felt bad--Woz showed that he has empathy. Jobs showed he does not. This is why psychologists consider Jobs an obvious case of a psychopath. 3. Vulnerable people discover psychopaths due to the classic psychopath turn. When at a moment's notice the person you thought was so nice to you turns on you and you realize they were just using you. When they "turn" they go back on promises, they throw you under the bus, backstab you, generally fuck you over. Usually they do this by getting you to trust them first because they seemed so nice that you trusted them. This happens ALL THE TIME in the tech industry and if pg isn't aware of these cases he is willfully ignorant.
nakedrobot2 12y ago
LOL :-) I like how you have no description next to Larry Ellison because it's simply self-evident... (yes and I agree with that)
- turar 12y ago
  Was going to say the same thing. :) With a perfect illustration: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmjowqmCYAEgFFX.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmjowqmCYAEgFFX.png
i4cu 12y ago
I agree with most of your points, but I don't think you went far enough. From the moment we are born we do damage; all of us. Even your kindest most respected role model will step on a bug, unknowingly, just when going for a walk. And people do know they're doing this so it is being 'mean' if you're the bug. Take your counter example pg. He is the business of excluding people which is actually pretty mean when you consider the damage path. The operating mechanics behind this very forum, designed intentionally by pg, are considerably mean, but of course all of this will depend on who you are and where you sit relative to any action taken by any given person. > For most of history success meant control of scarce resources. One got that by fighting, whether literally in the case of pastoral nomads driving hunter-gatherers into marginal lands... History is littered with examples how gaining control was simply a matter of: ownership, negotiating, venturing through difficult terrain or access points, or even plain old racing to be the first person there and establishing a stronghold. The word 'stronghold' is interesting. It implies force, yet often does not require any. Where one person might use the world 'stronghold' another might use 'establishment'. HN is an establishment. It maintains its strong hold on high quality content from its users via mean practices like hell banning over trivial things like not agreeing with it's owners or because of some relative interpretation of meanness held solely by its owners.
foobarqux 12y ago
The definition seems to involve being unsuccessful and/or purposelessly damaging to others. But sociopaths are not generally sadists; hurting others isn't the point, it's a side-effect.
onewaystreet 12y ago
Do you believe that competition is inherently "mean"? If you choose not to compete at your highest level and in turn are out-competed, what did you accomplish?
no_future 12y ago
How exactly did Microsoft hold back the internet?
- m0dE 12y ago
  monopoly
  - ams6110 12y ago
    During the entire time that Microsoft held this so-called monopoly---which was at most a monopoly on the desktop, not the servers or networks that most people think of as comprising "the internet"---Linux and other unix-like OSes continually made progress and now power the vast majority of the systems that provide the internet and indeed the devices we use to access it (tablets and phones). I'm not persuaded that Microsoft substantially held back the internet. IE of a decade ago was not a great browser by today's standards, but the hardware of the time could not have really supported the javascript-heavy apps that we take for granted today. I occasionally use gmail and google maps on a G4 powerbook with a "modern" browser (TenFourFox), and it's pretty painful. It almost feels like being back on a 48K dial-up ISP service. And let's not forget that Microsoft invented (or at least had the first browser support for) the scriptable XMLHttpRequest, the foundation for almost all of the asynchronous web apps that we use today. In fact way back in IE 5 (with the MSXML ActiveX plugin) you could build rich, responsive interfaces and asynchronous interaction using XML, XSLT, and scripting YEARS before you could do it in any other browser.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Abuse of monopoly power as detailed in the Findings of Fact in the DoJ's case against Microsoft: http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm In particular: http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm#v http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm#v There was more than just what the court found, however.
UberB 12y ago
"I think once you've been mean/ruthless/evil in business you may come out the other side and do some nice things, but you have to ask, will it ever be enough? Will Bill Gates ever make up for the billions of damage he caused humanity by using underhand tactics to destroy his opposition? Maybe. But while everyone praises him at the moment, I can't help but think he deliberately held the internet back for 6 or 7 years for his own profit. You almost can't start calculating the damage he caused precisely because it is so mind boggling." You're absolutely right. Think of all the billions of dollars that Gates donated to AIDS research, cancer research, vaccinations, etc. But no matter how many lives he saves, he'll never be able to make up the fact that he held back the internet for 6 or 7 years.
lamontcg 12y ago
Yeah, his definition of mean clearly doesn't involve superficially charming sociopaths and narcissists. As long as the person can look attractive and chat personably during a dinner, or out for drinks, or be the center of attention at a meeting they're 'nice' and not 'mean'. Never mind the fact the whole time they're talking to you they're taking notes on where to slip the dagger in your back should that ever become necessary. I think his wife's x-ray vision is necessarily quite a bit off.
aartur 12y ago
Most of CEOs you listed are of the biggest companies selling in the very competitive markets. It means that they succeeded because, in the first place, they were able to fight off competition. I don't think PG thinks about this kind of activity when he writes about startups. He writes that the amount of wealth is unlimited [0] so acquiring this kind of wealth actually does not involve "stealing" it from others. If you exclude the top and non-innovative companies I think that what PG writes about is true. [0] http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html
- efuquen 12y ago
  > I don't think PG thinks about this kind of activity when he writes about startups I'm confused by your comment. Sure Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle are older established companies but from everything I know about Apple and Microsoft their stories seem very much to fit the startup mold (don't know much about Oracle). And the other three Zynga, Facebook, and Uber are comparatively much more recent successes that definitely took the standard seed funding to VC route and embody everything you would think of as a modern startup. So you're saying that this doesn't apply to super successful startups? Honestly that's not been my experience, both personally and from plenty of stories I've heard from the more "modest" startups that have been successful but not on the same grandiose scale these companies have been.
  - zindlerb 12y ago
    I would not consider Zynga a success.
    - FD3SA 12y ago
      Mark Pincus and a few hundred million dollars of liquidated post-IPO Zynga stock beg to differ.
  - aartur 12y ago
    I wanted to oppose PG's view on what constitutes a startup to "normal" business practices, which involve fighting competition, networking with important people, hiring the cheapest workforce etc. In this kind of game being nice doesn't help. And you have to play this kind of a game when you are either not a startup (ie. not innovative) or big (because then you have competition and you also become a corporation in structure). And I think the companies from the parent comment succeeded because of these "normal" business practices. In PG's view startups succeed because they actually create some real value, something that other people want. And to build something like this it helps to be nice. Maybe I'm naive, but it's hard to say that PG doesn't know what he is talking about when he talks about startups :).
SteveJS 12y ago
The home team is disruptive, but benevolent (to stakeholders). The away team is ruthless, and mean (to competition).
hawkice 12y ago
> Perhaps you don't agree with me, but imho this is the most bizarre essay I've read by pg, and I really don't agree with most of his political leanings, so for me that's saying a lot. Of course this is a weird post. I think he wanted focus on the aspects of flattery involved in praising technology. You are providing counter-examples to a theory where his evidence is "my friends aren't assholes", which, while surely true, has a potential confound he doesn't discuss, and "people YC likes do better than those that we don't like", which isn't surprising for a SV power nexus.
mistermann 12y ago
> Will Bill Gates ever make up for the billions of damage he caused humanity by using underhand tactics to destroy his opposition? Maybe. But while everyone praises him at the moment, I can't help but think he deliberately held the internet back for 6 or 7 years for his own profit. You almost can't start calculating the damage he caused precisely because it is so mind boggling. I would be very interested if you could elaborate on the specifics of "the billions of damage he caused humanity" and "held the internet back for 6 or 7 years", these seem like rather extraordinary claims.
