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Comment by grababner | Hacker News Reader

'He tells us: "Eventually somebody would come back to you with your idea – they would say, 'Hey, you know, this doesn't need Windows at all'. And you have to control your urge to fucking kill them, because you've been telling them that for two years and now they finally come up with it like it's their idea. But that's the Jedi mind trick." '

OMG. I learned this a few years ago working in a corp environment with stubborn senior people with big egos. Basically, to get one of these types on board with your idea you have to find a way to convince them the idea was originally theirs. Sounds strange I know..

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The way I see it, you are just a single data point to the senior people. You mention something, they hear it from a couple of other places and they are now convinced that its a good path forward.

You can put your black hat and game this by making sure you suggest whatever you’re after to more people/sources of info that your target listens to. Bonus points for going through intermediaries that obscure the source of the idea.

At some point, your senior decision maker has his “epiphany” as what you want is “what everybody is talking about”.

Interestingly this is something we talk about with my partner as a lot of times one of us would suggest something, the other might be dismissive, but then someone else would suggest, it gets done and and I/she would get upset that “you listen to them but not to me”.

But in reality whats going on is that we are both waiting to accumulate enough data points to make a heuristic work.

Once that became apparent we’re much more understanding to each other.

As for managers, if they smart enough, they would notice that a lot of the things you’re suggesting ends up what being done, and at some point they would value your points a lot more. But hardly anyone would use only one source of input to make their decisions.

..and you've just described what management consultants do at scale.

I think it can be as simple as...

"I was thinking about what you said, and you were totally right, if we <insert your idea> then we can achieve <insert their goal>. I'm really glad you said that - you really gave me a new perspective on this."

I've had that exact same experience with my wife. I'd tell her something for weeks, months, years, without her buying into it at all--then I'd watch somebody at a party tell her the same thing and she suddenly agrees! It's been infuriating. But now that I look at it in this framework, I have a path forward: spread ideas to her family and friends first.

I've learned the best way to get ideas going in a corporate settings are:

- pitch the idea to as many folks as possible. Not just to the ones who are going to okay it. Even if only a small portion of each idea resonates with each person, you now have them all slightly on board, which is all you need to get a foot in the door. The more people on board, the more you can back yourself up with to get the okay

- do proof of concepts yourself. I always carve out some time to implement a MVP of my ideas, and then use that to hook people.

- make a design doc. I hate doing this personally, but a lot of people respond well to the idea of one, even if most won't read it. It's just the idea that it's well thought out, even if the design doc is mostly fluff and will change dramatically. People love procedural work.

The art of diplomacy is to let other people have your way

That's a great way to put it. BTW if you are quoting someone else, would love to know the source.

David Frost

Come on, if I wanted your opinion, I'd give it to you.

> to get one of these types on board with your idea you have to find a way to convince them the idea was originally theirs

I forget where I read it, but I recall reading several times that this was how people at Apple had to present stuff to Steve Jobs to get him onboard with it. He'd initially dismiss it, then come back with the exact same idea as if it were his own.

EDIT: According to this URL, it was from the Isaacson biography: https://www.nhbr.com/emulate-steve-jobs-with-your-eyes-open/

That's what set Steve Jobs apart. Your typical executive could take months between rejecting your idea and proposing it as their own. But Jobs could compress this down to a week.

I'm amazed how absolutely every character flaw Jobs had gets turned into a positive. If I had a nickel for how many times I've seen this happen on the internet, I'd be rich.

I also don't think clever monopolistic businessman Gates would ever be 'hoodwinked'

That's because "character flaws" on a personal level are often required to achieve exceptional results.

Not sufficient. But often required.

If Jobs were a quiet, contemplative, respectful person who was careful to keep track of where he heard what idea and assign credit where credit was due - it's unlikely we'd have Apple. That's just a different personality type.

Why putting character flaws into quotes? They are still character flaws, the same way as same behavior is if it is not coming from rich powergul person.

There is no reason to pretend it is something special. If they helped him to get more money and more credit and what not, that does not make them not flaws.

Calling them flaws would seem to me to be a subjective position. Personality traits are perceived differently depending on what the observer is sensitive to. Somebody that is considered rude in a yoga clinic might not be perceived the same way on a construction site.

