Books Warren Buffett thinks you should read | Hacker News Reader

Books Warren Buffett thinks you should read

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153 pointsohjeez25 comments

Some of the books look interesting.

I am, however, dubious about Jack Welch as a role model. Steve Ballmer's adoption of Welch's employee performance system did more damage to Microsoft than any other single policy I can think of.

So, for one book at least, "meh" with a couple levels of indirection. Some of the others are on my list, though.

(I thought that The Making of the President by Theodore White was really good. It's helpful to remind ourselves that politics has always been a crappy scene, and that we shouldn't expect things to be automatically any better today than they were 50 years ago).

Hopefully people are intelligent enough to know not to take any advice, no matter if it comes from a book or a person, too literally.

I read Welch's books and it was inspiring. Doesn't mean I ran back to my employees and enforced everything I read.

BTW I agree that some of the management styles were proven harmful. You can say the same about Andy Grove's management though. Times changed, society evolved. Still very helpful to know what was tried and what worked at what time

"Hopefully people are intelligent enough to know not to take any advice, no matter if it comes from a book or a person, too literally."

Ironically, Buffett is quoted in the article as saying, "We don't read other people's opinions. We want to get the facts, and then think."

True to that. But ones opinion should be shaped by others, not acquired.

My rule of thumb is to never turn more than 90° based on one single feedback/fact. It's far from perfect but helps with the overload of mis/informations. Instead of questioning everything and researching on my own, I just moderate the "intake".

I remember reading the Welch book and finding it terrible. It seemed to me mainly a litany of great things he did and great people he hired. No real insight, just an egotist full of himself. Maybe am I just too low on the totem pole to appreciate his way of thinking?

I had the same feeling about that book.

Often it's worth reading something you disagree with just to understand the thought process behind it, if nothing else than not to make the same mistake if you are utterly against it.

>I am, however, dubious about Jack Welch as a role model. Steve Ballmer's adoption of Welch's employee performance system did more damage to Microsoft than any other single policy I can think of.

I think people can apply something as clear as an equation the wrong way, let alone what a person says. Just because I can't make the maths work doesn't mean mathematics don't work. Maybe I'm just clumsy.

I've become aware of the resentment some people have towards Welch after reading "Winning" (which I liked a lot). I'm not familiar with the controversy, but from what I have seen, Welch is revered by a lot of people too.

It appears GE's valuation increased 4000% when he was at the helm. Though the S&P was +1400% in 2000 with respect to 1980. A bull market.

Here's GE under Welch during the boom:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v4hgl8zpzrtg34k/Welch_GE_SP.png?dl...

Here's GE from 2001 when he left (dealing with two crashes must have been terrible for Immelt):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/k6gk4vztyzvxnp0/GE_2001_2016.png?d...

CEOs ability to impact a large company performance is very limited. Most likely GE's performance is explained by it's history, luck and/or leverage. I also read Welch's books and am not a big fan, pretty standard MBA (though I don't think Jack ever got one), manage by buzzword, process oriented stuff. Still an interesting read but I wouldn't jump to a conclusion that by applying Jack's ideas you are going to get your company to those 4000% valuation increase.

> CEOs ability to impact a large company performance is very limited.

How would you explain the relationship between Apple and Steve Jobs.

So for one thing correlation does not equate causation.

Steve Jobs was co-founder of Apple, not just a CEO taking on some random company. So Apple was to some extent his creation and he has guided that creation towards some of his goals from the beginning. He had influence on the culture, what kind of people got hired, etc. from day 1. That said luck certainly played a significant role. The economy played a role. He was at the right place at the right time (and more than once at that). At the end of the day you can always back-splain any success story but for every successful Steve Jobs there can be 100 failed Steve Jobs's that didn't have the lucky circumstances and you've never heard of. Our mind likes to believe the "Story" of Steve Jobs but that's us after the fact. Take Steve Jobs to a different company in a different era and the outcome could have been different. He's definitely special in many ways but anyone who has worked for a large company knows there are lots of factors that a CEO is unable to control, most factors for that matter, and there are lots of people who could potentially be just as successful as the CEO that hits gold.

http://www.inc.com/will-yakowicz/study-luck-looking-the-part...

