No Brilliant Jerks
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No Brilliant Jerks
1–10 of 66 posts
Re: No Brilliant Jerks
#2Not directly related to the content of the article, but...
There are jerks everywhere, and there always will be. Like diseases, tornadoes and mosquitoes, they are part of life.
I think our energy is better spent creating an env that empowers nice people and encourage them to defend themselves. An env that calls out bad behavior.
It's way more durable.
Re: No Brilliant Jerks
#3The only thing that matters is who determines what a “jerk” is. The same behavior may be excused in one person and condemned in another.
It’s one thing to write this, but quite another to actually rein in a CEO with a ton of clout and success at their back (Adam Neumann 2020 is not the same as Adam Neumann 2018). Hand waving “oh well you have to curate the culture” isn’t enough.
Re: No Brilliant Jerks
#4We have seen decades of general stagnation compared to decades of new inventions and growth before that. [Just imagine a bunch of quotes from Peter Thiel here. You read or heard the argument already.]
Good chunk of it is probably due to our societies getting physically older. But how much can be attributed to the culture of being nice, getting along, not rocking the boat, undermining people, etc?
OP ironically even advises to be contrarian to the contrarians. Pretty ingenious rhetoric.
Re: No Brilliant Jerks
#5I have a problem with Nassim Taleb. On the one hand I think he has been a colossal jerk to many good people who don't deserve it. On the other hand he keeps dropping pearls of wisdom that I value highly.
If I were an employer I wouldn't want an employee with his level of toxicity laying waste to morale. But it could be exactly that kind of employee who could make the company profitable with the power of one brain.
So I'd go with a default policy of no brilliant jerks, but be willing to override it for some values of brilliant and jerk.
Re: No Brilliant Jerks
#6The only thing that matters is who determines what a “jerk” is. The same behavior may be excused in one person and condemned in another. It’s one thing to write this, but quite another to actually rein in a CEO with a ton of clout and success at their back (Adam Neumann 2020 is not the same as Adam Neumann 2018). Hand waving “oh well you have to curate the culture” isn’t enough.
Unrelated to the content of the comment, but since this comment was immediately dead (saw it at "0 minutes ago"): what's with the new moderation technique of just marking comments of some users as dead from the moment they post?
I've seen this more and more recently. Is that a new approach to shadow banning? Is that automatically applied when multiple comments are flagged by some amount of people? Are the affected users aware, or is that hidden from them while they're logged in?
Re: No Brilliant Jerks
#7I have a problem with Nassim Taleb. On the one hand I think he has been a colossal jerk to many good people who don't deserve it. On the other hand he keeps dropping pearls of wisdom that I value highly. If I were an employer I wouldn't want an employee with his level of toxicity laying waste to morale. But it could be exactly that kind of employee who could make the company profitable with the power of one brain. So…
If the jerk is brilliant enough maybe you can buffer it somehow and include it in the structures, eg a dedicated jerk handler etc.
Re: No Brilliant Jerks
#8The only thing that matters is who determines what a “jerk” is. The same behavior may be excused in one person and condemned in another. It’s one thing to write this, but quite another to actually rein in a CEO with a ton of clout and success at their back (Adam Neumann 2020 is not the same as Adam Neumann 2018). Hand waving “oh well you have to curate the culture” isn’t enough.
Unrelated to the content of the comment, but since this comment was immediately dead (saw it at "0 minutes ago"): what's with the new moderation technique of just marking comments of some users as dead from the moment they post? I've seen this more and more recently. Is that a new approach to shadow banning? Is that automatically applied when multiple comments are flagged by some amount of people? Are the affected us…
Are you talking about draw_down’s comment? Doesn’t look dead to me.
Re: No Brilliant Jerks
#9There's a point where a Jerk becomes Toxic; you shouldn't have people that are trending towards toxic. It's obvious when a person gets to the toxic stage, but you have to put up barriers before that stage, otherwise bad behavior will escalate to the point of toxicity.
Re: No Brilliant Jerks
#10I have a problem with Nassim Taleb. On the one hand I think he has been a colossal jerk to many good people who don't deserve it. On the other hand he keeps dropping pearls of wisdom that I value highly. If I were an employer I wouldn't want an employee with his level of toxicity laying waste to morale. But it could be exactly that kind of employee who could make the company profitable with the power of one brain. So…
Exactly!! I can’t stand his smug, self-satisfied style, and yet he has some of the most insightful thoughts around. One day, maybe I’ll grind my teeth through one of his books.