Comment by TangoTrotFox | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TangoTrotFox | Hacker News Reader

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Absolutely.

A big part of the problem with many projects, or even companies, is that leadership is too soft and so you end up surrounded by incompetent individuals who either through delusion, or Dunning Kruger, have difficulty assessing their own ability. This results in incredibly inefficient and 'noisy' (as in signal:noise ratio) working environments. 'Hard' leadership gets rid of the slack and is willing to tell people when they're screwing up. This means you're going to be surrounded by the best, and anybody that's not carrying 100% of their weight is going to get removed. Of course you can have a problem there if the leadership is brutal and incompetent, but brutal and competent is a phenomenally desirable mix -- and that really sums up Linus, perhaps to extreme on both sides of the equation.

And in my opinion that really sums up many of the most successful leaders, both past and present. Though of course one huge difference between a Steve Jobs and a Torvalds is that Linus' work and behavior is, like Linux, completely open. Steve Jobs' was able to keep his persona restrained to within corporate avenues, with the rest of the world shown an extremely sculpted and fake image, the depths of contrast between the two only coming out after his death.

There are plenty of examples of great leaders who were direct, driven, and hard, yet still treated people with respect. It's not an easy trick to pull of, which is why people like Steve Jobs just said fuck it.

Could you post a few examples?

Woz seems like a nice guy and Warren Buffet likewise. Both seems to have worked in small teams.

What are Larry Page and Sergey Brin's reputation in this regard?

Since we're talking about the open source world, how about Guido van Rossum?

Paul Graham seems like he's probably a direct yet civil guy. http://paulgraham.com/safe.html

Elon Musk isn't abusive. He extremely driven and demanding but that's not the same as abusive.

I could expand the list quite a bit if you want but do you really believe it'd be a challenge for me to list important leaders who aren't assholes? BTW, I don't know these people so I might get it wrong regarding some of the people I'd list.

Googlers/Xooglers describe Larry Page as "rude" "egomaniacal" "jerk". [1] And fitting the typical pattern, the same individuals also describe him as "brilliant", an "intellectually honest person" and with a "vision stronger than arguably anyone in the industry." The reason you listed Brin and Page is because you know nothing about them outside of their carefully crafted public personas, which again tend to contrast quite starkly to these individuals' private behavior. But with Linus he acts as he is rather than crafting some fake public persona.

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As an aside, this is all very reminiscent of politics. We collectively claim we absolutely hate politicians who give nonanswers or focus tested and completely 'fake' responses to practically everything. Yet oddly enough, these people make up very near 100% of all politicians elected. Why might this be? It's because when we find a politician that does actually give his honest view on things we freak out and look for somebody 'better'. And who's better? The liar that tells you what you want to hear, instead of what he really thinks. And we get people that are smiles and honey on the surface, and two-faced corrupt liars on the inside. And then we act confused about why what they do and what they say don't match up.

[1] - https://www.businessinsider.com/googlers-say-larry-page-is-a...

Your article cites examples of behavior that wasn't abusive just essentric and annoying. These guys seem fine. I wasn't trying to list saints.

Just eccentric and annoying to you. This entire discussion is largely about the fact that different people interpret the same style of feedback either as offensive or as refreshingly direct.

For instance, Page one told someone that what they did was boring. Eccentric or abusive and jerkish? Probably the latter. What about the time he suspended work across the entire company and told everyone to work on latency because their products were fat and slow, and there was no higher priority than latency? Probably not offensive because it was targeted at the whole company? But if the same feedback had been given to an engineer one on one, maybe offensive.

I'd expect that anecdote was not the reason for the declarations. The vast majority of Googlers will never have any 'real' interaction with Page/Brin, thus giving intimate examples of their behavior in private would be unwise. I think this is part of the reason that the flood gates for Jobs only opened once he died a premature death.

So you think that the founders of Google are abusive assholes based on no real evidence then. It's easy to make claims about anyone applying your loose rules of evidence. It's flimsy, sloppy thinking, not to mention unfair to the people you're talking about.

The real issue isn't about any one or two individuals, though, it's the principle. The question is are there good leaders who are direct yet exercise self control? The implied question is do you have to be an asshole to succeed? I can list more examples if you think the ones I chose were inadequate, or you could acknowledge that I have a point. This isn't a contest. We are all here to learn.

No, I think that people that have had personal experiences with Larry Page have described him varying as egomaniacal, rude, and a jerk, which is relevant to this conversation. My personal opinion is, however, based on something different. I tend to judge individuals by actions, not words. Words are too often fake. This can be both 'good fake' as in people who build up artificially positive personas, and bad fake. I have no doubt that the individuals who had these experiences with Page genuinely believe him to be as they said, but one person's jerk is another's honesty, one person's egomaniac is another confidence, and so on.

So what can we judge Page/Brin on? Due to stock structuring they still have disproportionate control over Google and so Google's actions are going to be heavily attributable to their personal views and values. If you think the direction of Google is 'good' then that ought reflect accordingly upon your view of their values. And similarly if you think the direction of Google is something less than 'good'. There are numerous issues there as well of course but lacking superior alternatives, it's better than nothing.

You're fixated on these guys. They aren't really the point, though i don't think anything described rises to the level of abusive behavior. Calling someone's work boring doesn't do it, though even if I'm completely wrong about those guys it's not crucial to my point. I even acknowledged I might get it wrong about some of my examples, but unless you think such a list isn't possible, then the matter of Google's founders amounts to a red herring, a distraction.

The assertion is that there are a lot of examples of strong leaders who did not abuse those who worked for or with them. The subtext states that abusive behavior is not a prerequisite or driver of sucess. It's the dark side of ambition. We could talk about Steve Job's rocky career where he was his own worst enemy setting his own vision back years.

I can give examples of abusive leaders chasing away key players, setting back projects with rippling consequences felt for years, recovering slowly, never quite getting there. These leaders accomplished a lot but ultimately left with a sense of a partially realized vision. Unfinished business.

These same leaders also often hurt those closest to them who actually did need them, neglecting or even abandoning children, a reprehensable act for any reason but even more so to gratify ego. This is just not how a man acts.

At the same time, you likely don't see the succesful leaders who became fully realized adults. I coud list 50 and you'd pick out some to fixate on because of their flaws. This tells me that your opinion is received truth. You defend it with the sophistry a partisan uses to defend an ideology.

The point was not about 'these guys' but about your example, even in so few given, being a perfect example of the problem. It's difficult to know whether your perception of a person is genuine or based on a facade. The fact that you listed Larry Page was just a particularly good example of the issue. You listed him not because you knew he was a person who fits your criteria, but because you assume by default that the lack of evidence indicates somebody must therefore be notably upstanding. And this assumption is fundamentally where we disagree.

Yes, it's always hard to dicern facade from reality but we can't make assumptions that the facade hides abusive behavior. In some cases it does, but just because someone maintains a public facade doesn't mean they're doing something bad behind the scenes.

And, critically, no matter how hard you try to maintain a perfect public facade, the truth comes out eventually if you're abusing people.

Anyway, I think we can agree to disagree on this whole topic. I enjoyed discussing this with you and I don't expect to convince anyone I'm right on anything.

>It's flimsy, sloppy thinking, not to mention unfair to the people you're talking about.

And yet you're dismissing the opinions of those with apparent first hand experience working with said leaders, while having no first hand experience yourself.

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