EDIT: So another thought is that there's certainly some value in looking at the success stories and finding commonalities, including qualities of management. But to look at single data point of a successful company and attribute that to some management philosophy (let's say "Six Sigma", or only being in the business that you're #1 at) and then try to take that into a different situations is not science, it's religion. There are people who are very successful (let's say Buffet) or inspiring (let's say Obama) but I don't think any of that boils down to a recipe or guarantees of success. It's just not simple cause and effect. Even though we want to believe otherwise...

>I wouldn't jump to a conclusion that by applying Jack's ideas you are going to get your company to those 4000% valuation increase.

The reason I mentioned the raging bull S&P (+1400℅) during Welch's tenure and the reason I added the S&P chart was precisely to suggest the possibility of correlation and looking at the performance of each within the context they inherited the company.

The point I was making is that the controversy around Jack Welch as a person has no effect on what you can learn from him as a brain. Imagine if people wouldn't read Mein Kampf because Hitler was "not nice".

Now, you are warning people that there's no direct cause to effect relationship between the advice in the book and the 4000℅.. Is that warranted, though? That would probably be named "cargo cult reading".

A bit disappointed that pretty much all of them seem to be investment/finance related (with 2 being general history).

I would expected to see much more general philosophy books on that list.

I don't really see the benefit to reading books on investing. For the middle to upper middle class, it's extremely straightforward. Avoid taxes wherever legally possible. Invest in index funds and bonds w/ low fees. Don't panic when there's a downturn.

What's the fun in that ;) And how am I going to make any money with my investment books and advice?

1000 pages a day? Maybe, in the course of a long day, I can read 200 or 250 pages of straightforward narrative fiction or history. I would have doubts about a financial adviser who told me that he read six hundred pages a day.

Is there a way to get Poor Charlie's Almanack in electronic format? I looked for it on Amazon, but no luck.

You can get it direct from Charlie. https://www.poorcharliesalmanack.com/ You can even get an signed copy.

It's basically a coffee table book, so I doubt there is an electronic version.

A big chunk of the material (I hesitate to say 'all') is transcripts from various talks that you can legally find on the web (like "The Psychology of Misjudgment"), so maybe a good place to start is looking at the table of contents and searching for each.

Not available in electronic format, unfortunately. It's very well illustrated though.

I read it, twice in fact, and can vouch it is a very, very good book. It's basically a collection of charlie munger's speeches and writings. An example of one such speech is here: https://old.ycombinator.com/munger.html

If you like that, you'd probably like "Seeking Wisdom" which is part of the same publishing house. (And not sure if this matters, but it's a favorite of Nassim Taleb's as well).

https://www.poorcharliesalmanack.com/orderform_2016.php

It's a popular library item: http://www.worldcat.org/title/poor-charlies-almanack-the-wit...

Many public libraries now include scanners at which books may be duplicated. There are guides (a good one is on Wikimedia) for creating PDF or DJVU output from scanned images. This is also one of the best uses of a larger-format tablet (9-10"). Sadly a neglected form-factor, and sadly, no current mainstream tablet is really an acceptable user environment (Android, iOS).

You can find it as a good quality PDF from the internet but there isn't official version sadly. As someone who reads 99% of my books in Kindle or on iPad it's a shame you can't even buy lot of books in electronic format.

Some people are so poor, all they have is money.

Why is there not a single work of fiction or poetry in that list? Surely Mr. Buffett think you should read more than just business books.

Maybe he doesn't consider himself a qualified authority in areas outside his primary domain.

Since he wouldn't ask a poet where to invest, maybe he feels it would take too much hubris to offer his advice on poetry.

On the other hand if you want other CEOs describing their favorite books, often fiction they've enjoyed, valuewalk has some:

http://www.valuewalk.com/2014/09/warren-buffett-favorite-boo...

e.g.:

Oprah - To Kill a Mockingbird

Zuckerberg - Aeneid

Bezos - Remains of the Day

Tillerson - Atlas Shrugged

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