- nevir 12y ago
  Internet Explorer 6's stagnation.
  - saurik 12y ago
    Microsoft is also the reason why people expect good browser technology to be essentially free and embedded in all things; the world as run by Netscape looks nigh-unto distopian in 2014 :(. They cared about CSS when Netscape didn't (who instead added a ton of proprietary extensions we now hate: the massive pile of presentation styling we now consider a dirge on HTML), and for that the W3C looked upon them very favorably. It also seems hard to blame them for letting IE6 stagnate when they were coming out of the anti-trust lawsuits, the ones where Netscape fought hard to defend their business model--which they lost. Microsoft is not a company that internally works on things because they are mission critical, but because they are fun and motivating to engineers. They backed CSS, invented AJAX, and forced JavaScript to be a multi-vendor standard rather than a competitive advantage of Netscape; they then had the gall to integrate it as an API and use it in their OS (something we now just assume any reasonable development environment will have), because they thought the web was the future. For more information, and some evidence, in case you don't remember all of this playing out at the time, I will refer you to this older comment thread :(. The world just isn't this black and white: none of these players come off very well; but if you want to measure impact to the world in dollars of agony, Microsoft's moves in the world of browser technology don't seem all that bad. (If you want to complain about Microsoft, complain about Office or DOS or something, not IE.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5716596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5716596
Morcane 12y ago
And how do you know you absolutely need to be an asshole when push comes to shove? Are you a great startup founder? Not being mean here.
drcomputer 12y ago
> I can't help but think he deliberately held the internet back for 6 or 7 years for his own profit. You almost can't start calculating the damage he caused precisely because it is so mind boggling. That's 7 years less of internet and technological perspective he gets to experience in his mortal life, if that's actually the case. It depends on what you think is more valuable. Are you working in tech for tech? Or are you working in tech to make money? Just because these people made a lot of money, doesn't make them totally knowledgeable about all tech. I think as long as you give ideas openly, you get ideas back. You teach people about tech, you learn about tech back. People who get greedy are fucking themselves in one way or another. With all that fame, independence, and achievement comes a lot of opportunity to miss developing a sense of humility, social connection, and interpersonal growth. But, I think there is a cautious difference we must make here. There is a difference between meanness, and the attempt to make fair judgments - diplomacy. The position of a person who has to decide the fate of their company and the effects that has cascading down human generations on technology and human growth in general, is not in an easy position to be in. If these were simple problems, we would see simple answers. It is easy to look back at people's decisions in retrospect and criticize. It's hard to make those decisions when you are actually there. It's hard to empathize with people that seem like assholes, but I wonder if they have difficult empathizing with themselves. We get to see a sliver of who these people are, and that sliver is distorted through a chorus of echoes across culture.
warcher 12y ago
I think you make an excellent point, but all these cases are examples of guys who got a seat on a rocket and were pretty ruthless about who else got to ride. Which is to say, they're lottery ticket winners. And that's super, but it is a bad idea to model your personal finances on lottery ticket winners. In the rest of the stupid world, with people who are just grinding it out day by day and not jousting with billionaires, being nice is a very, very, very good idea. Being nice keeps doors open. Being nice to everybody you can keeps a lot of doors open. You never know when your next deal, or next gig, or next hire is going to come from. I can't tell you how many times I have gotten a great opportunity (often years after the fact, or through a friend of a friend of a friend) through helping people out just to be nice. You can't dictate luck, but you can absolutely put yourself in a position to be lucky. And the more times you can spin the wheel, the better off you are. Having people in your corner is a powerful influencer of this. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to finish a very profitable contract job that I got because I liked to hang out and drink beers with the drummer who lived next door a couple years back. (Who subsequently went on to become the head of marketing for a national firm. When hippies sell out, they go all the way.)
- pinaceae 12y ago
  some of them, yes, lucky once, no proven success after that. but not all. jobs, ellison, gates and as it's currently looking to be, zuckerberg. sustained success, even after massive setbacks. you don't build billion dollar companies (as in revenue, not fantasy valuations) on pure luck. you build them on being a mean motherfucker. practically all of history is evidence against PG here. edison. ford. rockefeller. etc etc etc.
  - ovi256 12y ago
    I'm afraid everyone giving robber barons and their ilk as counter-examples is misreading the essay. PG states that he works on the premise that a new non-zero-sum game of wealth creation is afoot, as exemplified by tech startups. In this specific context, being non-mean significantly improves success odds. Everyone focuses on the last statement but misses the premise, which is a recurring theme in Graham's essays.
philwelch 12y ago
I think you and pg are talking past each other. Here's the first sentence of his essay: "It struck me recently how few of the most successful people I know are mean." There's probably a disconnect between the most successful people pg knows personally, and the handful of tech CEO's you know only from reputation. I'm willing to bet not even pg knows (or knew) Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Larry Ellison personally. Who does he know? "I only know people who work in certain fields: startup founders, programmers, professors." There are hundreds of successful startup founders, and you can name seven mean ones over the course of almost 50 years. I'm sure if we worked together we could come up with a few more, but it's a small, countable number. Y Combinator probably funds around seven successful startups every year, and that's not even counting the programmers and professors. I'm willing to bet PG's experience outstrips anything that you or I know purely from reputation. Plus, I think some of your examples actually support pg's argument. Take Uber, for instance. The technical implementation of Uber is trivial. What enables Uber to survive is their ability to pick and win political fights with the taxi cartels, which is exactly the kind of place where pg would expect mean people to succeed. Oracle and Microsoft won, not based on technical merit but based on enterprise sales and deal-making.
- deleted 12y ago
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- modfodder 12y ago
  PG is also meeting these founders as a peer. Working in advertising, I've seen a lot of successful people who were perfectly nice to me, but terrors to underlings and people they felt were unimportant or incompetent (and much of of what was seen as incompetence was often the result of little communication from the top of the bureaucratic ladder). I would never call these people nice, but I'd say they were nice to me. Often how nice someone is depends on where you're standing and how they see you.
  - PhasmaFelis 12y ago
    Indeed. One of the wisest pithy quotes I've ever read is from Dave Barry: "A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person." If someone is nice to people when it's advantageous to them, all that means is that they're not an idiot. You can learn a lot about someone's character by how they treat people they don't have to be nice to.
meowface 12y ago
Apologies for the low-content post, but it's funny yet sad how Larry Ellison needs no explanation.
YuriNiyazov 12y ago
Re: Sophistry - the key here is to look at the usage of the word "mean" when it is applied to kids fighting. When kids are being mean to each other in a fight, the opposite of them being mean is "good" and "benevolent". My full comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8674961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8674961
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- merrua 12y ago
  This is really really funny. The only person I could imagine writing this before I saw this was Michael dell. Most people around the world who worked for him have nothing good to say about him. And he is another one who was caught for doing illegal business practices.
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necrodawg 12y ago
I like how Oracle requires no explanation.
fludlight 12y ago
Your n=7 sample size is considerably smaller than pg's presumably n>=700. Be careful drawing conclusions from such a limited subset.

