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Re: undefined

#51

Post by surgical_fire »

> Startups don't win by attacking. They win by transcending. There are exceptions of course, but usually the way to win is to race ahead, not to stop and fight.

> Another reason mean founders lose is that they can't get the best people to work for them. They can hire people who will put up with them because they need a job. But the best people have other options. A mean person can't convince the best people to work for him unless he is super convincing. And while having the best people helps any organization, it's critical for startups.

This is just lame, self-serving rationale. One of the most vapid arguments I read in recent memory.

It's the sort of rationale that results in "good people are successful, therefore successful people are good".

Winning quite often has nothing to do with being good or mean, and only with being related to the correct people and having access to more money. This, paired with the fact that most people with a lot of money are all sociopaths does not paint a very rosy "mean people fail" bullshit.

Re: undefined

#52

Post by malcolmxxx »

This sounds like one of my former bosses' speeches! He's a nasty man, of course. He's stupid, too. Now I'm his partner. I suppose that makes me mean, too. And even more stupid. Is the detail about his wife symptomatic? My friend often says the same thing about his wife. I've tried a couple of times to tell him that it's not a good idea to 'vibe' people's intentions and that he's confusing loyalty with goodness. Like the Politburo. I'm trying to convince him that it would be more democratic and environmentally friendly to assume that everyone is mean and stupid.

Re: undefined

#53

Post by wat10000 »

tolerance wrote: post #31

Everyone talking about this being out of touch with the present and how figures in proximity to Graham don’t fit the description of nice he’s referring to should think about this passage: > For most of history success meant control of scarce resources. One got that by fighting, whether literally in the case of pastoral nomads driving hunter-gatherers into marginal lands, or metaphorically in the case of Gilded Age fi…

Has anything changed? He's not correct about the past metric always being about zero-sum games. Railroads are pretty obviously not zero-sum, and wars are generally negative-sum. How many successful merchants existed in ancient times? I'm sure there were plenty.

And there's plenty of zero-sum in success today. Politics is the most obvious example. I can't be a Senator without excluding someone else from being a Senator. Your startup might be creating value, but the funding it needs is funding that can't go to other startups. The economy is not zero-sum because things have different value to different people, but money is zero-sum aside from banks playing tricks.

The idea is patently absurd in any case. There are plenty of successful mean people out there, including one extremely successful mean person who became particularly successful after this essay was written and is so notorious that I don't even have to name him for you to know who I'm talking about.

This looks like an example of hackers thinking they're fundamentally changing the world, when all that's happening is that they're working in an area that's too small for the wider world to care very much yet. Back when the internet was shiny and new, there was all this talk of how it was going to change the world with the free flow of information. Censorship would fall, regulation would be impossible, and the internet would be a bastion of freedom. Well, it only looked that way because governments took a while to start actually caring about the internet. Once they did, it turns out the internet is like everything else: the people with guns ultimately get to decide what you do if they want to.

I accept that the successful people pg knows are nice to him. Maybe they're even nice in general. But extrapolating that to "being mean makes you fail" is absurd.

Re: undefined

#54

Post by jruohonen »

jruohonen wrote: post #2

At his best. (And I don't mean business or politics per se but as a philosophical take to life.)

Oh no, people are mean to me :-O. I mean, sure, we can talk about sociopaths and whatnot, who may or may not have their means, but do we need such role models? Ends, not means. Kant?

Re: undefined

#55

Post by raffael_de »

Dig1t wrote: post #46
raffael_de wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But didn't all those people you list fail at the end of the day? Bill Gates is not just unfaithful, he even considered slipping his wife STD medication to avoid having to talk about his state of affairs. He's now alone and the only people willing to care for him are probably very few old friends he didn't alienate, yet. The rest is just after his money. Steve Jobs was an infamously bad father and husband, just as Elo…

>Elon Musks own daughter is attacking him online. Think about that. If you read Walter Isaacson's book on Musk it's pretty clear that his kids do love him, he does care for them well, and that his "daughter" fell into pretty extremist ideology.

