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You are saying your boss goes to the trouble to get a working prototype going and even does the UI fronted and when he asks you to finish and scale it out as an engineer (which is your job) you take offense to this request?
Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
71–80 of 276 posts
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#72It appears that men labeled as genius were simply men of high charisma capable of convincing and inspiring others.
And since those qualities are so out of reach for techies they're looked down on.
This is an interesting comment.
My visceral reaction was that it was a huge generalization, but when I think about it more, I do have a difficult time thinking of people that are both charismatic and tech-savvy. The obvious example is Jobs, but even he wasn't the "tech" guy in a sense, we always associate that with Woz or others.
I guess for a lot of people here Musk is maybe an example of it? Is there some left/right brain separation that keeps techies from being charistmatic, is it a historical, cultural thing?
Or is it just a stereotype after all? :) It seems like a fascinating topic, though.
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not what the author is saying. He's saying that if you are either unable or unwilling to correctly use "your" and "you're", you are probably unable or unwilling to pay attention to the details that matter to success in his business. I agree that there's a fine line between proper attention to detail and nitpicking, but taking the author's statement in context I don't think he's on the wrong side of it.
It makes sense, but that's the danger of it in my opinion. If you think this way, it's worth going back and examining the writings of people you admired. You might be surprised! Or not.
It depends on why I admired the people. If I admired them for their success in business, then yes, I would expect their writing to show attention to details like spelling. But if I admired them for something else, I wouldn't necessarily expect that. I'm certainly not saying that anyone who is worth admiring has to spell correctly.
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#74If 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.
True but only one company makes the new iPhone, many companies design enterprise software that need a simple workflow and a solid working database with reliable uptime.
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
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Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#76Alternately, 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.
It wasn't just word of mouth but he was also dazzled by what these geniuses were telling him and their enthusiasm. Eventually he realized he needed employees who can deliver more than talk.
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Um, he's using this whole episode as an example of what not to do, not what to do. He says right out that hiring that person that way was a mistake. The whole point of the article is to help people avoid the mistakes the author made. How many articles that get to HN's front page are basically the same thing?
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Which is why you incentivize salesmen via commissions and quickly fire those that are obviously showing up just for the base paycheck.
Employees still optimize for pay / effort, NOT absolute pay. In that respect, commissions are still FAR from perfectly aligning incentives.
You can't really be suggesting that commissions are the silver bullet for aligning incentives, as if that hasn't been tried for thousands of years already, with very mixed success :)
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
This works well running a grocery chain, but not so well designing the new iPhone. You'll end up with Windows Mobile.
True but only one company makes the new iPhone, many companies design enterprise software that need a simple workflow and a solid working database with reliable uptime.
And we know nothign about those companies because they're not on HN.
We suspect that they probably have restrictive workplace policies, helpdesk in India and office politics. Those things OP won't like.
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#80What 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".
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