Comment by futureshock | Hacker News Reader

Comment by futureshock | Hacker News Reader

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I think you really illustrate GP's point in a fantastic way. Let's define "smart" as the kind of smarts that would be in abundance on HN: Technical smarts, rapid learning smarts, knowledge smarts, creative smarts, idea smarts.

A smart person might be good at school and individual contribuitorship, and so believe that they should naturally be good at political games as well. But truly, politics takes a whole other set of smarts and the things that make you an excellent IC do not much overlap with things that make you good at the political game: charisma, selling, risk-taking, deep emotional intelligence, extroversion, strategic intuition, sociopathy, commanding presence.

Many smart engineers can't even see see that the game is being played or they realize it long after the match has been won. They are not the players, but the pieces on the board.

This is so true and sad. Often the smartest people at a company are literally just being moved about by the business people. They literally can't see the real game above them.

That's because they are smart enough to know better. It is dumb people who play games with the lives of others, it is the fool who loves power.

Typically not in my experience. Smart technical folks are subjected to plenty of suffering at the hands of leadership. The ones "smart enough to know better" find a way to insulate their livelihoods from capricious decision makers by either learning how to play the game or finding a way not to play (consulting or maybe creating their own product).

And I don't think it's accurate either to say that only fools love power. The need for power and status is deeply rooted in our evolution and psyche. To go back to Aristotle, man is the political animal.

Very accurate to say the love of power makes a fool. A fool is just closer to an animal than a "wise" man. Power over another is just selfish, as love, or the care of more than yourself is altruistic. By smart enough to know better I meant they aren't the ones perpetuating the games, not that they are not suffering from the games. You flipped it backwards.

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