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

Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

en.wikisource.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 276 posts

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#231

Post by valarauca1 »

pcrh wrote: post #226
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.

>Even the most brilliant idea will have been had by countless people It wasn't very brilliant then, was it?

Most ideas aren't that brilliant. If it occurred to you, it likely occurred to somebody else. Ideas are a product of your environment. While we pretend to be unique a lot of what we do is pretty common to dozens, if not hundreds, or thousands of people.

Even ideas as earth shaking and complex as Infinitesimal Calculus and Quantum Mechanics were developed in parallel initial by people with little to no communication between each other.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#232

Post by pertinhower »

baldfat wrote: post #224

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 a…

I think you're right. There are two forces at work: innate ability and social acceptability. Innate ability tends to harm social acceptability. Therefore, to the extent that social acceptability determines a person's overall ability to succeed, high innate ability can actually pose a greater net detriment to success than a lower innate ability does. In a word, being "smart" or even "skillful" may in some cases make you less successful. The optimum, as you point out, is to have high innate ability but to disguise it in order to reduce the social downside. The trouble with this is that it's harder to disguise than it might seem: people tend to "sense" the intelligence of other people. You don't laugh at the right times. You tell jokes that no one gets. You think the big ra-ra push is crazy and you can't help saying so. The path that you find obviously correct is the one everyone else finds silly.

I'm convinced that the real solution, to the extent it's possible, is for highly intelligent people to find their way into positions that don't require social acceptance. Academics is obviously one destination (one log-jam, rather) for these types. But by all means avoid management, because that's where the attractiveness of your brilliance to employers and the unacceptability of your brilliance to your reports become a trap.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#233

Post by woodchuck64 »

angersock wrote: post #185
woodchuck64 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think everyone should be highly suspicious of charisma. Charisma is a skill, not a trait, and it's developed by spending a lifetime practicing on people that one thinks are largely beneath one's self.

" that one thinks are largely beneath one's self." Mind elaborating on that?

Charismatic people are naturally drawn towards those they can impress. The easiest people to impress are those they can best. Charismatics don't hang around people who overshadow them.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#234

Post by ithkuil »

pertinhower wrote: post #232
baldfat wrote: post #224

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 a…

I think you're right. There are two forces at work: innate ability and social acceptability. Innate ability tends to harm social acceptability. Therefore, to the extent that social acceptability determines a person's overall ability to succeed, high innate ability can actually pose a greater net detriment to success than a lower innate ability does. In a word, being "smart" or even "skillful" may in some cases make y…

Another solution is to work in a place where highly intelligent people are the majority.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#235

Post by bryan_rasmussen »

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…

There's a difference between an idea guy and a Proof of concept guy.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#236

Post by bpyne »

"Brilliant" is so broad. Some people are brilliant in a particular subject; some are brilliant in the breadth of their knowledge; some of brilliant socially; some are brilliant analytically; etc.

I like the author's anecdotes and agree with some conclusions because I've run into people with the same personality traits. (We all probably have.) But Newton was both brilliant and stubborn as was Einstein. They didn't understand something in the physical world so they continued thinking about it until they were satisfied.

Human organizations need a balance of brilliance and plodders. I'd say they need many fewer brilliant people because it takes a large number of plodders to bring their ideas to fulfillment. But the brilliant people are looking to the future while the plodders are dealing with today.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#237

Post by [deleted] »

bpyne wrote: post #236

"Brilliant" is so broad. Some people are brilliant in a particular subject; some are brilliant in the breadth of their knowledge; some of brilliant socially; some are brilliant analytically; etc. I like the author's anecdotes and agree with some conclusions because I've run into people with the same personality traits. (We all probably have.) But Newton was both brilliant and stubborn as was Einstein. They didn't und…

[deleted]

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#238

Post by kghose »

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…

I agree with you so completely. I have seen this all my life, especially with myself. The things I am proud of are not those brilliant ideas lying half finished somewhere. It is those imperfect, simple things that I finished but which work and which still work now and which are a continual source of pleasure.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#239

Post by Kluny »

interstitial wrote: post #195
Kluny wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare the comments on this site with the ones you see on reddit, where a sarcastic one-liner or a good meme reference can get thousands of upvotes. From my experience of actually writing comments on reddit that have gotten thousands of points - the less thought you put into them the better they'll do. The same is not true on HN where long and well thought out comments do better, and one-liners often get moderated.…

I must be in the lower echelons of this secret HN club, because I cannot see the score on any comment. I thought it was the general and public absences of meaningless internet points that kept the comment system of HN in check.

High scores rise to the top, but the scores are kept unobtrusive so they don't become the focus.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#240

Post by vog »

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…

> even today, we are incredibly bad at managing [...] brilliant people

That is an important question, and unfortunately, I haven't seen lots of books on that topic.

Except maybe "Herding Cats: A Primer for Programmers Who Lead Programmers" by J. Hank Rainwater: http://books.google.de/books/about/Herding_Cats.html?id=9xFP...

(This is not so much about "brilliant" people, but about creative people - especially good programmers - in general.)

Post reply on HN