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Re: undefined

#41

Post by SirensOfTitan »

> It struck me recently how few of the most successful people I know are mean. There are exceptions, but remarkably few.

*mean to Paul Graham. I’ve worked with a lot of mean people in important positions in my career, and they all have a kind, charismatic side when they need to. Those same people are awful to subordinates or people that can’t do something for them. Paul is high value to many people, so they treat him well.

People like Graham who aren’t often in positions where they’re taken advantage of or humbled like to pretend they and their peers are magnanimous and kind but often enough they’re just not exposed to the forces that make people ugly. All other things being equal: it’s often lack of agency over work and over their own lives—this shows up in work where people are given lots of responsibility but without the freedom to fulfill it.

I often find it concerning how elementary a lot of well off tech peoples’ theory of mind is. People are not acausal personalities, they are functions of their internals and their environments. A person mean at a stressful job might be delightful at a party after.

Re: undefined

#42

Post by JoshTriplett »

stickfigure wrote: post #35
humannature1 wrote: post #20

I wish this was true. Yet, I think we all have some skin in the game to why this article rings false. When it comes to getting an advantage, people often look the other way at meanness. For example, it’s easy to complain about how Amazon treats their employees. Yet, we choose to buy from Amazon because it’s convenient, cheap, and everyone else is doing it. We might see an organization treat someone else unfairly but…

I don't think Amazon treats their employees badly. Warehouse workers aren't compensated like software engineers, but what do you expect? I'm sure there are shitty managers at Amazon (in warehouses and in software) but by and large I believe blue collar Amazon workers have it about as well as blue collar workers everywhere. Maybe better. I don't really see the problem here.

The issue isn't about pay. It's about measuring so aggressively and turning the screws until you extract every last bit of value out of someone.

If a company is measuring the duration and frequency of bathroom breaks (to pick one of many examples that's been highlighted in the press), something has gone fundamentally wrong.

Re: undefined

#43

Post by Dig1t »

raffael_de wrote: post #23
tigertheory wrote: post #12

I like Paul Graham a lot but this is simply not true. Look at the most successful people of recent times and you will quickly see a consistent pattern of meanness when you dig into how they work with others: - Steve Jobs - Bill Gates - Elon Musk - Sam Altman - Etc.

But didn't all those people you list fail at the end of the day? Bill Gates is not just unfaithful, he even considered slipping his wife STD medication to avoid having to talk about his state of affairs. He's now alone and the only people willing to care for him are probably very few old friends he didn't alienate, yet. The rest is just after his money. Steve Jobs was an infamously bad father and husband, just as Elo…

"authentically happy and fulfilled" is not the definition of success that PG is using in this essay.

TBH the pursuit of great wealth and the world of startups is not the line of work to pursue if the goal is to be "authentically happy and fulfilled".

Re: undefined

#44

Post by EFreethought »

raffael_de wrote: post #23
tigertheory wrote: post #12

I like Paul Graham a lot but this is simply not true. Look at the most successful people of recent times and you will quickly see a consistent pattern of meanness when you dig into how they work with others: - Steve Jobs - Bill Gates - Elon Musk - Sam Altman - Etc.

But didn't all those people you list fail at the end of the day? Bill Gates is not just unfaithful, he even considered slipping his wife STD medication to avoid having to talk about his state of affairs. He's now alone and the only people willing to care for him are probably very few old friends he didn't alienate, yet. The rest is just after his money. Steve Jobs was an infamously bad father and husband, just as Elo…

Their companies are all doing well (although I think the jury is out on OpenAI). So did they fail? Graham seems to measure a person's success by the success of their company.

Re: undefined

#45

Post by JoshTriplett »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #41

> It struck me recently how few of the most successful people I know are mean. There are exceptions, but remarkably few. *mean to Paul Graham. I’ve worked with a lot of mean people in important positions in my career, and they all have a kind, charismatic side when they need to. Those same people are awful to subordinates or people that can’t do something for them. Paul is high value to many people, so they treat him…

> I often find it concerning how elementary a lot of well off tech peoples’ theory of mind is.

This is a great way of putting it. I always get surprised when I discover that others aren't constantly modeling a theory-of-mind of other people as a part of interacting with people. That's leaving aside whether those models are accurate, people have varying degrees of skill at it, but it shocks me when I discover that some people don't do it at all, badly or otherwise.

