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Comment by pavas | Hacker News Reader

I think you're actually missing his point, which is not so much a matter of perspective but rather a direct application of Goodheart's Law. When you are trying to incentivize by proxy (e.g. promote good ideas by rewarding vocal and assertive people), you better hope that there is a very tight correlation between the two.

His point is that there isn't much correlation between good ideas and assertive personalities, so if you incentivize the latter you won't necessarily get the former. I'm inclined to agree with that.

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> Goodheart's Law

A man of culture!

I think we can call in the Pareto Principle here. After a certain point, assertiveness / aggressiveness becomes zero-sum (or worse). But getting to the point where everyone worth listening to has had a chance to speak gives you a lot of bang for your buck. You can either have an environment which enables this (everyone gets the talking stick) or train everyone to have a baseline of assertiveness skills.

The baseline shouldn't just be "excuse me, I have a question" scenarios though. The baseline has to be sufficient to handle stuff like "I think my boss is screwing up big time".

> I think you're actually missing his point

You are probably right.

I don't have a good argument for getting your good idea recognized by others, if you are not an assertive type, other than learning to fight harder for it be heard, or finding someone to fight hard for you.

There may not be a correlation between good ideas and assertive personalities, but if you aren't at least somewhat assertive, I just won't hear your idea.

It's like playing a song in your basement and wondering why no one is praising your musical talent. Get yourself out in the real world and play in front of people, loudly enough for them to hear you!

Communication and technical implementation are skills that exist on two separate axes. You might find that many of the best implementers are not also the best communicators, and vice versa. It seems to me that the whole software industry is designed around solving this problem. Make the good implementers your engineers. Get the good communicators who can figure out what these engineers are talking about to be your project managers. The unicorns who can communicate and implement should be able to get a gig managing all these people/projects and keeping everyone honest.

This is an idealized version of the system and a million things can go wrong, but it seems like the only way that makes any sense.

"His point is that there isn't much correlation between good ideas and assertive personalities, so if you incentivize the latter you won't necessarily get the former. I'm inclined to agree with that."

Having worked at IBM Austin in the '90s, I'd tend to agree. The management style was very much "the loudest person in the room makes the decision." It did not end well.

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