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Comment by jfischer | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like the leadership at your startup needs to make the hard decision to fire the co-founder outright or to reducing him to a very limited consulting role (no coding, just answering questions about his code).

I think that you would have a great story to tell to future interviewers if you can get the bad code under control and launch the product (even if the startup fails). I would have more confidence in someone who overcame adversity than someone who never faced any problems.

The "+2.5-3 sigma technical and +3-3.5 sigma big picture" stuff would be a big turn-off to me. There's a lot of really smart and talented people in this industry.

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I think that you would have a great story to tell to future interviewers if you can get the bad code under control and launch the product

Great point. Thanks.

The "+2.5-3 sigma technical and +3-3.5 sigma big picture" stuff would be a big turn-off to me. There's a lot of really smart and talented people in this industry.

Sorry, I guess that does sound arrogant. To be fair, there are a lot of +3, +4 sigma minds in technology. Most of the programmers I've worked with I would put in the "+3 sigma technical" category (because I've worked with some awesome people at great companies). My "sigma" estimates were relative to the white-collar world in general. My point is that I have more than enough to make a great VC, EIR, et al with sufficient mentoring, not that I'm any kind of stand-out (relative to the HN-sphere, I'm definitely not, as there are a lot of people smarter than I am here).

Hehe, I suppose that if I have to ask, it's probably not a good sign about my own "sigma", but what's this +3 sigma stuff anyways?

From what I understand, it must be some way to asses someone's intelligence, like the IQ, but I've never heard of it.

Come to think about the IQ, it follows a normal distribution, and sigma is how we note standard deviation. Is this the kind of sigma you are talking about?

I don't know what it is either, but guessed along the lines you are guessing. Of course, a Z-value of 3.09 would put you in the 99.9 percentile, so that seems far fetched.

I think you are correct with your assumptions. But I think he needs to explain himself in this department. I didn't think it added any value to his post since it is unsupported. Maybe he could have quoted his GPA, or IQ[still dubious]. I think most people don't put their trust in numbers either way, they go for what did you accomplished[especially VC, they want to know the numbers behind your financial efforts]. I was quite surprised at how hard some of the other posters judged his "big picture" evaluation. I think maybe he has a problem with acting not thinking. I think he knows what to do, but just simply not doing it.

You're +3-3.5 sigma on big picture stuff???

LOL. How do you come to that conclusion?

By "big picture" I mean aesthetics, design, and also strategic resource allocation. I'm in my late 20s and know for a fact that, with a year of study, I could do better than 50-80% of society's major decision makers if in their place.

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