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

Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

daedtech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 150 posts

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#41

Post by LazyCroHacker »

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.

Yo.

Ask me anything.

Edit : I'm actually serious. I don't do most of the things in the article, or at least definitely not with the intent and detail - but I've been moved over time from being a pretty good and certainly respected hands on techie, to a middle to upper manager with massive imposter syndrome, and certainly feel I contribute less for more credit. Client loves me. My boss loves me. My team loves me. But I myself definitely struggle to always understand my value and I definitely spend many hours each week fine tuning PowerPoint slides, reporting, over communicating, team building, teaching people to communicate differently, etc - which again, seems to make everybody happy and impressed. Maybe my hidden talent is communicating between techies and business? Possibly there's real value in my role - but DEFINITELY not according to any hacker news colleagues - nearly everything I do is venomously dismissed by th HN zeitgeist (I'm neither surprised nor resentful - I spent 20 years saying same things, until I have become them:) . So - AMA :)

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#42

Post by tyroh »

revskill wrote: post #3

Why that is the matter ? The problem is in bad project management, technical leading and outcome management instead. Solve those issues first, and there will be no overrated people.

This is precisely what's happened in our company. The project management head was not a servant leader and actively avoided doing real work while telling others what to do and promising to do things that never happened. Sadly, this person is still with our company at the time of this writing, but thankfully not anymore in a role where they can derail work.

What really struck a nerve in me was that I had to catch all the work this person wasn't doing, and I only realized it after I got burned out from all the extra work.

The bigger issue then is that you can't solve this because often, the person does a good job of hiding the bigger issue by deflecting to smaller, more pressing ones.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#43

Post by jpmoral »

paulcole wrote: post #28
q-big wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

I think the problem is that people think that all office politics is necessarily bad.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#44

Post by nonrandomstring »

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.

The acceptance of others in our team called "society", who assume as a matter of human dignity that we each "add" something, is how we all get by and live. We're all nice people, terrified of growing old and alone, being left out out in the cold and hungry. We're all part of the same team, under the same shit system that makes us feel safer by devaluing others.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#45

Post by mberning »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #39
mberning wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the likelihood that one of these people is on such a site as this? They are avoiding work after all. Not trying to get better at it.

Hacker News is BRILLIANT for avoiding work :-)

Fair point. Although in my experience the most useless people at work usually spend working hours jacking around with their plex server, daytrading crypto, etc.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#46

Post by paulcole »

GoOnThenDoTell wrote: post #31
paulcole wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

Any interaction with another human at work is politics

Yes, but derisively referring any interaction with another human at work as “office politics” is the problem.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#47

Post by serverholic »

paulcole wrote: post #28
q-big wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

Yes because if you look at it objectively those people tend to be lying, manipulative people with big fake smiles on their faces.

People are so accustomed to our messed up society that they don't even realize how amoral "normal" behavior is.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#48

Post by musingsole »

croes wrote: post #29
k8t wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> BTW were is the breakthrough in Teslas

You're either uninformed or being pointedly obtuse. Tesla has a massive patent portfolio -- starting with the roadster's gearless transmission.

It's a point of fact that building a massive car company within a crystallized industry was a breakthrough in its own right.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#49

Post by mrtksn »

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.

I actually don't like that kind of articles at all precisely because I tend to find things from myself and the authors often do very bad job in analysing these behaviours because the articles are one sided "hit pieces" that essentially promote a narrative or a worldview.

All the same behaviours can be written in a self improvement post on LinkedIn or something or a successful person might try to attribute the success to these behaviours. In its core its all the same, at best people trying to explain things they don't understand using broken mental models and at worst people trying to explain their failure through their virtues(I could have been great but I'm too good of a person to act in that way).

IMHO all these behaviours have different roots and dynamics and plays little role in the actual results(being successful or overrated).

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#50

Post by renewiltord »

mberning wrote: post #35

Man the slackware clock thing is so common. “Is that in confluence?” burns me up regularly. Things like how to delete a file in git. Or revert a file. As the number of tools required to build software continues to grow there are more and more opportunities for people to play dumb and act dopey.

I don't see how that can work. If someone does that even once you're going to lose respect for them. Twice and you're going to fire them for just not being smart enough.
Post reply on HN