You're not a hustler. You're a bull-shitter | Hacker News Reader

You're not a hustler. You're a bull-shitter

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75 pointsjoeyclover33 comments

The story he cites makes no sense to me. The pheasant achieved its goal with the help of bullshit, it wasn't the bullshit that caused its downfall. The goal was the problem, not the bullshit.

Am I the only one wondering why it took 4 days for the pheasant to reach the top of the tree? Obviously to eat more bullshit it would have had to fly back to the ground to get some. It should have just eaten enough on the first day to get enough energy to reach the top. . .

> it wasn't the bullshit that caused its downfall

this wasn't stated, so i don't understand your complaint. the post even says "Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won’t keep you there."

Many tops don't require staying there. In the age of golden parachutes for executes, why would anyone want to stay at the top ?

Besides, staying at the top of a company or even country requires things very different from what you'd want to. The game changes, but it doesn't change from being a good bullshitter to being good at the job ... it requires changing from being good at self-promotion to being good at the opposite: not letting others successfully self-promote.

Besides, all of western industry runs on favors and counter-favors. Take the career of Stephen Elop, and explain to me how this person gets any job more important that toilet cleaner ...

His career:

1) Lotus Development Corporation -> victim of hostile takeover by IBM

2) CIO for Boston Chicken -> chapter 11 bankruptcy

3) Macromedia -> Dissolved after takeover, his resignation was demanded by by Adobe a few months later

4) COO of Juniper Networks -> he was legendary at this company for his incompetence

5) Head of Microsoft office -> where he "successfully" "held off" competitors to office like Google Docs (well done !)

6) CEO of Nokia -> google "burning platform". Half the company was sold off because it was the only way to avoid bankruptcy

7) Rehired at Microsoft as Executive Vice President (along with the devices unit of Nokia, which has since been fully disbanded). His job ended ... when Microsoft terminated

  a) Stephen Elop

  b) 7800 people, mostly those working for Stephen Elop

  c) another 1600 people (later)

Note: Microsoft paid 7.6 BILLION dollars for the privilege of not having Stephen Elop in the company, and even that absurd number doesn't include several extra charges he caused: 1 billion the year after he left for eliminating the last of his department, the 7.3 billion for the Nokia acquisition he talked them into and the $300 million that Stephen Elop his Nokia position in the first place.

8) Telstra -> he is "Group Executive Technology, Innovation and Strategy", stock price has dropped by a little over 33% since his joining

And let me tell you one thing is for sure. There has been ZERO Technology innovation or strategy in Telstra. Zero. In fact Telstra is systematically losing marketshare because of enormous gaps exactly there. (Not that that's particularly strange for a telco incumbent, but still).

In case you wonder, yes, I have encountered "guidance" from Mr. Elop twice in my career, and I have a central policy to my current and future employment: if my employer so much as makes a deal with Mr. Elop, I immediately look for employment elsewhere.

Every single one of his jobs turned into a complete disaster for anyone working for him, and only his first and third positions did not turn into disasters for shareholders of the companies he worked for. Whether all of it is his fault ? Of course not. But at his pay grade, he needs to be able to turn things around and ... to put things VERY mildly, he's not up to that (or even up for that. His behavior has always been to systematically eliminate any political threat to his position, including of course anyone showing even slight traces of rational thought. Ironically, this has often helped him avoid blame. For instance, he claims that his decisions at Nokia were supported by the entire management staff under him, and they were ... after he replaced most of them. There was collective action by company directors, who went to the board of Nokia directly to point out just how bad his decision was. But Elop had cemented his position in the board, not by rational thought, but by money)

And allow me to add, as a commentary on this guy, just listen to his own words:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owvtKGlYFVA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOxCtZSi_Jw (he is explaining, yes really, "how to create longevity for your company")

So I think this conclusively illustrates that you can be incredibly successful while being, not just incompetent, but literally be a shit version of king Midas. Everything this guy has ever touched turned to shit in record short time. Everything.

He is known for immediately surrounding himself with yes-men, for constantly delivering ridiculously bad motivational speeches (and I mean ridiculously bad, as in 1960 B horror movie bad, as in people laughing when they know it can get them fired), for immediately biting off the head of anyone doing the slightest bit to criticize him (including firing people 5 levels below him for this).

As an executive to one of the most important companies providing vital services to 30+ million people, he cannot get a room for 30 people to fill up ... What is there to say about just how incompetent this guy is ?

I really love this rant. When I was younger I had lots of run-ins with "hustler" bullshitter types in business. Some of them were extremely negative. Eventually I learned how to identify and categorically dismiss not only these types of people but this entire philosophy of business. It's all bullshit.

The funny thing is that most business schools drill "customer focus" into their students' heads. But I suppose it's one thing to gain knowledge second-hand, and another to gain it through life experience :(

Customer focus is pretty easy to misinterpret as "snow over the customer to sell them in the short term so you can flip it to dumb investors."

It's also sometimes a bit more honest in the sense that a lot of these biz-school graduates have no idea about anything other than business. Being customer focused means gathering what the customer wants and then promising to deliver it and then attempting to do so... and finding out it violates the laws of physics or costs 1000X what they estimated.

Yep, people just hear what they want to hear.

As an aside, I think a more telling example of "customer focus" would be how a business handles things after they "find out it violates the laws of physics" etc. I get the feeling a lot of the "hustle" crowd would deal with that by bending the truth. Customer focus would be: keeping the clients informed early as possible, and some sort of gesture to make things up to them. Basically, "do unto others"

To be fair, customers are as guilty of that as those business types are.

There's plenty of customers who'll hear what they want to hear ... no matter what the supplier's engineers say (if they're even consulted at all).

