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Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

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Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#221

Post by anjc »

tokenadult wrote: post #137

As mathattack has correctly pointed out in a comment an hour ago, this is a parable (a made-up story). The huge salary by that day's standards should make that clear. But the unnamed author makes his hiring methods look stupid, because he should be doing a work-sample test[1] before hiring for such an expensive contract. If he doesn't know what the worker will actually do, he shouldn't put so much money on the line.…

The effectiveness of various hiring methods has been demonstrated pretty rigorously now. But how many companies now take them into account, neverminding 1924?

I'd probably be more expecting a Belbin or Myers-Briggs questionnaire to be required, than a work-sample test, to have my suitability tested for certain roles, despite the established effectiveness of various methods.

Great post btw, in the link.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#222

Post by leoc »

mattlutze wrote: post #217
dhimes wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of any given idea is really low I would agree if you mean average idea. Really great ideas are rare, difficult, and can change the world. The people who come up with those are rather special. And, unfortunately, rare, and almost never (in my somewhat limited experience) think of themselves as 'idea guys.' But this hivemind (nicely crurated by VCs- think that through) that ideas are worthless is very wrong.…

Really great ideas also have low value. Even the most brilliant idea will have been had by countless people before it is known to the world. The truly rare, difficult and world-changing is the realization (production, enactment, what have you) of a really great idea, and the luck of that realization occurring in the right context.

> The truly rare, difficult and world-changing is the realization (production, enactment, what have you) of a really great idea, and the luck of that realization occurring in the right context.

Nonetheless that doesn't make the idea itself worth little (let alone nothing). By analogy, land is normally little use unless you put a building or infrastructure on it or start farming or mining it. And it's seriously expensive and difficult to do those things. But that doesn't make the value of land low. Land isn't just valuable, it's expensive in the most literal and straightforward you-pay-money-for-it sense, sometimes staggeringly so.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#223

Post by jotm »

k__ wrote: post #205
nnq wrote: post #198

It's sad how this sounds so plausible and valid... because even today, we are incredibly bad at managing (or making use of or integrating into a team...) brilliant people and we fail to make use of them and we let them fail because we can only figure out how to make reliable profit by using readily available mediocrity. We should instead learn to recognize human diversity and accept that besides the "well rounded har…

> the always starters I have the feeling, that everyone who don't want to do real work, is this kind of person... There are a big bunch of people out there with ideas, but only a fraction of them will realize their ideas. This is why there are "non-technical-founders" (I have this idea, I just need someone _helping_ me to implement it) and why developers are paid so much money. Because everyone can have ideas, but no…

On the other hand, technical founders can make the idea work, but can't get people to use it, which makes it just as worthless (with a lot of wasted time and added stress, to boot). An "ideas guy" who can actually sell those ideas is pretty valuable.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#224

Post by baldfat »

I come from a HIGH IQ family. My father's IQ is unmeasurable but guesses are between 190-210 my move is over 165 and 3 of my sisters are in MENSA. I graduated Valedictorian in High School and College. I have been the "Jack of All Trades" and can study something and be proficient with it. Did some locally well known good deeds. From my 30+ years of work force experience I have decided that I wish I had an average IQ and that I got a B+ average.

My Conclusion: Perceived Intelligence is a curse. I try to hide my academic accomplishments and cringe when someone says I have some above average brain. Can't tell you how many times I hear, "The best _____ isn't necessarily the straight A student." "We don't higher straight A students."

People with a higher capacity intellectually can take in more information and see more moves ahead. That way there is a different perception on solution and it causes frustration for everyone.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#225

Post by jib »

leoc wrote: post #222
mattlutze wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really great ideas also have low value. Even the most brilliant idea will have been had by countless people before it is known to the world. The truly rare, difficult and world-changing is the realization (production, enactment, what have you) of a really great idea, and the luck of that realization occurring in the right context.

> The truly rare, difficult and world-changing is the realization (production, enactment, what have you) of a really great idea, and the luck of that realization occurring in the right context. Nonetheless that doesn't make the idea itself worth little (let alone nothing). By analogy, land is normally little use unless you put a building or infrastructure on it or start farming or mining it. And it's seriously expens…

Land is sort of a good example (there is scarcity involved, which makes it not a perfect analogy).