Is there any culture in which claiming credit for the ideas and innovations of others is considered positive?

And how many would agree it's healthy?

They aren’t “flaws” to everyone. One person’s asshole is another person’s straight shooter.

Which part do you perceive as "straight shooter"?

I believe this is the wrong way to think about this.

Character flaws are often associated with certain effective traits, but are not chained to them.

In your example, one can be vocal, biased-twoards-action, and low-bullshit, while also giving credit where credit is due.

I think it’s far from obvious that Jobs would have been a less effective leader if he had addressed his character shortcomings.

I similarly feel the same way about current leaders like Musk. He could do some inner work, become far less of a jerk, and be equally or more effective.

The sad thing is, they don't need that personal growth. Their luck or other character traits made/make them successful, they're rich and quite powerful, attractive to women, etc.

So they'll never do what you're saying. For an extreme example, look at Trump. In Romanian we have a saying: "the only thing that will straighten a hunchback's back is the coffin".

> "the only thing that will straighten a hunchback's back is the coffin".

Thats so cold.

Do Romanians generally call a spade, a spade?

A lot of our proverbs involve death, bodily harm and such. Not much beating around the bush over here :-))

Or some corrective surgery.

Voluntary or otherwise

As you image, it's an old proverb, I'm quite sure it predates modern medicine.

This has been on my mind a lot lately.

IMHO personal growth of the founders/leaders is correlated with long-term success. A healthy organization should be able to adapt to changes in the market. The same is true for a healthy individual. And more importantly as leader(s) of an organization - because you must lead by example. E.g. if you have a healthy way to keep your ego in check or be aware of your flaws you will be able to notice issues in organizational structures; if you're willing to change when presented with new information so will the organization; if you micromanage everything you've fixed the speed of adaptation to your own - can be good - can be bad; if you need validation you will surround yourself with people that validate you no matter what; if you twist your reality so that you're always on top those lies will seep into the culture.

It's kind of like Conway's law but more like organizations design structures (communication, hierarchies, etc.) which mirror their leaders identity/character/personality/soul...

Yeah, for some reason we as a society really dig the whole "good with the bad", "beauty and the beast" style narrative. As if people can't be that good without also being that bad.

It's an extremely old meme, and it will take a long long time to die.

Luckily we have noble actors like yourself to prove that an unblemished character is possible!

No. That’s just coverage bias. The leaders who are successful but aren’t dicks don’t have a ton of stories about them in the media about being brilliant dicks.

Winners get forgiven for a lot if stuff.

I read it ironically. I mean, if there are months in between, it makes plausible deniality that you forgot you got idea from someone else. Week makes you more of asshole.

That’s the genius of Jobs. You get a woman pregnant then deny the child is yours. Afterwards you acknowledge your error and have a great relationship with the kid and name a product after them.

That’s true genius.

... /s ?

I recently learnt that Jobs would ask people in the elevator what they were working on and fire people then and there if he didnt like it.

Now I hear that the next week he would take these ideas as his own.

Ruthless.

> I learned this a few years ago working in a corp environment with stubborn senior people with big egos.

Not disagreeing that corp envs are full of senior people with big egos, but this looks a little different from the opposite perspective.

Imagine you're a hypothetical "ideal" egoless senior corp person, and you have 20 people coming to you with their ideas. You know >51% of them are likely bad ideas (or at least it would be a bad idea to adopt most of them simultaneously). How can you tell which are worth adopting? If you trusted any of the suggesters absolutely they probably would've been promoted already, so it's difficult; you "stubbornly" reject most of them (probably some of the good ones too), or at the very least put them on the long finger for consideration later.

When you do get on board with an idea, yes there is still the problem of proper attribution and credit, and often there's non-benign human factors involved in muddying the waters there. But often ideas are Venn diagrams and defining them as atomic things from a single source isn't really practical.

Found the manager

> Basically, to get one of these types on board with your idea you have to find a way to convince them the idea was originally theirs.