Probably not going to be a popular article here given the number of people building businesses to flip in a few years time for early-retirement money...

Au contraire, this kind of rage-fluff is so popular that we have to penalize it on HN. It's not that it's wrong; it's too right. Nobody's going to disagree, and if they do the rage will turn on them.

It's sort of interesting how a supermajority view can feel like a minority view, but that's not the sort of thing a discussion can get going around.

I think your interpreting the wrong definition.

Just like hacker doesn't always mean breaking into computer systems.

So, yes your right to not work for people that break into systems and hustle("con") people for money, but if the definition is:

http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/hustle

verb. work hard make effort

devote apply knuckle down try

dig turn

direct address peg away

give be diligent persevere

give all one's got be industrious plug

give best shot bear down pour it on

give old college try bend pull out all stops

grind buckle down scratch

hammer away commit study

hit the ball concentrate sweat

hustle dedicate throw

This fits more with what my thinking is about what it means to hustle. It definitely can have a 'fraud' or 'swindle' connotation, but not always. To me, it just means to work hard and persevere despite initial failures.

It seemed right to me. How many industries do you see people on social media, usually start-ups, talking big game about their daily grind and how much involved they are in the work. Many times these individuals are just starting and while they're hustling now they're probably not going to last 'hustling' at their current rate. If you're busy talking about the hustle and not actually hustling you might just be hyping your shit up to people to make your new business work.

A hustler doesn't necessarily aim to con people but they con themselves into thinking what they're doing is more groundbreaking than it is.

+1, I'm pretty sure the term was adopted from gangster rap where it roughly translates to "working hard to make money". I've seen it in use by people who don't work in sales.

I don't think he is: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/hustle

"Obtain illicitly or by forceful action."

"Pressure someone into doing something."

"Sell aggressively."

"A fraud or swindle."

There's also "hustler" (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/hustler): "A person adept at aggressive selling or illicit dealing."

There are uses of the word that don't have negative connotations but in the context we generally hear it in around startups, I think the negative connotations are still appropriate.

This article would be much stronger if it referenced a concrete example.

The author argues bs is endemic to "quick-flip startups," but then clarifies that many of these startups are actually good-- not bs.

but no startups in either category are named, and the distinction is unclear in the abstract.

Anyway, I don't get it.

I don't think hustle necessarily translate to BS. Having worked with a team of hustlers and a team that were not, it was clear to me hustlers get the job done better with more enthusiasm and energy. The team that were not hustlers seemed to have dreaded their jobs and complained way too much. You can guess which team members got the promotions.

Don't confuse hustle with enthusiasm!

Enthusiasms is good - it drives people there is no misrepresentation involved.

Hustling is when you cross the line and start bs'ing people for your personal gains.

Well most start ups are bullshit and as a result most do fail.

"Hustle" is a word used often on a sports field to basically mean "work hard." In business environments, this is what it almost always means - someone who goes out and works hard to get the job done.

It just so happens the work these people do often happens to be bullshitting. So a hustle in that context could just be bullshitting more aggressively.

Dont confuse 'Hustle' i.e. to run or work energetically with 'Hustler' i.e. slang term for one who swindles (oversimplified, but this is the definition used in the article)

with regards to [0] You're using definition 1. the writer is referring to definition 4

although it does seem like the writer is ascribing uses of definition 3 instead to definition 4.

[0] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/hustle

I tested company app whole night and fixed most bugs, I am such a hustler. I tended to garden whole day, my hands and back hurt from all that hustling.

Am I using it right since it simply means work hard?

Huh, having played sports for over a decade, I don't perceive "hustle" to mean "work hard". I understand it to mean "hurry up" or "move quickly from A to B". Usually, I hear "work hard" referred to with "grinder" and "doing your job".

I think hustle is really doing whatever you can to get from A to B, and in the context of a startup, "hustlers" use their bullshit - whether that's pizazz and shiny things and empty or extreme promises - to move from objective to objective in pursuit of the goal.

I don't think you're wrong, just a slightly different perspective.

IMX the usage isn't quite the same. In sports, hustle seems to mean extra effort to be in the right place at the right time - e.g. to seize an opportunity to make a shot, or challenge an attacker to block/prevent one. In business, right place and right time are part of it, but there's also an aspect of trying something novel or non-obvious. In some cases, that means pushing legal/ethical boundaries. That connotation, absent in the sports version, seems to be what the OP is objecting to.

P.S. Also, what gr3yh47 said. That's a whole different meaning of "hustle" that's probably not meant by people who describe themselves that way but which often applies to them nonetheless.

Typical start up operator is a bullshitter. They bullshit investors for money. It's completely normal and legal.

If you don't bullshit - you don't get funded. Simple.

Theranos for example was a typical bullshit company on steroids.

Fake it until you make it is widely accepted norm.

It’s all about appearance of intent and managing expectations. If you cannot deliver, don’t make a promise. Also, individuals tend to have their own range of fudge factor, think “claimed divided by actual.”

George Carlin on BS:

http://zenpencils.com/comic/25-george-carlin-on-bullshit-exp...

I can’t imagine this article will produce an interesting discussion. The article is entirely vague, and addresses the issues in only the broadest of platitudes, without even a single concrete example. The whole article could be more concisely written as “Some founders act in ways I morally questionable, and I don’t like it.” Not exactly fertile ground for debate.

I'm from South Dakota, where pheasants are plentiful. I have seen zillions of them in cornfields, not a single one in a tree.

Then again, we didn't have many trees....

this article is bullshit, but i can see the hustle, no?

OP should post this on the /r/politics

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