Land doesn't have any intrinsic value. There are two reasons (unused) land has value:

1) Someone expects to be able to use it to create value 2) Someone expects that someone else will want to use it to create value in the future and they expect that scarcity will come into play allowing them to charge more for it in the future than it currently costs to buy.

Land is only staggeringly expensive if either the value expected to be generated from 1) is exceptionally high or the expected value someone else will generate from it in 2) is exceptionally high.

If those aren't in play, you can get land very cheaply, or even for free, or in extreme cases be paid to take over land (that usually only applies for contaminated land etc).

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#226

Post by pcrh »

mattlutze wrote: post #217
dhimes wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of any given idea is really low I would agree if you mean average idea. Really great ideas are rare, difficult, and can change the world. The people who come up with those are rather special. And, unfortunately, rare, and almost never (in my somewhat limited experience) think of themselves as 'idea guys.' But this hivemind (nicely crurated by VCs- think that through) that ideas are worthless is very wrong.…

Really great ideas also have low value. Even the most brilliant idea will have been had by countless people before it is known to the world. The truly rare, difficult and world-changing is the realization (production, enactment, what have you) of a really great idea, and the luck of that realization occurring in the right context.

>Even the most brilliant idea will have been had by countless people

It wasn't very brilliant then, was it?

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#227

Post by aaren »

loladesoto wrote: post #139

tl;dr: look for integrity. some of the most brilliant hackers i know are rightfully afraid of going into business with the kind of "brilliant men" described in this article. just as non-technical founders benefit from learning to code for a myriad of reasons, hackers should do careful due diligence on a potential business partner. ask questions. require them to invest in the relationship. blow away the smoke and mirr…

I like the acronym!

I think HALT is also useful for introspection. Sometimes you are forced to function and make decisions in this state and you can learn a lot about yourself when this happens.

You can do this through work but it is probably better outside of that, through some sort of pastime that you can make difficult. Mountains, climbing and cycling are what I think of but there are many ways to induce HALT.

Intentionally push yourself out of your comfort zone every now and then and you learn a lot about your personal limits and your character. If you can't get on with yourself in a HALT state then how is anyone else going to?

Stress the organism and it grows.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#228

Post by jcd748 »

spinlock wrote: post #25
d23 wrote: post #19

What if you aren't a finisher? How can you become one?

Start finishing things. It sounds trite but it's true. Some of the best advice I've ever been given is: the way you do anything is the way you do everything. So, finish the smallest tasks consistently and that will carry over to the bigger tasks.

A quote I've always liked, from "The Writing Life" by Annie Dillard:

"How we spend our days, of course, is how we spend our lives."

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#229

Post by wcummings »

nnq wrote: post #198

It's sad how this sounds so plausible and valid... because even today, we are incredibly bad at managing (or making use of or integrating into a team...) brilliant people and we fail to make use of them and we let them fail because we can only figure out how to make reliable profit by using readily available mediocrity. We should instead learn to recognize human diversity and accept that besides the "well rounded har…

Prototyping and R&D seems to be a great place for these people. Build MVP, start to build things up on the business end, show its potential, hand off to engineering and let them productionize it. "Idea men" have to at least bring their ideas to the point of implementation.

Alternatively, working on tooling, libraries, tricky bug fixes and other odds and ends may be good projects for the inattentive.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#230

Post by hawleyal »

jib wrote: post #210
nnq wrote: post #198

It's sad how this sounds so plausible and valid... because even today, we are incredibly bad at managing (or making use of or integrating into a team...) brilliant people and we fail to make use of them and we let them fail because we can only figure out how to make reliable profit by using readily available mediocrity. We should instead learn to recognize human diversity and accept that besides the "well rounded har…

A lot of people want to be "the idea guy", because it's cool and relatively easy. The problem is that ideas are cheap. The value of any given idea is really low - I would argue that for many organisations ideas even have a negative value on average, because you are going to spend a lot of time dealing with the idea without it actually becoming something that generate value in the end. Even if you have an idea, that w…

Agreed. However, this is not about the idea guy.
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