Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#81

Post by arethuza » Thu, Mar 20, 2014, 9:11 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #34

Tloewald wrote: post #18

If you include Sir Isaac Newton in a case against employing geniuses, your case is pretty thin.

Why? From all I have read about Newton, he would have been the employee from hell. A genius as a mathematician and physicist, yes; but a terrible employee.

He became Warden of the Royal Mint and became rather passionate about his new role - even to the extent of working as an undercover agent and personally leading the prosecution of "coiners" in court.

[NB For a fictionalized, but hugely entertaining, account of the relevant time in history I can recommend Neal Stephenson's wonderful "Baroque Cycle" - Newton is a major character.]

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#82

Post by rwallace » Thu, Mar 20, 2014, 9:12 PM UTC

d23 wrote: post #19

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

Take on smaller projects that you can feasibly finish. Finish them. Don't let yourself take on any more large projects until you've built up some track record of finishing small ones.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#83

Post by JabavuAdams » Thu, Mar 20, 2014, 9:12 PM UTC

d23 wrote: post #19

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

Practice.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#84

Post by JabavuAdams » Thu, Mar 20, 2014, 9:14 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #45

spinlock wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I really need to work at this. I definitely have always fit the "genius but doesn't finish things" description. I've been working at this hard for 8 years because it really has negatively affected my life. I'm making some progress but it's really slow and if I slack off even a little I tend to lose everything. It's hard.

Yup, but it's worth it.

Also, allow yourself some blow-out projects. You don't have to finish everything, but you want to become reliable. I.e. if you say you'll do something, then you'll do it.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#85

Post by JabavuAdams » Thu, Mar 20, 2014, 9:17 PM UTC

exarch wrote: post #48

Very dated perceptions. We know now, for example, that those who stammer and struggle for words often simply possess brains that are more full of information, rather than possessing less efficient or organized ones. In a knowledge economy built on creativity, I'll take Different Thinkers over Cogs of Constancy any day.

Yeah, but you probably want a mix for your team.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#86

Post by carboncreek » Thu, Mar 20, 2014, 9:17 PM UTC

> You have lived twenty-five or thirty years without making a profit on your life; how can I expect that you will be a profit-maker for me?

Well, imagine that I have all your noble qualities, but I just couldn't get the $20,000 that was paid out to you in your sophomore year.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#87

Post by thebokehwokeh2 » Thu, Mar 20, 2014, 9:17 PM UTC

Working at a startup helmed by a "brilliant" man as mentioned in the article, I wholeheartedly agree. So much hand waving. So little execution. One month, we were doing one thing that "had to be in the app". Another month, something else. Neither would get the actual attention that needed for them to be implemented properly, and nothing of value was produced.

Society places too much importance on the buds of ideas. True, an idea can change the world. But what gets lost in the shuffle is the fact that what truly matters is in those ideas being executed and turned into something tangible.

The charismatic idea men are a dime a dozen. I'm sure everyone here has worked with some hand-waving, smooth talking salesman who wows investors, then fail hard at meeting promises. It's those who can execute that are truly transformative.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#88

Post by michaelochurch » Thu, Mar 20, 2014, 9:19 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #46

michaelochurch wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His use of "brilliant" has little to do with IQ. It's a conflation of (a) creativity (which correlates, as he observes, with manic-depressive patterns and unreasonable expectations of others) and (b) superficial charisma (which correlates with narcissism and substance abuse). Those are two types of "flashiness" that he makes the mistake of conflating. I'm category (a): creative, prone to mood swings, basically reliab…

Does "+3 sigma creativity" actually mean anything? (I'm aware enough of the rough technical definition, I mean in the sense that if you think there are 500,000 super special people in the U.S. can you do anything useful to find them?)

I was just using it ("+3 sigma") to mean "high-level" creativity and could have just as easily said "99.9th percentile" or some other number. No, I don't know of a good way to test for it.

My point is that there's a strong negative correlation, especially at the competitive upper reaches, between creativity and the sort os superficial reliability that (a) tends to determine a person's ability to advance in organizations, and (b) you'd probably want in someone you put in front of difficult clients on a regular basis.

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#89

Post by badman_ting » Thu, Mar 20, 2014, 9:23 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #77

badman_ting wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird thing is, why didn't he hire this person in a way that posed less risk to his business? Why is he handing over a gigantic check worth 140,000 of today's dollars? Isn't this person crazy, or at least a terrible businessman? Yet here we all are, listening to his advice. The longer I think about this the more I dislike it.

Um, he's using this whole episode as an example of what not to do, not what to do. He says right out that hiring that person that way was a mistake. The whole point of the article is to help people avoid the mistakes the author made. How many articles that get to HN's front page are basically the same thing?

Right, but I'm saying it's the wrong counterexample.

This is "I got fucked up and crashed my Ford into a tree, so I'm never buying a Ford again."

Re: Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men (1924)

#90

Post by nthj » Thu, Mar 20, 2014, 9:27 PM UTC

aaron-lebo wrote: post #72

cbp wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And since those qualities are so out of reach for techies they're looked down on.

This is an interesting comment. My visceral reaction was that it was a huge generalization, but when I think about it more, I do have a difficult time thinking of people that are both charismatic and tech-savvy. The obvious example is Jobs, but even he wasn't the "tech" guy in a sense, we always associate that with Woz or others. I guess for a lot of people here Musk is maybe an example of it? Is there some left/righ…

> Is there some left/right brain separation that keeps techies from being charistmatic

Nah. It's just that most techies are too busy doing brain things to learn soft skills like how to interact with people.

— a guy who struggled with being pretty awkward in high school, worked hard at socializing for a few years, and now does very well with business meetings / networking / parties even though he'd prefer to be delivering code

P.S.: "So if intelligence in itself is not a factor in popularity, why are smart kids so consistently unpopular? The answer, I think, is that they don't really want to be popular."

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html