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Peter Thiel on what works at work (2014)

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Re: Peter Thiel on what works at work (2014)

#61
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem comes when MBAs, generally without technical background, build companies without real value and expand an already existing bubble.

What about MBAs WITH technical backgrounds? Are they allowed to build companies?

MBAs with technical background usually have a BS in STEM and go work to a bank/corporation in finance/management positions.

Hence, they are not actual engineers actively building a product.

Please do build a company, but not a money-making scheme treating developers like dispensable tools.

Re: Peter Thiel on what works at work (2014)

#62
post #53
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You try to hire people you could become friends with" is a profoundly stupid maxim. People who come from conservative and religious societies will always be pressured by friends to not make new friends who are of different ethnicities. Thiel is basically ensuring each company Will become a little Island of segregation and this is what I have seen in the bay area: companies that are 90% Indian, 90% Chinese, or 90% wh…

I come from a conservative background and I've never been discouraged from hanging out with different ethnicities and cultures. We are not the strawmen you apparently think we are.

Conversely when a few of my friends family found out I was an atheist they were no longer allowed to associate with me. A select few tried to convert me, others acted outright vitriolic towards me. This was in a major metro in CA. Romantic relationships have also ended in the past when family members couldn't get over my lack of faith.

Re: Peter Thiel on what works at work (2014)

#63
post #33

Something I found very interesting was Peter's comment: "You try to hire people you could become friends with." I contrast this with Zuckerberg's approach to only hiring people that he would work for ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/03... ). It's probably not fair to put these side-by-side due to context, but Peter's approach resonates with me now. Here's how I reconcile this: Peter's "frie…

"Try to hire people you could become friends with" seems like a really bad idea from the discrimination point of view, since people are most likely to view someone of the same race, age, and gender as a potential friend.

I wouldn't say it's stupid so much as variable in its value. Some people are naturally attracted to a wide variety of people, ideas, experiences, and so on. For them, following this advice is likely to turn out well. For others, with narrower horizons, results will be a bit more mixed.

Re: Peter Thiel on what works at work (2014)

#64
post #40
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Try to hire people you could become friends with" seems like a really bad idea from the discrimination point of view, since people are most likely to view someone of the same race, age, and gender as a potential friend.

"You try to hire people you could become friends with" is a profoundly stupid maxim. People who come from conservative and religious societies will always be pressured by friends to not make new friends who are of different ethnicities. Thiel is basically ensuring each company Will become a little Island of segregation and this is what I have seen in the bay area: companies that are 90% Indian, 90% Chinese, or 90% wh…

ya'll are taking this maxim and removing it from the context of hiring. I thought it was obvious he meant, you want someone capable and someone you could be friends with. It's not supposed to be a maxim, it's from an interview.

Re: Peter Thiel on what works at work (2014)

#65
post #33

Something I found very interesting was Peter's comment: "You try to hire people you could become friends with." I contrast this with Zuckerberg's approach to only hiring people that he would work for ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/03... ). It's probably not fair to put these side-by-side due to context, but Peter's approach resonates with me now. Here's how I reconcile this: Peter's "frie…

"Try to hire people you could become friends with" seems like a really bad idea from the discrimination point of view, since people are most likely to view someone of the same race, age, and gender as a potential friend.

It is, but I think it's no more discriminatory than yardsticks that people use to hire and promote people in today's work place. We'd like to think that we're objective, but if you look at the kind of people that get hired and promoted, they all fit certain type of molds, especially personality.

Re: Peter Thiel on what works at work (2014)

#66
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with that? IMO wanting to be an entrepreneur is one of the best reasons to start a company :)

Most of these people (not all of whom are MBAs) just want to be bosses, not entrepreneurs. Their goal is to be executives ("big picture guys") shouting orders, not worker bees, but they don't have the social resources to make it happen in an existing company so they drum up some seed funding and hire some engineers (usually, scraping the bottom) and try to kick something together. It doesn't work very often. "I want…

> Most of these people (not all of whom are MBAs) just want to be bosses, not entrepreneurs. Their goal is to be executives ("big picture guys") shouting orders, not worker bees, but they don't have the social resources to make it happen in an existing company so they drum up some seed funding and hire some engineers (usually, scraping the bottom) and try to kick something together.

That seems like a very mean way to say they don't want to be a cog in a machine.

> "I want to be an executive" is a pretty fucking lame vision, as it were.

By "I want to be an executive" do you mean "I'd rather not work for a boss"? Is there a difference in those two desires? How is that fucking [sic] lame?

> What they're really saying is, "I think that, based on some linear combination of pre-existing socioeconomic resources and inflated self-image, I have the right to a job where I tell other people what to do."

