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Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

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Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#21

Post by qsort »

300bps wrote: post #5

Found myself simultaneously laughing and being horrified by identifying techniques used by people I've worked with. The advice at the end is spot on. It also turned out that the best way to appear generous was actually to be generous since false displays of generosity were usually discovered and resulted in ostracism I'll help anyone out at work. I'll teach anyone anything I know. I will never throw someone else unde…

The best mix is a lot of genuine collaboration with a tiny bit of backstabbing occasionally thrown in.

Be genuinely useful, cooperative and valuable, that's a given. It speaks for itself, it's rewarding to you personally, and it's the only way to do not burn out.

But don't be afraid to play hardball. Don't cover for incompetence. Don't be taken advantage of. Don't be a sucker.

The simple wisdom of tit-for-tat is what I recommend.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#22

Post by [deleted] »

jiggawatts wrote: post #13

I get the strong impression that many (most?) of the people fired from Twitter are just like the overrated person described in the article. People love to act like Elon is some sort of mouth-breathing man child who stumbled into the CEO position through nothing but luck and connections. Meanwhile, if I was to take over a company that's made up of thousands of developers, the first thing I would ask for is examples of…

[deleted]

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#23

Post by q-big »

RC_ITR wrote: post #17
jiggawatts wrote: post #13

I get the strong impression that many (most?) of the people fired from Twitter are just like the overrated person described in the article. People love to act like Elon is some sort of mouth-breathing man child who stumbled into the CEO position through nothing but luck and connections. Meanwhile, if I was to take over a company that's made up of thousands of developers, the first thing I would ask for is examples of…

I get the strong impression that you‘ve never led a multi-billion dollar organization. Don’t show me the random code you built that makes a users like history load 500 milliseconds faster, talk to me about how to make the product better/more engaging/monetized!

> Don’t show me the random code you built that makes a users like history load 500 milliseconds faster, talk to me about how to make the product better/more engaging/monetized!

Honestly, if I were the CEO, I would ask for the former if I were looking for the good programmers to keep since these are the things that make the technological base of the company run.

The answer is of course likely different if I were looking for the managers to keep ...

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#24

Post by cplusplusfellow »

genghisjahn wrote: post #8

These articles come out with some regularity, and yet no one ever says, "Yep! That's totally me! I'm a non contributing zero but I've made a living at making others think I add to the team!" Everyone knows people like this, but no one is one.

They make up a really small percentage of the population and that group generally isn’t reading articles and introspecting.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#27

Post by k8t »

ilikeitdark wrote: post #25

Elon Musk

He's the CEO and a huge voting share owner of his companies, why would he need to pretend to be working? Also, it's probably hard to make breakthroughs in space travel and electric vehicles doing fake work.

There's been a huge amount of leaks, rumors, and reports about Elon from within and from without his companies. He's been accused of a lot of things, but fake working has not been one of them.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#28

Post by paulcole »

q-big wrote: post #19
genghisjahn wrote: post #8

These articles come out with some regularity, and yet no one ever says, "Yep! That's totally me! I'm a non contributing zero but I've made a living at making others think I add to the team!" Everyone knows people like this, but no one is one.

First: there is of course an incentive not to admit this. Second: I do believe that many people on HN really deeply care about technology/hacking topics and have detest for office politics. On the other hand, the people that the article discuss are good at office politics/marketing themselves and often don't have such a deep knowledge about programming. Thus, I would indeed assume that the typical HN reader/writer le…

The average HN reader is highly overrated for other reasons.

> have detest for office politics

The problem is that many people on HN believe any interaction with someone with an MBA, marketing background, manager, etc. is “office politics.”

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#29

Post by croes »

k8t wrote: post #27
ilikeitdark wrote: post #25

Elon Musk

He's the CEO and a huge voting share owner of his companies, why would he need to pretend to be working? Also, it's probably hard to make breakthroughs in space travel and electric vehicles doing fake work. There's been a huge amount of leaks, rumors, and reports about Elon from within and from without his companies. He's been accused of a lot of things, but fake working has not been one of them.

The breakthroughs were done by his employees not Musk or do you praise Pope Julius II. for the Sistine chapel ceiling?

BTW were is the breakthrough in Teslas?

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