hnnewguy 12y ago

>I can't help but think he deliberately held the internet back for 6 or 7 years for his own profit. First, the degree to which he "held back" the internet, when contrasted with what Microsoft did positively for home computing and the internet, is debatable. Second, if Bill Gates can't be construed as a good person doing good things in the world-- as "not mean"-- then this debate is mostly pointless.

jarcane 12y ago
I think, crucially, the point is that he wasn't 'not mean' when he was actually in charge of things at MS. He was actively horrible from the beginning; there've even been suspicions for years that MS-BASIC, the very thing the company started on, was stolen.
gnaritas 12y ago
Bill is good now, in his old age with a wife who apparently had a big effect on that part of him. Previously, he was a ruthless and immoral businessman who saw no problem ruining people and lives to get ahead and illegally and unethically pressing his monopoly advantage to prevent and destroy competition. Don't confuse the nice old guy image you see now with the actual personality that created the worlds largest fortune. There aren't any billionaires that don't have many people who'd like to see them dead for the lives ruined by their ascent.
- meowface 12y ago
  Whose lives did Gates destroy? Yes, Microsoft was engaged in very anti-competitive business practices, but being beaten in the market is not equivalent to having your life ruined. Also, not that this excuses any actions, but "it's not personal, it's just business" plays a factor here as well.
  - gnaritas 12y ago
    > Yes, Microsoft was engaged in very anti-competitive illegal business practices Fixed that for you. It's just business applies to legal business, not illegal anti-competitive tactics. Competition is beating the other guy, not preventing him from being able to play by locking him off the field. So no, it doesn't play a factor here, not at all.
    - mercer 12y ago
      While I'm not saying that Bill Gates is or was 'nice', I take issue with the thought that something that is illegal is by definition something that makes a person 'not nice'. I've known my share of people who were engaged in very illegal practices and still, by my moral standards, nice, and even good. Conflating morality with legality feels a bit easy to me. It's just not always true.

akshatpradhan 12y ago

Just wondering, why do you put Kim Dot Com in there? I don't know anything about his "asshole-ness"

benologist 12y ago
He's a career criminal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom#Criminal_investigations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom#Criminal_investigati... And he sold out a bunch of his colleagues: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/04/17/where-kim-dotcom-got-his-start-the-house-of-coolness/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/04/17/where-k... The controversy around House of Coolness went beyond selling access to a site that largely hosted other people's intellectual property. Around 1993, House of Coolness was targeted by Günter Freiherr von Gravenreuth, a German lawyer who made a career of suing copyright infringers. But rather than face legal attacks from Gravenreuth, associates of Schmitz tell me he instead began supplying Gravenreuth with names of other figures in the bulletin board scene involved with pirated content. According to the journalist Lars Sobiraj of the German tech news site Gulli.com, Schmitz was allegedly paid for every pirate bust he helped to facilitate. His cooperation with Gravenreuth was also mentioned in a 1997 lecture at a conference of the German hacker Chaos Computer Club by the group’s former spokesperson Andy Muhler-Maguhn, who labelled him an "agent provocateur" not to be trusted.
- hobs 12y ago
  Isnt he now bankrupt though?
  - benologist 12y ago
    His assets were frozen during his most recent criminal investigation.
- akshatpradhan 12y ago
  From your links, Kim Dotcom's "criminal career" seems to involve the Entertainment Industry like the RIAA and MPAA. Those organizations are questionable themselves. Best to be even handed about it and put those organizations on the same list as Kim Dotcom and Bill Gates.