Central plot of the movie Inception ;-)

If your goal is to change the world--incepting some politician to change their position or some businessperson to alter their product--that makes a lot of sense... if you are working for some company extracting value from you, why would you ever do this? I can't imagine it would help your career any... shouldn't you be spending all of that effort finding a less toxic place to work?

I agree. I imagine the idea is you do it when you'll still get to lead/work on the project and it'll be enjoyable/beneficial to your career.

I tend to think of bureaucracies as a mechanism for outsourcing the "real-life" parts of a project I care less about. The marketing, the litigation-responding, the budgeting. The cost is you sometimes have to deal with this. Sometimes it's still worth it. Whether or not it's toxic depends on whether or not you wanted them to take credit for it, or whether it was a surprise.

Not every "idea" that crosses one's mind is worth taking credit for. They are not that great to begin with.

> if you are working for some company extracting value from you, why would you ever do this?

Because there can be massive monetary rewards for it? (Sorry if that’s the obvious answer we’re all pretending isn’t there.) We’re talking about the Xbox project, where one of the leaders is so rich he pays people to help him cook ancient Egyptian bread for something to do.

Ok, so if you are incepting someone into giving you a pay raise or a dividend or options or a commission on a new project, that makes some sense to me; but if you are just working at a company and have to move mountains to convince people to do something that they will never even be able to appreciate you for it because part of the process was tricking them into thinking it was their own idea, then I guess I am saying you also need to make damned sure that you aren't going to just work for that project and have protection against being replaced on it: you need to incept the further idea that you should get a cut of the upside (which just sounds difficult in a world where you are explicitly diverting any credit for the idea to someone else).

Agree with this. If you’re not going to be recognized for your efforts in someway then what’s the point?

But why would a manager reward someone with only bad and/or non-original ideas?

It’s not necessarily about the environment being toxic. I’ve had the same experience with co-authors. It’s just human nature to forget things other people tell you, and then to suddenly have the idea yourself....

To me the problem was the "I won't do it if it isn't my idea (and so other people have to go out of their way to trick me into thinking their idea is my idea so I don't discard it)" aspect (which I find extremely toxic), not some kind of "I (maybe even accidentally) took credit for your idea because (but if you had corrected me I'm sure it wouldn't have been a problem)" angle.

You can’t just keep running from all of your difficult situations. Sometimes the best way to avoid something is figuring it out.

You sometimes see other people never face the same situations you face repeatedly. That is life telling you that you need to learn and that they’ve already figured that part out. That is why when they face the situation it doesn’t seem so intense.

It's not toxicity though - it's human psychology. The classic book "How To Win Friends And Influence People" even mentions this strategy when discussing winning people over to your ideas.

People are far more willing to promote an idea they played a role in creating than one which they are just a passive party to. In large organizations, getting buy-in is critical to moving anything forward, so you need to have higher-ups going to bat for your ideas.

One way to use this approach to your career advantage is to make sure you are a few steps ahead once the idea takes hold. This makes it clear that you also had the idea, and you were smart enough to consider the consequences of it.

> "How To Win Friends And Influence People"

"This book had a profound effect on me, however, of the negative variety. It did give me pointers on how to actually break out of my shell and "win friends" but in the long term, it did way more harm than good. Not the book per se, but my choice to follow the advice given there. The book basically tells you to be agreeable to everybody, find something to honestly like about them and compliment them on it, talk about their interests only and, practically, act like a people pleaser all the time.

It might sound like a harmless, or even attractive idea in theory, but choosing to apply it in your every day life can lead to dangerous results. Case in point: after being a smiley happy person with loads of friends for about a year, the unpleasant realization began to creep in, that by being so agreeable to everybody else, I rarely ever got my way. I also sustained friendships with people who were self-centered, so talking about their interests was all we got to do together, which drained me of my energy. The worst thing still, is that by trying to find something to like about every person, I completely disregarded their glaring faults. It didn't matter that those people did have redeeming qualities - they weren't redeeming enough! I ended up with a bunch of friends I didn't really want and, because I was so preoccupied with "winning" those friendships I missed out on the chance to form relationships with good people.

I suppose, for somebody who is a better judge of character, the principles outlined in this book could be of some value. But that's really just me trying to find something positive (using the "principles") in a book that I am still trying to UN learn.

