The annoying habits of highly effective people • Hacker News Board

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#161

Post by C1sc0cat » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 12:12 PM UTC

Kurtz79 wrote: post #123

sonnyblarney wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" it's a lot easier to get up at 5am, shake hands firmly, and dress for success" Let's not be superfluous. Being a CEO is hard, even the 5 am rising and 'hand shaking' parts.

I appreciate that the work is hard, what I cannot come to terms with is the apparent and total lack of accountability of the role (speaking about big-company CEOs). Yes, a "bad" CEO will be fired, meaning that he will pocket a fat severance package and he will be able to try again in another company with almost no stigma attached. Even if he did it so badly making himself unhireable for similar positions, he will hav…

Not realy don't do what the trendy thing is in the city and any C level might get pushed out.

on example was the campaign against a former BT CFO would not would print shares to go on a buying spree - like Vodaphone was doing

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#162

Post by Const-me » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 12:12 PM UTC

DecayingOrganic wrote: post #115

"The largely dominant meritocratic paradigm of highly competitive Western cultures is rooted on the belief that success is due mainly, if not exclusively, to personal qualities such as talent, intelligence, skills, smartness, efforts, willfulness, hard work or risk taking. Sometimes, we are willing to admit that a certain degree of luck could also play a role in achieving significant material success. But, as a matte…

> Such a discrepancy between a Normal distribution of inputs, with a typical scale (the average talent or intelligence), and the scale invariant distribution of outputs, suggests

Read this: http://www.physics.umd.edu/~yakovenk/papers/EPJB-17-723-2000...

The authors started with even distribution of money, and random transactions with uniform probability, yet they arrived to very uneven distribution of outcomes.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#163

Post by manigandham » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 12:14 PM UTC

CalRobert wrote: post #157

manigandham wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dishonest people will be a constant obstacle, but communication is also important so others know what your contribution is. There can't be progress without measurement. Being accurate and quantifiable without becoming confrontational is an art though, but ultimately necessary. Going over people can often lead to worse results. Eventually the truth does come out but whether it's worth the time and effort is up to you.

I had another offer lined up when I decided to chat with the boss' boss. It went about how I expected, I took the offer, and learned a good deal about how business works in the process. Communication is important - very important - but it's also often what people focus on when the reality is just a bigger pain in the ass ("so and so is a selfish twit who takes credit for others' work" is much harder to say than "we n…

I think that's an issue both in communications and in handling people.

For example, did you have to take credit for that particular situation? What was the true downside of your boss taking credit? Why not cover for him and gain the ally? Build the relationship and you'll often find that it pays back in multiples.

Business is 99% about relationships. The only way you can get what you want is by helping others get what they want.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#164

Post by rfeather » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 12:16 PM UTC

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #130

CalRobert wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when I was early in my career and fixed an enormous flaw in ad allocation for a large online publisher. It led to easily over a million extra in revenue that year. My boss was delighted to take credit for it while also ensuring I stayed on message that it wasn't actually a result of him screwing up and being generally incompetent. I eventually figured I had nothing to lose and talked to his boss (politely…

Did your boss hire you? Did your boss ask you to look at it?

The boss could very easily at least make it known which engineer did the good work to fix it. If that isn't standard practice, something is seriously wrong. I make it a goal to be clear about who did the work when talking about something my team accomplished, even if I had the idea.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#165

Post by village-idiot » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 12:22 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #140

manigandham wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're focused on the actions rather than the results. Common mistake. People become leaders by creating and commanding change that positively affects the company. Land a major deal or create a new product line that doubles revenue? You're getting to the top. Working harder than the others is part of this process, and sometimes that means you come in at 5am, but it's not a requirement nor is it something that anyone…

Land a major deal or create a new product line that doubles revenue? You're getting to the top. Be in charge of the department/team that "lands a major deal or create a new product line that doubles revenue" and you're on your way to the top. Being the person who was in the office until 3 am working out the final details of that deal or fixing the show stopping bugs that let you actually launch the product won't get…

Depends on the company, and a few other details.

Smart companies reward those workers, dumb ones often do not. This naturally pushes some of the smart and self motivated talent towards organizations where they will be rewarded.

The one other exception is personality. The toxic person who works until 3am will rarely if ever get rewarded, because people judge more on the toxicity than anything else.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#166

Post by village-idiot » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 12:24 PM UTC

a_imho wrote: post #135

manigandham wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At all? I don't know what you mean by "underclass" developers but it is common to see many devs who spearhead projects get higher titles and progress faster. There are many such examples just in SV companies. Part of it is making sure contributions are measured and noticed. People can't act on what they don't know.

I mean the blue collars sitting with other developers at lunch. We can pretend there is a meritocracy out there, but that's simply not true. Sure, in theory it might be possible to progress as a developer but in practice the roi of putting in enormous effort is simply laughable compared to the alternatives. A few percent raise realistically. Getting to the top? Not a chance.

It’s absolutely not a true meritocracy, that’s true.

But if you’re claiming that individual contributor devs never get promoted for good work, that’s just clearly and utterly wrong.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#167

Post by pythonaut_16 » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 12:37 PM UTC

dkarl wrote: post #48

At one time I thought highly successful people would be more like each other than less successful people. I believed it even more when it was explained as the Anna Karenina principle. But my experience hasn't borne it out. There are many things you can point to as advantages or "best practices" but in the end it all seems to dissolve into our penchant for telling stories. One guy is successful because he was born int…

I appreciate that your conclusion was that the starting position helps determine the strategy necessary for success, rather than your starting position already determining your ability to succeed.

A lot of comments in these kinds of threads just assume a kind of fatalism that success is determined purely by change and the circumstances of your birth.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#168

Post by coldtea » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 12:39 PM UTC

113 wrote: post #148

coldtea wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so? We're not automatons that only speak with citations and meta-studies, nor it is prudent to do so. Empirical personal observation will always be very important.

It is prudent to make decisions based on evidence though. Not just something you think might have happened to you.

Well, when you're not supposed to be doing a universal study, what happened to you is your first line of evidence.

If all scientific evidence says oranges are harmless, and you eat one and have to puke, then you'll avoid it, and rightly so, based on your empirical observation of 1.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#169

Post by motohagiography » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 12:39 PM UTC

Given this issue a lot of thought, mostly after reading Jeffery Pfeffer's views about how most CEO biographies are designed to kick the ladder away behind them.

Given the exponential / power law distribution of returns, if you are anywhere on the left hand side of that curve, you are doing phenomenally well, even if your actual place on it is random. This curve is the mechanism behind the Matthew Effect as well. To get there, you just need to survive long enough to end up on it somewhat randomly. The competitive environments in offices are really about getting exposure to opportunity - not reaping the rewards of work. This is why some seemingly dumb people do well. They have the relationships that get them exposure to the opportunities to end up somewhere randomly on that exponential curve.

You'll notice that people who fail or stagnate in offices are the ones who have been isolated from peers, customers, sales people, and other sources of exposure to randomness, and that is not an accident. Highly successful people ensure they are at the front of the queue for those random opportunities, and whether they do that through merit or mendacity is ultimately immaterial. Being smart is not about problem solving or abstraction, it's an instinct for always getting the option on opportunity.

Absolutely recommend Pfeffer on this.

Re: The annoying habits of highly effective people

#170

Post by C1sc0cat » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 12:42 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #158

lotsofpulp wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Eventually the truth does come out Why does the truth eventually come out? Or is this an assumption?

Because performance is unlikely to be repeated and at some point the person who is wrongly taking credit will not be able to perform, but this can take days or decades depending on the organization.

Or they find a scapegoat