bluedino 12y ago

Sun, Vinod Khosla.

tlogan 12y ago

Maybe the problem with this PG's post is that he did not define the term "mean". I did noticed the pattern: people which have very little empathy have batter chance to succeed as startup founders. Which means that they will inflict harm to other people without any remorse if that make business sense. And they will be extra nice to people with more money then them. So being mean in order to promote your business is called "being ruthless", "growth hacking", "efficient manager", etc. Being mean without any reason is just stupid and, ... really really mean. Also there are plenty of successful founders which do have a lot of empathy and they are successful.

mreiland 12y ago
I don't know that it's a lack of remorse or empathy as much as it is good business sense. Decisions have to be made sometimes. I'm not defending assholes, but it's amazing how perceptions can be skewed of people and their intents, especially when it comes to the decisions they make.

legohead 12y ago

When successful people get together, they aren't usually "mean", or bad people. pg is successful, so his claim is naturally immature. For the rest of us, it's pretty obvious that successful people are mean, for the most part. Here's a simple example: politicians.

tehwalrus 12y ago
Politicians, by definition, work for fights (arguments), not real things. PG mentions how unproductive fights are in his article, and (I think implicitly) says that fights are proportional to meanness. Not that parent and grandparent are not good points; the hypothesis he presents is quite unlikely given the correlation between psycopathic traits and business leaders (particularly "turn around an unsuccessful enterprise" CEOs.)[1] [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2013/04/25/the-disturbing-link-between-psychopathy-and-leadership/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2013/04/25/the-dist...

waps 12y ago

Most of the people you put in there are not mean. In fact they appear very open and friendly. Which is of course the personality type business rewards : superficial openness, fun and friendliness, but always ready to knife you in the back if the numbers say it should be done, without any delay. There's one other attribute they all have : they're programmers (except Marcus Pincus, Travis Kalanic of Uber was a coder). They technically know what they're doing, or asking others to do, a trait I've found incredibly rare in the corporate world. It seems pg simply left something out of his essay : successful people are not mean outward, yet bastards who fuck over everyone who deals with them, or at the very least, they were willing to abandon anyone and take away all support at the drop of a hat. (So were, to be honest, those famous scientists from hundreds of years ago. You should read more about them) Here's another correction to be made in pg's essay : > It seems quite likely that most successful drug lords are mean. Not at all. They're open, approachable, they laugh and make you feel good. They will help you out at the mere asking. And then, suddenly, they'll make working for them a condition of the relationship. I mean, I've only ever met one, and didn't realize it, but still. There's another archetype personality he seems to be describing : > Why? I think there are several reasons. One is that being mean makes you stupid. Here he points out that most people, in fights, lose control of their calculating nature. That's true. > Another reason mean founders lose is that they can't get the best people to work for them. This is not niceness as such, but merely niceness as observed by others, in casual settings (ie. not long-term). > The startup founders who end up richest are not the ones driven by money. This is a very important attribute. So let's see what we know about our startup founders : 1) There is a large difference between outward appearance and inner feelings/thoughts. Outwardly, they are attractive, nice and helpful. 2) They are able to keep control, and maintain composure and execute plans in the face of high emotions. 3) As the parent poster pointed out, they will backstab others, but only to great effect. This mostly means that they are able to plan conflicts ahead of time (when you see this, it's because they cause the conflicts), others don't see them coming (probably because getting into a conflict with them is impossible unless they plan it), and they nearly always win (they don't just plan, they plan well). 4) They are driven by some sort of external impulse that is not money, nor related things like family and the like, but some sort of abstract goal ("improve the world" but applied to a specific field. So their goal is to, make the products with the best UI, or make the best business software, or ...)

jayvanguard 12y ago

I agree with you. I think the complete opposite is true. Very few successful CEOs aren't assholes are at least on the higher end of aggressive and ruthless. It could be what he intends by the word "mean" is more along the lines of petty and emotionally immature with aspects of small-minded vindictiveness. If so, I think what he is saying is true. That style of "meanness" (think nasty little kid) is very difficult to hide and doesn't garner respect. Aggressive ruthlessness does unfortunately, at least among the types of people that are followers.

andyl 12y ago
The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant. Is 'Mean People Fail' playing to people's fantasies? http://48laws-of-power.blogspot.com/2011/05/law-32-play-to-peoples-fantasies.html http://48laws-of-power.blogspot.com/2011/05/law-32-play-to-p...
- douglasallen 12y ago
  The only way pg's article makes any sense if is you read it as "successful people don't act like internet trolls in real life" Self-control is certainly required to win in business. Only stupid or mentally ill people would ever be overtly "mean" in a situation where they couldn't get away with it (Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Linus, etc know they can get away with it)
  - deleted 12y ago
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  - lenn0x 12y ago
    Do they? I wonder if it just comes natural to them and they aren't thinking about what they can and can't get away with it.
    - _nedR 12y ago
      On the contrary. I have read that Steve Jobs had the best (or worst) of both worlds. Take for example the quality of empathy - It consists of 2 aspects :- 1.The intellectual ability to put oneself in others shoes. 2. Too feel emotional pity/sympathy when something bad happens to them. It is shown that empathy is a key aspect lacking in psychopaths. As PG points out - empathy helps us to navigate the social world. Hence, such people have difficulty handling social situations. Steve Wozniak who is a genuinely nice person had a strong sense of empathy and was motivated by it to help others (eg:- giving significant portion of his own shares to someone who was shortchanged during Apple's IPO) On the other hand Steve Jobs was what you would call a "highly functioning sociopath" - Someone who had strong emotional intelligence which could be used to great success in charming and manipulating people into doing one's bidding while at the same time, having an almost pathological inability to feel any sympathy for others or remorse for one's actions.(Take the same example where he refused to help out said employee or the time when he screwed over Woz). Unless I am mistaken, this aspect of Jobs's character is hinted at in Walter Isaac's biography of Steve. I believe this rare combination of both high emotional intelligence and cold ruthlessness was one of the key factors (among many others) in Steve Job's success. I don't want to over-exaggerate things or to imply that Jobs had absolutely no empathy (As a counter-example Jobs clearly loved his adoptive parents and felt great remorse over a relatively minor incident mentioned in the book) but he does seem to be an unusually mean person (much more than Bill Gate IMO).