That may well be. I'm also extrapolating from what I read about his upbringing. That's pretty extreme. He was severely abused by his father (possibly even sexually) and bullied by his peers. His "superpower" is an insatiable desire to proof something forever. Also asking Epstein (post-conviction) for an invitation to a wild party on his island is allowing for conclusions that are hardly flattering. And I mean that in a way that is orthogonal to happiness.

Re: undefined

#56

Post by konmok »

Dig1t wrote: post #46
raffael_de wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But didn't all those people you list fail at the end of the day? Bill Gates is not just unfaithful, he even considered slipping his wife STD medication to avoid having to talk about his state of affairs. He's now alone and the only people willing to care for him are probably very few old friends he didn't alienate, yet. The rest is just after his money. Steve Jobs was an infamously bad father and husband, just as Elo…

>Elon Musks own daughter is attacking him online. Think about that. If you read Walter Isaacson's book on Musk it's pretty clear that his kids do love him, he does care for them well, and that his "daughter" fell into pretty extremist ideology.

Why the scare quotes? Would you like to be more explicit about which ideology you think she fell into, and why you consider it extremist?

edit: this book? https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/1/23895069/walter-isaacson-...

Re: undefined

#57

Post by raffael_de »

FeteCommuniste wrote: post #40
raffael_de wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But didn't all those people you list fail at the end of the day? Bill Gates is not just unfaithful, he even considered slipping his wife STD medication to avoid having to talk about his state of affairs. He's now alone and the only people willing to care for him are probably very few old friends he didn't alienate, yet. The rest is just after his money. Steve Jobs was an infamously bad father and husband, just as Elo…

Graham's essay seems to be mostly about material success, which the listed people have in spades.

You're probably right. But then he is wrong anyway. Almost all the famous founders of the most successful companies the US produced are or have been infamously mean. Sometimes they had more likeable co-fouders like Paul Allen or Wozniak, but his little opinion piece falls flat nonetheless. He is contradicting himself in his own self-righteous thought bubble. I just chose not to participate.

Re: undefined

#58

Post by wat10000 »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #41

> It struck me recently how few of the most successful people I know are mean. There are exceptions, but remarkably few. *mean to Paul Graham. I’ve worked with a lot of mean people in important positions in my career, and they all have a kind, charismatic side when they need to. Those same people are awful to subordinates or people that can’t do something for them. Paul is high value to many people, so they treat him…

Isn't that why a lot of us went into tech in the first place, because other people's minds are weird and confusing and they keep doing inexplicable stuff like saying things that actually mean something totally different, or not thinking about how something works when trying to use it?

Re: undefined

#59

Post by wat10000 »

stickfigure wrote: post #35
humannature1 wrote: post #20

I wish this was true. Yet, I think we all have some skin in the game to why this article rings false. When it comes to getting an advantage, people often look the other way at meanness. For example, it’s easy to complain about how Amazon treats their employees. Yet, we choose to buy from Amazon because it’s convenient, cheap, and everyone else is doing it. We might see an organization treat someone else unfairly but…

I don't think Amazon treats their employees badly. Warehouse workers aren't compensated like software engineers, but what do you expect? I'm sure there are shitty managers at Amazon (in warehouses and in software) but by and large I believe blue collar Amazon workers have it about as well as blue collar workers everywhere. Maybe better. I don't really see the problem here.

Low-wage workers are generally treated pretty badly. Maybe Amazon is the same as the rest, but that doesn't mean they treat their workers well.

Re: undefined

#60

Post by Herring »

wat10000 wrote: post #58
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #41

> It struck me recently how few of the most successful people I know are mean. There are exceptions, but remarkably few. *mean to Paul Graham. I’ve worked with a lot of mean people in important positions in my career, and they all have a kind, charismatic side when they need to. Those same people are awful to subordinates or people that can’t do something for them. Paul is high value to many people, so they treat him…

Isn't that why a lot of us went into tech in the first place, because other people's minds are weird and confusing and they keep doing inexplicable stuff like saying things that actually mean something totally different, or not thinking about how something works when trying to use it?

Read more, like biographies and good fiction. Meditate and see into yourself. Understanding minds is a skill like any other, and gets better with practice.
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