If you want to win friends, you have to do it the hard way, by being yourself and risking rejection (and daring to do some rejection of your own, as well). And if you want to influence people the only fair way to do it is through honesty. All the rest is manipulation and pretending. Do not read this book, you'll only learn how to manipulate yourself & others. Do not read it out of fear of rejection & low self-esteem, there are better ways to gain some courage in approaching people. This will harm you in the long run.

Thank you for reading this review." — Caroline [1]

I'm sharing this review because trying Carnegie's strategies had the exact same effect on me.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/96767612

You're going to want to use the advice there as weapons, to use in order to accomplish goals and build a power base, not for personal fulfilment.

Advice nudges people in a direction. Carnegie's advice is good for nudging people in the direction of being less self centered. For people pleasers who don't think of themselves enough, it is bad advice. For people too wrapped up in themselves, it is good advice.

Interesting. I have tended to think the book's main flaw is in encouraging some amount of manipulation of others and a degree of artificiality in doing so. I always thought of it in tactical terms for things like business negotiations. It never occurred to me to treat it as a general guidebook to personal interaction, but I can see how that could cause problems.

That's basically the core of managing without authority. If you want people to do something but they don't report to you, then it has to seem like a great idea that will benefit them. All the better if they think it was originally their idea and get to claim the credit.

That was alledgedly how the Technical University of Denmark was started by Hans Christian Ørsted after he praised government officials of "their" idea of a polytechnical learning institution.

Imagine the same trick being used with Trump: “it was your idea to wear face masks”.

I've seen this in companies too. You keep reminding them about this thing, and then eventually they come up with this idea themselves. I have the feeling that the idea doesn't reach their mind but their subconscious, and then that one reminds their mind again. It seems they have to ponder on it for a while, maybe hear it multiple times, before it reaches their mind again as their own idea.

It makes you wonder how many of your own ideas were actually that from others.

Frustratingly high in my case, apparently. The good news is that Google often allows you to easily verify that fact. The bad news is that Google often allows you to easily verify that fact.

I once worked at a place where I would constantly suggest switching to GoLang to solve some performance scaling issues.

I recently got a call from a recruiter asking me if I was interested in a job programming in Go...

Go doesn’t solve scaling issues in any meaningful sense. At most it’s just some constant factor reduction in required severs compared to python/ruby/whatever interpreted thing it usually replaces.

Have you seen the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”? What you are describing is a big plot point in the movie.

> in a corp environment with stubborn senior people with big egos. Basically, to get one of these types on board with your idea you have to find a way to convince them the idea was originally theirs. Sounds strange I know..

Not strange at all: that is the way my mother has always operated with my father.

Perhaps this had been done to you in turn...

This is the way. L+1 thinking.

Benjamin Franklin.

> Sounds strange I know.

There is nothing strange about that, unfortunately. It's just how people work. Things like this are also why I sincerely hope that humanity eventually dies off and is replaced by literally any species, natural or artificial, that bases decisions on logic and facts.

There is no such thing as a meritocracy when humans are involved, no matter how much we delude ourselves to believe otherwise.

It is time to take some vacations pal.

Thanks for the advice that wasn't requested and isn't appreciated. Also, we aren't pals.

The problem with that is logic doesn’t provide goals, priorities or motivation to achieve them.

I was thinking about this recently while watching Raised By Wolves. The Androids express feelings and emotions, but this isn’t necessarily unrealistic. That could be a useful way to encode goals and evaluate priorities.

I didn't describe my logic, so to which logic are you referring? I made some statements which I believe to be true.

You're just contributing to my beliefs that humanity is entirely worthless.

I'm sorry you took offense, I didn't mean to be rude. I'm just making a point about logic in general, not "your logic" whatever you mean by that. Fundamental drives and goals are necessarily axiomatic and so cannot be derived logically. Intermediate goals yes, but not base drives and objectives.

My "logic" is this: humanity continually makes decisions collectively which harm humanity collectively. We are into self-harm in a major way, and almost no one cares. Those who do care are effectively shunned by others because more money is made by ignoring them and marginalizing their views.

Humanity is a self-destructive mess and deserves to go extinct.

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