gnaritas 12y ago

> Will Bill Gates ever make up for the billions of damage he caused humanity by using underhand tactics to destroy his opposition? Maybe. No he will not and cannot. No amount of good deeds to people X makes up for destroying people Y. I agree, this is a bizarre essay.

hnnewguy 12y ago
>No he will not and cannot. Your bar is very high. I hope you practice what you preach. Personally, I think Bill Gates has been a net positive for the world.
- gnaritas 12y ago
  It's not a high bar at all, it's simple decency. Gates is a net positive for the world, but that's beside the point and doesn't excuse his past wrongs. If I punch you in the face and then apologize to 10 other people for hitting you, it doesn't make me a good person nor have I in any way made up for wronging you.
  - mike_ivanov 12y ago
    > and then apologize .. it doesn't make me a good person That's exactly what will make you a better person. That's how it works.
    - gnaritas 12y ago
      Try reading what I said again, you utterly missed it. In my example, he didn't apologize to the person he hurt, he apologized to others.
      - Tenobrus 12y ago
        Change "apologize to 10 people" to "save 10 African children from starvation" and I don't see how you can possibly argue this hypothetical person is "bad". If you honestly think this then you also think Ghandi and MLK are bad people, because they both did "bad" things to people who they didn't directly help. If I kill someone to save 1000 others I'm pretty obviously a good person, but I can never apologize to that person specifically or make it up to them. Your moral philosophy makes no sense.

paulhauggis 12y ago

What does nice really mean? Nice usually means you are a pushover and will go out of your way to make other people happy. I've seen lots of nice people try to start businesses..what usually ends up happening is that someone more aggressive (IE: mean) comes around and either puts them out of business or pushes their way in to take it over. The successful ones are the ones that pushed back or were aggressive in the first place. It's not just a rule in business, it's a rule in life. If you are too nice, eventually someone will take advantage of you.

Bahamut 12y ago
Being nice is not antithetical to being competitive or being a pushover. I'd argue that being nice is crucial to being a strong good leader.
e40 12y ago
Nice usually means you are a pushover and will go out of your way to make other people happy. Wow. Maybe I'm just cynical, but nice, to me, means being fair, and generally employing The Golden Rule. I've been at forks in the road many times in my business career. I always took the fork that allowed me to sleep, which meant I applied The Golden Rule. I have employees that have worked for me for 20+ years and they seem to like me. I have no doubt that if I were a dick I could be more successful, but the cost of that would be too great for me.
- ams6110 12y ago
  So let's say you're at this fork in the road: On the left is a [edit: ethicial, i.e. not based on insider info, or other motivations that most people would think of as "cheating"] choice that you think will lead to more success for your business and more certainty of keeping your employees employed and maybe even hiring more. As a consequence, your competitors may lose some business and have to lay off some employees. On the right is a choice that you think will not benefit your business, maybe this choice is just doing nothing, carrying on as before. Your competitors are unharmed, nobody is laid off, but maybe your business will not be able to hire anyone new this year. Which choice "applies the golden rule." If this scenario isn't representative of what you are talking about, I apoligize; I am not trying to find any fault in what you are saying, just trying to clarify what you mean by what "allows you to sleep."

Evolved 12y ago

What these guys who would be considered mean have in common is they all made difficult decisions for the betterment of the company and many of those decisions came with a very high price (eliminating competition meant alienating lots of potential future employees and firing anyone who dared present an opposing viewpoint meant taking away their ability to provide for their family). What would have been the results if they had been nice instead? Perhaps they wouldn't have been nearly as profitable or perhaps revolutionary products never would have existed because they wouldn't have had the drive to push people to their limits to create something great. On the other hand they could very well have done just fine and been more successful but what they do know is what worked for the people before them was working for them so there's no reason to stop doing it.

diltonm 12y ago
>> they all made difficult decisions for the betterment of the company Irrelevant, if you can agree they were mean then it refutes PG's article. I agree with the parent. I also agree with part of PG's article, fights are often won by out thinking your opponent, transcending the moment to paraphrase PG. Sometimes the little guy does win, perhaps more often than we often recognize.

paul 12y ago

Do you actually know any of those people, or are you simply repeating media noise?

deleted 12y ago
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presty 12y ago
I'm not the OP, but have any of the accusations of "meanness" against Gates, Jobs, Ellison, Kalanick, Bezos, even Larry/Sergey, etc ever been denied? (And I don't necessarily mean by themselves, but say friends or co-workers.) Because there are several first hand reports from employees about Gates' meanness ("That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard"). Woz said himself how he had to give part of his equity to the employees Jobs screwed over. The whole Uber PR debacle has been going on for months. Zuck's money fight with Saverin is well reported in his gchats. Same thing with the Snapchat guys. And so on... Anyway, I think this is a poor article simply because it seems to depict people as being in extremes (you're either black or white), as if a "good person" won't do mean things and vice versa. There's an old saying that goes something like "the opportunity makes the thief".
- paul 12y ago
  I'm sure they've all done something mean at some point, but it's a mistake to believe you know someone based on a collection of sensationalized stories. There's no point in arguing though. People will continue to believe what they want to believe regardless of truth or evidence. (e.g. http://www.newsweek.com/why-we-believe-lies-even-when-we-learn-truth-78775 http://www.newsweek.com/why-we-believe-lies-even-when-we-lea...)
  - personZ 12y ago
    So you have truth or evidence otherwise, or are you just waving your hands and implying that you do? I mean if we really want to talk about truth or evidence, the correlation between sociopathic behaviors and business success is very well studied and documented, and lies in absolute contrast with this rather odd essay by PG.

