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The reference was to the 12 apostles of Jesus - they were low in standing and generally unschooled.
Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
61–70 of 276 posts
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#62Alternately, this is the story of a man who hired based on word of mouth, then when that didn't work out, learned the wrong lesson.
Indeed, he's definitely talking about SALES people, who use their sales tactics to sell him on themselves. Definitely not talking about "book smarts" brilliance. The author probably intentionally mistitled the story for attention. That said, there's a good lesson - if you hire sales people, their most attractive target will always be selling themselves to the guy who's writing their paycheck. It will not automaticall…
The weird thing is, why didn't he hire this person in a way that posed less risk to his business? Why is he handing over a gigantic check worth 140,000 of today's dollars? Isn't this person crazy, or at least a terrible businessman? Yet here we all are, listening to his advice. The longer I think about this the more I dislike it.
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#63If you want to run a solid, reliable, mediocre business hire solid, reliable, mediocre workers.
This works well running a grocery chain, but not so well designing the new iPhone.
You'll end up with Windows Mobile.
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#64What if John Carmack is an average programmer, and the rest of us are just lazy in comparison.
Carmack is actually a hard worker and writes code. Too often in the tech industry you bump into people who are "architects" and "strategists" and not hands on at all, or what this article may refer to as a "genius".
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#65"The letters you brought spoke in the highest terms of your sales genius. The only question which they did not answer to my satisfaction was why companies which had valued you so highly should ever have allowed you to get away!"
This is a truth that holds today (in the form of things like LinkedIn Recommendations): Outside of exceptional circumstances, people seldom talk up the people they need the most, but they will talk up the people they wouldn't mind losing.
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#66"But if you blunder for words, punctuate incorrectly, spell incorrectly, and express yourself clumsily, I'm sure to believe you mind is cluttered and ill-disciplined." My mind is cluttered and I rely on spelling correction. Hard to say if I would get the position.
Since the article was written prior to the invention of automatic spelling correction, these sorts of seemingly trivial errors could tarnish one's first impression significantly. If you know nearly nothing about someone but need to form an opinion of them, you will use everything you do know to assess them, regardless of how trivial. Furthermore, you will generally be biased towards criteria that are more difficult t…
I agree, it was more of a non humorous joke.
Reading this article is almost in perfect timing with my situation. I am 24 year old with only 2 years of college. I was learning more outside of school than in. Even though I might not be the best developer or maybe not even average, I took the jump in trying to make it. So far so good. With learning that experience is everything and know how to get help will take you far. I feel like I know twice as much as I did last year. Is it possible that a lot of us are trying to reach that feeling of accomplishment?
I most certainly pass this article on to friends and peers.
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#67What if you aren't a finisher? How can you become one?
You might want to try, if you haven't already, making public, specific, measurable commitments to have things done by a certain time. Give your word that you'll do something, in a concrete form that people can see failure or success on, to someone whose opinion really matters to you.
I've found that exercising that sort of honesty works very well for me. It's like, if you value your word, (which I do,) then you can leverage it back against yourself when you have to do something difficult.
Don't know if it works that way for everyone who values their word, but it might be worth a go. Might need some fine-running at the start, making tamer goals than you think you can achieve to prevent inadvertently breaking your word.
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#68Good writing and ok advice for someone who wants to run a grocery business. But it is absolutely untrue that "brilliant" men cannot also be careful, detail-oriented and have good business sense and skills. And certainly innovation and risk taking can be just as critical in business as following proven formulas and paying close attention to the bottom line. It depends on the business and circumstance. Overall I think…
His use of "brilliant" has little to do with IQ. It's a conflation of (a) creativity (which correlates, as he observes, with manic-depressive patterns and unreasonable expectations of others) and (b) superficial charisma (which correlates with narcissism and substance abuse). Those are two types of "flashiness" that he makes the mistake of conflating. I'm category (a): creative, prone to mood swings, basically reliab…
Upvoting for conflation (my favourite word) and making it known that "brilliant" may have been used a different way back then.
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#69A corollary to this principle is to respect risk. If you never take on volatility that can ruin you, you will grow slow but steadily.
Conversely, if you accept excessive volatility by taking big bets, you can end up broke even if your expected value was positive.
Rule #1 according to Buffett: Never lose money. Rule #2: Don't forget Rule #1.
I learned this the hard way. Maybe I was brilliant.
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#70Well, I'm available then ;).