Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly what I took away from the article. Execution matters.
So does the idea. It's almost like they both have to be in tandem or something.
The any idea will only matter if it is executed upon well.
Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
271–276 of 276 posts
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#272This story is a cheap attempt to make people with an inferiority complex feel good. There is nothing great about mediocrity. Someone who fails to deliver on their work is not brilliant, appearances to the contrary. But at the top of the world are brilliant people who have delivered, and no amount of self-congratulation for stolid mediocrity can change that.
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#273tl;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. Int…
right. the best long-term relationships have gone through stages of HALT, which is nothing more than exposing one's vulnerability.
that's where a person's character resides. and people who manage to be honest, and generous and courageous in those moments, are the ones to surround yourself with. experience character-building through HALT, in spite of it, and you're on your way to being a better man or woman, i suspect.
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#274I think there's decent advice here for CERTAIN TYPES OF BUSINESSES. But this is not universal good advice for all businesses.
The business in question, in this story, is a grocery store. It's a business with lots of competition and little innovation, where you're selling exclusively to customers who live very close to you. Furthermore, the fictional business owner isn't interested in taking the risks needed to build a massive chain, he's looking to grow slowly and make small, steady profits. For this business, there's no need for brilliance or big risks, you just need hard workers who are going to execute decently day in, day out.
A tech startup (the interest of most people on HN) is pretty much the complete opposite situation. You need brilliant programmers to build an excellent product. If you're B2C, you need those excellent salespeople who are going to dream big and go after massive deals. If you're B2B, you need great growth hackers/biz dev/marketers who can creatively get your product in front of massive numbers of people for minimal cost. When you're trying to grow from nothing to ginormous in 3-5 years, you simply can't do it with the slow grinding approach, the only way is with risk and brilliance. That doesn't mean there won't be grinding, repetitive tasks along the way, there will be TONNES, and you need people who will execute on them (not the pure "idea guys" with zero ability to execute, who I agree are of little use), but you also need to be dreaming big and taking big risks. Always going after small wins just doesn't work for tech startups, you need to regularly go after the big wins.
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 b…
Broad elevator-pitch-level ideas may well be of little value, but specific ideas about strategy for a given organization at a given time are hugely valuable. There is a significant difference betwen the ideas person who just spouts out 'x for y' type product ideas, and the ideas person who is always coming up more effective processes for getting work done and achieving goals.
Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 b…
Broad elevator-pitch-level ideas may well be of little value, but specific ideas about strategy for a given organization at a given time are hugely valuable. There is a significant difference betwen the ideas person who just spouts out 'x for y' type product ideas, and the ideas person who is always coming up more effective processes for getting work done and achieving goals.
Even those specific ideas have value only speculatively; specific case hypotheses are more easily testable, but they only have value, only provide benefit, when results of execution are realized.