Actually, "I have the right" is your words, not theirs.

> I don't think that all MBAs are douchebags.

Whoa, whoa. Nobody said they were douchebags.

> I know plenty whom I like a lot.

And I have a lot of gay friends (but I wouldn't say I like them "a lot").

> Unfortunately, the culture of business school and especially the elite business schools is one of entitlement and position-seeking.

What is a culture of entitlement? People just go to business school and... sit there and be entitled? What is a culture of position-seeking? Do they seek positions in companies? Does engineering school also have a culture of position-seeking, or is that different somehow?

> When that type of person founds a startup, you get a lot of the same toxic big-company behaviors and formalities and political structures, but in a small company that can't afford the inefficiencies.

So some MBA's aren't that good. I think we all already know that some startup founders suck. But others must be good, or turn out to run successful companies, or investors would just unilaterally cease funding any MBA's. The phenomenom of bad founders is not limited in any special way to people that got MBA's, either. So in what way is the problem with business schools, or the people that go to them? (Aside from the usual complaint you hear from a lot of people, that you're repeating, about MBA's that don't really know what they're doing because they don't have experience, which we get when people make stereotypical complaints about management consultants too.)

> In most educational divisions, the correlation between prestige and douchebaggery is nonexistent, i.e. Yale law students aren't noticeably douchier, or less douchey, than students at middling schools; in MBA school, it's clearly a positive correlation (although Stanford is probably worse than Harvard, though less prestigious, for obvious reasons).

It would be helpful if you could point us to an academic study that makes these measurements of douchiness. I don't hang out with enough law school graduates and business school graduates from these respective schools to be able to tell if what you are saying is true, but I guess you hang out with enough of them from each major business school and law school to have figured this all out.

Re: Peter Thiel on what works at work (2014)

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these people (not all of whom are MBAs) just want to be bosses, not entrepreneurs. Their goal is to be executives ("big picture guys") shouting orders, not worker bees, but they don't have the social resources to make it happen in an existing company so they drum up some seed funding and hire some engineers (usually, scraping the bottom) and try to kick something together. It doesn't work very often. "I want…

It starts even earlier than business school, with the kids who campaign to be president of ten different school clubs just for the sake of being in a leadership position and being able to put it on their resumes. American culture really encourages this shallow sort of leadership by entitlement, while truly great leaders almost always earn their authority through a medium to long period of hard work side by side with…

In what way is becoming president of school clubs a form of entitlement?

Re: Peter Thiel on what works at work (2014)

#68
post #40
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Try to hire people you could become friends with" seems like a really bad idea from the discrimination point of view, since people are most likely to view someone of the same race, age, and gender as a potential friend.

"You try to hire people you could become friends with" is a profoundly stupid maxim. People who come from conservative and religious societies will always be pressured by friends to not make new friends who are of different ethnicities. Thiel is basically ensuring each company Will become a little Island of segregation and this is what I have seen in the bay area: companies that are 90% Indian, 90% Chinese, or 90% wh…

Speaking as a white American from a very conservative/religious family and social group, I think your view is just as generalized as you imagine conservative/religious groups to be. I have multiple aunts and uncles who are Korean, my first serious girlfriend was black, my best friend growing up was Mexican (as well as having many Mexican relatives), so I would say that our conservative and religious views didn't preclude us from not only being open to other ethnicities, but to embracing them as our own. Granted, I don't think my upbringing was typical of conservative/religious upbringings, but I know it wasn't typical of many liberal/non-religious points of view. I don't think it's something you can shoehorn quite like that. (I would say our religion brought us all together more than anything else).

I think the effect you're seeing (where many Asians, such as Chinese, Korean, or Indian) are more isolated has far less to do with idealogical beliefs, than it does with multiple factors, such as being immigrants in a country that has typically has had a harder time identifying with their culture as well as a large trend of pushing towards higher education, especially in demanding fields such as medicine and engineering.

But I digress :)

Re: Peter Thiel on what works at work (2014)

#70
post #58
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Try to hire people you could become friends with" seems like a really bad idea from the discrimination point of view, since people are most likely to view someone of the same race, age, and gender as a potential friend.

I think this advice was given with the assumption that the receiver is an intelligent human being.

There are many intelligent human beings who suffer from many forms of gender and/or race bias. Our very nature as humans is to surround ourselves with people who look, act, and think like us. Hiring people that could be your friends without having the insight to get beyond the inherent bias in all of us could very easily lead to a corporate structure that is extremely myopic. Not that it won't be successful, just ends up looking like Stepford Corp, look at the boardrooms of the Fortune 500 for many examples.
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