NextPerception 12y ago

In other words, good founders live by Game Theory?

mszyndel 12y ago

I don't know if it's a cultural difference or what else but your examples of meanness don't fit my definition at all. To me being mean is to inflict harm on others without any personal gain, just for the sake of harming. That said most of your examples were indeed harmful but also had a clear personal or corporate goal, which in my eyes makes them not-mean (I'm not talking about ones you didn't give any example, since it's hard to discuss them).

eCa 12y ago
So, the ends justify the means?
- mszyndel 12y ago
  No, I'm just making a point that being harmful or even cruel doesn't make someone mean. It's just a different kind of thing.

jmount 12y ago

I strongly agree with you. It looks like the effect is more "successful people get fans and apologists."

raverbashing 12y ago

And here's the detail: "Another reason mean founders lose is that they can't get the best people to work for them. They can hire people who will put up with them because they need a job. But the best people have other options"" Yes, Steve Jobs was very mean sometimes. But he also knew how to praise, he also knew how to identify and motivate talent. And of course, it's one thing to be a startup founder, another one to begin seeing money in the bank. That changes things usually.

jfmercer 12y ago

A member of my family is a retired psychologist who has treated many CEOs during his career. He once told me that "in [his] experience, most CEOs are sociopaths."

rahimnathwani 12y ago
Selection bias? Perhaps the non-sociopaths don't come for treatment?
- douglasallen 12y ago
  There is rigorous empirical research showing that psychopaths are more prevalent among the successful. "Studies conducted by forensic psychologist Robert Hare indicate that about 1 percent of the general population can be categorized as psychopathic, but the prevalence rate in the financial services industry is 10 percent. These "financial psychopaths" generally lack empathy and interest in what other people feel or think. At the same time, they display an abundance of charm, charisma, intelligence, credentials, an unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation, and a drive for thrill seeking. A financial psychopath can present as a perfect well-rounded job candidate, CEO, manager, co-worker, and team member because their destructive characteristics are practically invisible."
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    If they're invisible, how do the characteristics become known?
    - douglasallen 12y ago
      1. Researchers identify psychopaths using the rigorous statistical techniques of forensic psychology 2. Counsellors identify psychopaths based on a pattern of actions that lack empathy. A psychopath might be very "nice" when he meets you, but as soon as he can benefit by throwing you under the bus, he does so with no display of remorse. The lack of empathy is the defining characteristic of the psychopath--a non-psychopath will refrain from throwing someone under the bus because they empathize with that person. Steve Jobs fucked over his colleagues without remorse. Woz then gave them all money because Woz felt bad--Woz showed that he has empathy. Jobs showed he does not. This is why psychologists consider Jobs an obvious case of a psychopath. 3. Vulnerable people discover psychopaths due to the classic psychopath turn. When at a moment's notice the person you thought was so nice to you turns on you and you realize they were just using you. When they "turn" they go back on promises, they throw you under the bus, backstab you, generally fuck you over. Usually they do this by getting you to trust them first because they seemed so nice that you trusted them. This happens ALL THE TIME in the tech industry and if pg isn't aware of these cases he is willfully ignorant.

nakedrobot2 12y ago

LOL :-) I like how you have no description next to Larry Ellison because it's simply self-evident... (yes and I agree with that)

turar 12y ago
Was going to say the same thing. :) With a perfect illustration: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmjowqmCYAEgFFX.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmjowqmCYAEgFFX.png

i4cu 12y ago

I agree with most of your points, but I don't think you went far enough. From the moment we are born we do damage; all of us. Even your kindest most respected role model will step on a bug, unknowingly, just when going for a walk. And people do know they're doing this so it is being 'mean' if you're the bug. Take your counter example pg. He is the business of excluding people which is actually pretty mean when you consider the damage path. The operating mechanics behind this very forum, designed intentionally by pg, are considerably mean, but of course all of this will depend on who you are and where you sit relative to any action taken by any given person. > For most of history success meant control of scarce resources. One got that by fighting, whether literally in the case of pastoral nomads driving hunter-gatherers into marginal lands... History is littered with examples how gaining control was simply a matter of: ownership, negotiating, venturing through difficult terrain or access points, or even plain old racing to be the first person there and establishing a stronghold. The word 'stronghold' is interesting. It implies force, yet often does not require any. Where one person might use the world 'stronghold' another might use 'establishment'. HN is an establishment. It maintains its strong hold on high quality content from its users via mean practices like hell banning over trivial things like not agreeing with it's owners or because of some relative interpretation of meanness held solely by its owners.

foobarqux 12y ago

The definition seems to involve being unsuccessful and/or purposelessly damaging to others. But sociopaths are not generally sadists; hurting others isn't the point, it's a side-effect.

onewaystreet 12y ago

Do you believe that competition is inherently "mean"? If you choose not to compete at your highest level and in turn are out-competed, what did you accomplish?

no_future 12y ago

How exactly did Microsoft hold back the internet?

m0dE 12y ago
monopoly
- ams6110 12y ago
  During the entire time that Microsoft held this so-called monopoly---which was at most a monopoly on the desktop, not the servers or networks that most people think of as comprising "the internet"---Linux and other unix-like OSes continually made progress and now power the vast majority of the systems that provide the internet and indeed the devices we use to access it (tablets and phones). I'm not persuaded that Microsoft substantially held back the internet. IE of a decade ago was not a great browser by today's standards, but the hardware of the time could not have really supported the javascript-heavy apps that we take for granted today. I occasionally use gmail and google maps on a G4 powerbook with a "modern" browser (TenFourFox), and it's pretty painful. It almost feels like being back on a 48K dial-up ISP service. And let's not forget that Microsoft invented (or at least had the first browser support for) the scriptable XMLHttpRequest, the foundation for almost all of the asynchronous web apps that we use today. In fact way back in IE 5 (with the MSXML ActiveX plugin) you could build rich, responsive interfaces and asynchronous interaction using XML, XSLT, and scripting YEARS before you could do it in any other browser.
dredmorbius 12y ago
Abuse of monopoly power as detailed in the Findings of Fact in the DoJ's case against Microsoft: http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm In particular: http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm#v http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm#v There was more than just what the court found, however.

