Hacker News Reader

Comment by hassel | Hacker News Reader

I've seen a bunch of these articles recently, and I'm tempted to agree to a certain extent. But I feel that its a bit misdirected maybe ? Seems to be plenty of other positions where ppl "behave" much like this, were it hurts just as much.

View on HN

Agreed that its mostly empirical and that correlation does not imply causation.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "other positions" though? Do you know of specific cases where startups have failed as a result of the said personality of founders?

With my limited experience in the field of it, 10 years at some isp's and a few startups. Its seems to me that ppl how score less in terms of "agreeableness" have a way of getting in to positions where they are allowed to act out on their "entrepreneurship", since its often recognised as a sign of good leadership. Positions lower then CEO, maybe CTO or even further down the ladder, "head of yadayada" reporting to C*O's. I've nothing solid to support this though. But I've seen ppl (and companies) having to pay high prices for having these entrepreneurs not doing what they're actually good at. Source: gut feeling.

Edit: I have some, not sure I'm the right guy to disclose though.

Well the point of the article is that the said personality type makes good entrepreneurs. Its totally understandable that they would not be the best of employees (which is what you are describing).

Yes indeed. Maybe I've suffered from a broken recruitment effort in my case.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com