Re: undefined

#46

Post by Dig1t »

raffael_de wrote: post #23
tigertheory wrote: post #12

I like Paul Graham a lot but this is simply not true. Look at the most successful people of recent times and you will quickly see a consistent pattern of meanness when you dig into how they work with others: - Steve Jobs - Bill Gates - Elon Musk - Sam Altman - Etc.

But didn't all those people you list fail at the end of the day? Bill Gates is not just unfaithful, he even considered slipping his wife STD medication to avoid having to talk about his state of affairs. He's now alone and the only people willing to care for him are probably very few old friends he didn't alienate, yet. The rest is just after his money. Steve Jobs was an infamously bad father and husband, just as Elo…

>Elon Musks own daughter is attacking him online. Think about that.

If you read Walter Isaacson's book on Musk it's pretty clear that his kids do love him, he does care for them well, and that his "daughter" fell into pretty extremist ideology.

Re: undefined

#47

Post by FeteCommuniste »

beloch wrote: post #30

A velvet glove conceals the iron fist. It may be that successful mean people just hide it well enough to seem nice and the "x-ray vision" of the author's wife doesn't work on everyone. Once a mean person's position is unassailable, the velvet gloves come off. Alternatively, money is power and power corrupts. The current crop of billionaires are at the pinnacle of success (depending on how you define it), but most sur…

Right. Highly successful people are rarely mean in the crudest and most obvious ways, like punching somebody unprovoked. But there's nothing stopping them from being broadly callous, or screwing over people who are in no position to fight back.

Re: undefined

#48

Post by paulryanrogers »

theamk wrote: post #22
orangea wrote: post #11

If the successful people you meet in real life are nice and you see lots of meanness on the internet, it probably just means that anonymity causes meanness.

Not really - I've seen some pretty mean people back in high school, because high school is one of the places where people are forced to be together, no matter what their preferences are. But once one becomes an adult, there is a much greater leeway in choosing whom to interact with, so it is often possible to not interact with mean people at all.

Wait. There are people who aren't individually educated by private tutors while they accompany their parents on travel, and at their summer, and winter homes throughout the globe? /s

Re: undefined

#49

Post by notahacker »

raffael_de wrote: post #23
tigertheory wrote: post #12

I like Paul Graham a lot but this is simply not true. Look at the most successful people of recent times and you will quickly see a consistent pattern of meanness when you dig into how they work with others: - Steve Jobs - Bill Gates - Elon Musk - Sam Altman - Etc.

But didn't all those people you list fail at the end of the day? Bill Gates is not just unfaithful, he even considered slipping his wife STD medication to avoid having to talk about his state of affairs. He's now alone and the only people willing to care for him are probably very few old friends he didn't alienate, yet. The rest is just after his money. Steve Jobs was an infamously bad father and husband, just as Elo…

It's PG, the definition of the sort of success he advocates in the startup world is "accumulated a lot of money, influence and kudos" and those guys are outlying successes in those areas, regardless of issues in their personal life and how many people detest some of them.

Sure, there are normies with greater levels of personal happiness (as well as plenty of nice normies who also managed to fall out with significant people in their lives for one reason or another), but I don't think PG is likely to consider them higher achievers, even if they're significantly more secure and happy in their career than some of those individuals.

Re: undefined

#50

Post by jraph »

humannature1 wrote: post #20

I wish this was true. Yet, I think we all have some skin in the game to why this article rings false. When it comes to getting an advantage, people often look the other way at meanness. For example, it’s easy to complain about how Amazon treats their employees. Yet, we choose to buy from Amazon because it’s convenient, cheap, and everyone else is doing it. We might see an organization treat someone else unfairly but…

> I wish this was true.

Exactly what I was thinking as I was tapping the thread link, strange to see the exact same words on the screen a second later.

Either what pg considers means is radically different from what I consider mean, or we have different things in mind when thinking about success, or he lives in a different world.

Several counter examples immediately come to mind, and not only in the startup world. Granted, it's probably easier today than in 2014 but still. It feels utterly naive. The whole piece. For instance:

> Startups don't win by attacking. They win by transcending.

Well, sure, if eliminating all your competitors by burning investor cash and if breaking the law left and right or disregarding ethics or the environment is considered transcending and not attacking or being mean. Now, maybe that stuff is considered fair game in pg's world.

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