UberB 12y ago

"I think once you've been mean/ruthless/evil in business you may come out the other side and do some nice things, but you have to ask, will it ever be enough? Will Bill Gates ever make up for the billions of damage he caused humanity by using underhand tactics to destroy his opposition? Maybe. But while everyone praises him at the moment, I can't help but think he deliberately held the internet back for 6 or 7 years for his own profit. You almost can't start calculating the damage he caused precisely because it is so mind boggling." You're absolutely right. Think of all the billions of dollars that Gates donated to AIDS research, cancer research, vaccinations, etc. But no matter how many lives he saves, he'll never be able to make up the fact that he held back the internet for 6 or 7 years.

lamontcg 12y ago

Yeah, his definition of mean clearly doesn't involve superficially charming sociopaths and narcissists. As long as the person can look attractive and chat personably during a dinner, or out for drinks, or be the center of attention at a meeting they're 'nice' and not 'mean'. Never mind the fact the whole time they're talking to you they're taking notes on where to slip the dagger in your back should that ever become necessary. I think his wife's x-ray vision is necessarily quite a bit off.

aartur 12y ago

Most of CEOs you listed are of the biggest companies selling in the very competitive markets. It means that they succeeded because, in the first place, they were able to fight off competition. I don't think PG thinks about this kind of activity when he writes about startups. He writes that the amount of wealth is unlimited [0] so acquiring this kind of wealth actually does not involve "stealing" it from others. If you exclude the top and non-innovative companies I think that what PG writes about is true. [0] http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

efuquen 12y ago
> I don't think PG thinks about this kind of activity when he writes about startups I'm confused by your comment. Sure Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle are older established companies but from everything I know about Apple and Microsoft their stories seem very much to fit the startup mold (don't know much about Oracle). And the other three Zynga, Facebook, and Uber are comparatively much more recent successes that definitely took the standard seed funding to VC route and embody everything you would think of as a modern startup. So you're saying that this doesn't apply to super successful startups? Honestly that's not been my experience, both personally and from plenty of stories I've heard from the more "modest" startups that have been successful but not on the same grandiose scale these companies have been.
- zindlerb 12y ago
  I would not consider Zynga a success.
  - FD3SA 12y ago
    Mark Pincus and a few hundred million dollars of liquidated post-IPO Zynga stock beg to differ.
- aartur 12y ago
  I wanted to oppose PG's view on what constitutes a startup to "normal" business practices, which involve fighting competition, networking with important people, hiring the cheapest workforce etc. In this kind of game being nice doesn't help. And you have to play this kind of a game when you are either not a startup (ie. not innovative) or big (because then you have competition and you also become a corporation in structure). And I think the companies from the parent comment succeeded because of these "normal" business practices. In PG's view startups succeed because they actually create some real value, something that other people want. And to build something like this it helps to be nice. Maybe I'm naive, but it's hard to say that PG doesn't know what he is talking about when he talks about startups :).

SteveJS 12y ago

The home team is disruptive, but benevolent (to stakeholders). The away team is ruthless, and mean (to competition).

hawkice 12y ago

> Perhaps you don't agree with me, but imho this is the most bizarre essay I've read by pg, and I really don't agree with most of his political leanings, so for me that's saying a lot. Of course this is a weird post. I think he wanted focus on the aspects of flattery involved in praising technology. You are providing counter-examples to a theory where his evidence is "my friends aren't assholes", which, while surely true, has a potential confound he doesn't discuss, and "people YC likes do better than those that we don't like", which isn't surprising for a SV power nexus.

mistermann 12y ago

> Will Bill Gates ever make up for the billions of damage he caused humanity by using underhand tactics to destroy his opposition? Maybe. But while everyone praises him at the moment, I can't help but think he deliberately held the internet back for 6 or 7 years for his own profit. You almost can't start calculating the damage he caused precisely because it is so mind boggling. I would be very interested if you could elaborate on the specifics of "the billions of damage he caused humanity" and "held the internet back for 6 or 7 years", these seem like rather extraordinary claims.

nevir 12y ago
Internet Explorer 6's stagnation.
- saurik 12y ago
  Microsoft is also the reason why people expect good browser technology to be essentially free and embedded in all things; the world as run by Netscape looks nigh-unto distopian in 2014 :(. They cared about CSS when Netscape didn't (who instead added a ton of proprietary extensions we now hate: the massive pile of presentation styling we now consider a dirge on HTML), and for that the W3C looked upon them very favorably. It also seems hard to blame them for letting IE6 stagnate when they were coming out of the anti-trust lawsuits, the ones where Netscape fought hard to defend their business model--which they lost. Microsoft is not a company that internally works on things because they are mission critical, but because they are fun and motivating to engineers. They backed CSS, invented AJAX, and forced JavaScript to be a multi-vendor standard rather than a competitive advantage of Netscape; they then had the gall to integrate it as an API and use it in their OS (something we now just assume any reasonable development environment will have), because they thought the web was the future. For more information, and some evidence, in case you don't remember all of this playing out at the time, I will refer you to this older comment thread :(. The world just isn't this black and white: none of these players come off very well; but if you want to measure impact to the world in dollars of agony, Microsoft's moves in the world of browser technology don't seem all that bad. (If you want to complain about Microsoft, complain about Office or DOS or something, not IE.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5716596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5716596

