Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

ftp.iza.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 270 posts

Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#41

Post by maxxxxx »

Veen wrote: post #12
kuzehanka wrote: post #7

The notion of bullshitters needs to be brought to the front of our industry's consciousness. Our industry is one where the impostor complex is rife and anyone who sounds confident must know what they're talking about, since even the PhD's aren't half as confident in their field of expertise as a bullshitter is at anything. The tech industry is increasingly inundated with these types of people who manage to get placed…

If bullshitters rise to the top with very little work or knowledge, then perhaps being a bullshitter is the smart choice for people of a certain disposition.

You need to find the right balance between bullshitting and delivering . Elon Musk or Steve Jobs are first class bullshitters but they also back it up quite often (not always though).

Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#42

Post by mgkimsal »

tru3_power wrote: post #15
kuzehanka wrote: post #7

The notion of bullshitters needs to be brought to the front of our industry's consciousness. Our industry is one where the impostor complex is rife and anyone who sounds confident must know what they're talking about, since even the PhD's aren't half as confident in their field of expertise as a bullshitter is at anything. The tech industry is increasingly inundated with these types of people who manage to get placed…

Dude I struggle with this everyday. When I first started off in my career I was so nervous to express any technical ideas or questions in front of other people because I thought I was stupid- as I started progressing in my career I learned that a lot of the people I encountered at work who were ultra confident (and probably attributed to my tech self-consciousness) actually knew way less than I thought. I still don’t…

it's all fine and dandy until the sysadmin you're talking with pronounces "mail queue" as "mail kway". with a straight face. then you start to realize they may know less than you do.

Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#44

Post by hypertexthero »

Fede_V wrote: post #21

If you've never experienced it before, the first time you work with someone who is a pathological liar and bullshitter is a completely disorienting experience. Normal people just don't lie that brazenly and with so little remorse - so you walk out of meetings wondering if perhaps you just misunderstood because there's no way someone would straight up lie that way. Interestingly, both of the worst bullshitters I've ev…

This book was a very interesting read: https://content.psychopathcode.com/preface.html

Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#45

Post by michelpp »

Zaphods wrote: post #16

It's interesting the definition of bullshit in this study: > ‘Bullshitters’ are individuals who claim knowledge or expertise in an area where they actually have little experience or skill. compared to the definition that the philosopher Harry Fankfurt came to in his book On Bullshit , and that this study references: > bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. The liar cares about the truth and…

On Bullshit is one of my favorite books from long ago, thanks for reminding me about it, I just found my old copy and looking forward to digging through it again!

Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#46

Post by devonkim »

will_brown wrote: post #31
kuzehanka wrote: post #7

The notion of bullshitters needs to be brought to the front of our industry's consciousness. Our industry is one where the impostor complex is rife and anyone who sounds confident must know what they're talking about, since even the PhD's aren't half as confident in their field of expertise as a bullshitter is at anything. The tech industry is increasingly inundated with these types of people who manage to get placed…

>The notion of bullshitters needs to be brought to the front of our industry's consciousness The industry (tech, startups, VC money) do bring bullshit to the front of the industry consciousness. I’ve never seen another industry push and promote “fake it till you make it” so hard. Democratizing this...disrupting that...we respect your privacy and data...DAO/code is law...Self driving cars...uber is creating good jobs.…

A colleague of mine put the problem more succinctly “what other industry is there where the top decision-makers have never done the basic work of the company?” Most executives in finance have done some form of financial analysis and reporting, construction company owners have almost always done a hard day’s worth of labor, and a lot of directors have had to do some acting / camera work and whatnot. In tech (especially enterprise business verticals) your typical CEO outside Silicon Valley hasn’t ever written a line of code or had to deliver a software project of substantial size. Many are salesmen, marketers, consultants, politicians, etc. and the technology and how it works is just an afterthought. It’s as if executing on the technology is a complete afterthought to investors and frankly they may be right - the barrier to succeed in most enterprise software is probably not your technology as much as how entrenched you already are in the industry you’re working in. This oftentimes bleeds over into supposed tech companies like IBM and HP - your customer base and partners infects your company culture from the top down and drives out engineers. Engineers are far too often excluded because “they’re too pessimistic” and yet every other time I hear about dismissing engineers’ concerns I also hear about tanked projects where it’s a complete mess or situations like the 737 Max. The thing is that the other half is a pretty good gamble.

Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#47

Post by plutonorm »

stelfer wrote: post #36
tru3_power wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude I struggle with this everyday. When I first started off in my career I was so nervous to express any technical ideas or questions in front of other people because I thought I was stupid- as I started progressing in my career I learned that a lot of the people I encountered at work who were ultra confident (and probably attributed to my tech self-consciousness) actually knew way less than I thought. I still don’t…

The realization that I came to was that by speaking up I was usually asking a question that many people were not asking; by providing a strong opinion it would help to catalyze deliberate action. If you stay silent we'll never get anything really done.

Yeah, but I find I usually take a social hit by asking the question. A good 80% of those listening will think that you simply don't understand something. The other 20% are either indifferent or actively threatened by the observation. It doesn't pay to speak up about anything, you just get talked down to by those who are bullshitting.

Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#48

Post by dnautics »

filleokus wrote: post #33
kuzehanka wrote: post #7

The notion of bullshitters needs to be brought to the front of our industry's consciousness. Our industry is one where the impostor complex is rife and anyone who sounds confident must know what they're talking about, since even the PhD's aren't half as confident in their field of expertise as a bullshitter is at anything. The tech industry is increasingly inundated with these types of people who manage to get placed…

I have always thought that the hierarchical system used for doctors here in Sweden could be applicable to tech. Doctors here specialise in a field after some time of general practice and then some of them become "överläkare" (lit. superior physician), and have both deep expertise in their area but also some managerial responsibility for their department. Of course there is hospital administration etc, but the senior…

The actual physician-ing might be relatively hard to bullshit (but I wouldn't be 100% sure), but how can you be sure they aren't terrible managers? It might even be anti-selected (as it is with science professors)

Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#49

Post by mgkimsal »

maxxxxx wrote: post #41
Veen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If bullshitters rise to the top with very little work or knowledge, then perhaps being a bullshitter is the smart choice for people of a certain disposition.

You need to find the right balance between bullshitting and delivering . Elon Musk or Steve Jobs are first class bullshitters but they also back it up quite often (not always though).

and sometimes people just think you're bullshitting because they have no idea that you can actually deliver (or that anyone can deliver) but you know that you can (and perhaps even have done so).

Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#50

Post by misterman0 »

kuzehanka wrote: post #7

The notion of bullshitters needs to be brought to the front of our industry's consciousness. Our industry is one where the impostor complex is rife and anyone who sounds confident must know what they're talking about, since even the PhD's aren't half as confident in their field of expertise as a bullshitter is at anything. The tech industry is increasingly inundated with these types of people who manage to get placed…

Hear, hear!

For the love of Jesus Christ, the bullshitting in our industry must stop! This is my main gripe with our industry and the reason I've been contemplating getting the fuck out of Dodge on, holy shit, so, so many occasions. I've been in it for 25 years+. But,

people who are full of shit need to shut the fuckz up.

It takes a significant amount of civil courage to take tone in a meeting full of bosses. But if you don't then who do you expect will take tone, stand up and call out bullshit? Are you delegating that responsibility to someone else? Your kids perhaps? Are they the ones who aren't supposed to just ride on the wave of absolute crap that is our ancestors idea of "economy"? Or are you?

People who have guts as well as brains, take tone and make a scene.

Edit: spellng

Post reply on HN