Morcane 12y ago

And how do you know you absolutely need to be an asshole when push comes to shove? Are you a great startup founder? Not being mean here.

drcomputer 12y ago

> I can't help but think he deliberately held the internet back for 6 or 7 years for his own profit. You almost can't start calculating the damage he caused precisely because it is so mind boggling. That's 7 years less of internet and technological perspective he gets to experience in his mortal life, if that's actually the case. It depends on what you think is more valuable. Are you working in tech for tech? Or are you working in tech to make money? Just because these people made a lot of money, doesn't make them totally knowledgeable about all tech. I think as long as you give ideas openly, you get ideas back. You teach people about tech, you learn about tech back. People who get greedy are fucking themselves in one way or another. With all that fame, independence, and achievement comes a lot of opportunity to miss developing a sense of humility, social connection, and interpersonal growth. But, I think there is a cautious difference we must make here. There is a difference between meanness, and the attempt to make fair judgments - diplomacy. The position of a person who has to decide the fate of their company and the effects that has cascading down human generations on technology and human growth in general, is not in an easy position to be in. If these were simple problems, we would see simple answers. It is easy to look back at people's decisions in retrospect and criticize. It's hard to make those decisions when you are actually there. It's hard to empathize with people that seem like assholes, but I wonder if they have difficult empathizing with themselves. We get to see a sliver of who these people are, and that sliver is distorted through a chorus of echoes across culture.

warcher 12y ago

I think you make an excellent point, but all these cases are examples of guys who got a seat on a rocket and were pretty ruthless about who else got to ride. Which is to say, they're lottery ticket winners. And that's super, but it is a bad idea to model your personal finances on lottery ticket winners. In the rest of the stupid world, with people who are just grinding it out day by day and not jousting with billionaires, being nice is a very, very, very good idea. Being nice keeps doors open. Being nice to everybody you can keeps a lot of doors open. You never know when your next deal, or next gig, or next hire is going to come from. I can't tell you how many times I have gotten a great opportunity (often years after the fact, or through a friend of a friend of a friend) through helping people out just to be nice. You can't dictate luck, but you can absolutely put yourself in a position to be lucky. And the more times you can spin the wheel, the better off you are. Having people in your corner is a powerful influencer of this. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to finish a very profitable contract job that I got because I liked to hang out and drink beers with the drummer who lived next door a couple years back. (Who subsequently went on to become the head of marketing for a national firm. When hippies sell out, they go all the way.)

pinaceae 12y ago
some of them, yes, lucky once, no proven success after that. but not all. jobs, ellison, gates and as it's currently looking to be, zuckerberg. sustained success, even after massive setbacks. you don't build billion dollar companies (as in revenue, not fantasy valuations) on pure luck. you build them on being a mean motherfucker. practically all of history is evidence against PG here. edison. ford. rockefeller. etc etc etc.
- ovi256 12y ago
  I'm afraid everyone giving robber barons and their ilk as counter-examples is misreading the essay. PG states that he works on the premise that a new non-zero-sum game of wealth creation is afoot, as exemplified by tech startups. In this specific context, being non-mean significantly improves success odds. Everyone focuses on the last statement but misses the premise, which is a recurring theme in Graham's essays.

philwelch 12y ago

I think you and pg are talking past each other. Here's the first sentence of his essay: "It struck me recently how few of the most successful people I know are mean." There's probably a disconnect between the most successful people pg knows personally, and the handful of tech CEO's you know only from reputation. I'm willing to bet not even pg knows (or knew) Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Larry Ellison personally. Who does he know? "I only know people who work in certain fields: startup founders, programmers, professors." There are hundreds of successful startup founders, and you can name seven mean ones over the course of almost 50 years. I'm sure if we worked together we could come up with a few more, but it's a small, countable number. Y Combinator probably funds around seven successful startups every year, and that's not even counting the programmers and professors. I'm willing to bet PG's experience outstrips anything that you or I know purely from reputation. Plus, I think some of your examples actually support pg's argument. Take Uber, for instance. The technical implementation of Uber is trivial. What enables Uber to survive is their ability to pick and win political fights with the taxi cartels, which is exactly the kind of place where pg would expect mean people to succeed. Oracle and Microsoft won, not based on technical merit but based on enterprise sales and deal-making.

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modfodder 12y ago
PG is also meeting these founders as a peer. Working in advertising, I've seen a lot of successful people who were perfectly nice to me, but terrors to underlings and people they felt were unimportant or incompetent (and much of of what was seen as incompetence was often the result of little communication from the top of the bureaucratic ladder). I would never call these people nice, but I'd say they were nice to me. Often how nice someone is depends on where you're standing and how they see you.
- PhasmaFelis 12y ago
  Indeed. One of the wisest pithy quotes I've ever read is from Dave Barry: "A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person." If someone is nice to people when it's advantageous to them, all that means is that they're not an idiot. You can learn a lot about someone's character by how they treat people they don't have to be nice to.

meowface 12y ago

Apologies for the low-content post, but it's funny yet sad how Larry Ellison needs no explanation.

YuriNiyazov 12y ago

Re: Sophistry - the key here is to look at the usage of the word "mean" when it is applied to kids fighting. When kids are being mean to each other in a fight, the opposite of them being mean is "good" and "benevolent". My full comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8674961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8674961

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merrua 12y ago
This is really really funny. The only person I could imagine writing this before I saw this was Michael dell. Most people around the world who worked for him have nothing good to say about him. And he is another one who was caught for doing illegal business practices.
- deleted 12y ago
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necrodawg 12y ago

I like how Oracle requires no explanation.

fludlight 12y ago

Your n=7 sample size is considerably smaller than pg's presumably n>=700. Be careful drawing conclusions from such a limited subset.