How narcissists climb the career ladder quickly | Hacker News Reader

How narcissists climb the career ladder quickly

bbc.com

84 pointsjanvdberg64 comments

There is a lot of overlap between positive traits and narcissistic or antisocial ones. Some people have trouble distinguishing between confidence and arrogance for example. How about basic extroversion vs self promotion? OTOH some of the tactics a narcissist uses when they're in trouble are common (good?) for a company to employ when faced with bad publicity. Self promotion is a form of marketing right? It's all superficial, so I think the best we can do is train more people to see through it. Hold people accountable, don't let them blame shift, don't promote them for others accomplishments, etc... Once you've got their number, there may still be good strategic uses for these people. Just don't let them get out of control and ruin the company?

I was also going to mention that confidence is a powerful predicter/cause of success & promotion, more so than any skills behind that confidence. Anecdotally, I've noticed people are much more successful in work & personal life when they are confident, as other people use that confidence as a shortcut for assessing actual talent & skills. Narcissism is a mix of unwavering confidence and self-assuredness that exploits this shortcut and lets people progress in life without any test of their actual abilities.

maybe it is the inverse. When you are successful in work and personal life you become confident. And they fuels more success/confidence. Basically you become more confident as and when you find more success.

Both.

Narcissists project confidence without actual success.

Experts project confidence based on proven success.

Just adding to what dsr_ is saying, narcissists project confidence without actual success because their version of reality supports their correctness.

Narcissism/NPD is a result of the mind not being able to accept information that disproves their elevated sense of self worth. Anything that proves them wrong therefore is discarded before it can be processed internally. So when they speak with confidence, its because nothing in their reality can disprove what they are saying, even if what you're saying is true to our shared reality.

to have a broken version of reality one must likely have a broken childhood, be abused etc.

It's tough to separate someone who is a narcissist from a confident person unless the person judging them is an knowledgeable in the same field.

> don't let them get out of control and ruin the company?

pretty much the line between any pleasurable activity and an addiction

i think confidence ends and arrogance begins when the party in question acts towards furthering their goals at the expense of others, instead of collaberatively helping the group

but then you get outwardly arrogant groups of internally confident people...hm

having worked with a narcissist boss, I can very easily see why they get ahead quicker.

IMO - this technical management role had no real way of being evaluated by her seniors - they weren't technical enough, in fact they (directors) pretty muched looked down on technical roles. -(similar to the comedy "The IT Crowd", but a bigger team)

The only thing they could judge the management role on was a) was there anything going wrong with the IT systems b) was the manager a good person

a) was taken care off by the techies in the IT team

and for b) she was extemely charming, boastful and according to her, she was the reason the company IT existed - yet she boasted she wasn't technical - she was extemely not technical

I avoided her at all cost and followed the rule of never ever pointing out she'd made a mistake, not even positive criticism.

We did put a basic system in place to monitor the responses of fixes and calls - I did laugh when I ran a report on the performance of the team vs her holidays

> never ever pointing out she'd made a mistake

This is such a key skill. It's important to judge whether a person is open to feedback or not. A lot people assume others are open to hearing criticism. If your manager is a narcissist and you start pointing out things that they are doing wrong without earning their trust you are as good as toast.

I would go even further. Every single thing you say at work should be dedicated to improving your career. You should be playing politics with every sentence.

Doesn't mean you are sleazy, but if it doesn't make you look better to say or make you friends, don't bother say it. Let that open to the internet server slide if it requires blaming someone higher up.

Totally agree with not saying anything in this situation regarding opinions or constructive criticism, and would add not opening up and/or sharing any info regarding your personal life. With narcissistic bosses, all that is used as a weapon against you, whether now or long into the future.

Would have to disagree on playing politics, unless you mean minding what one says. Office politics aren't worth the energy or the toll they take on one's morale and character. If you work at a place where the mudslinging is heavy and often, especially among management types who are toxic and target the ones they manage, gtfo of there.

From experience, if you stay you're essentially letting them rob time from your short period spent alive, and recovering from the trauma is lengthy. Personally, it's taken nearly a year after being laid off to recover and begin feeling like myself from before the ~7 years of working under 2 bosses of this type (one was the vp of tech and the other was a manager below her, so two levels in hierarchy).

I wish I'd known all this when I was younger

I was too trusting - huge mistake from a health and stress perspective

If you are in an engineering context, where you are building/fixing stuff that is responsible for profitability, then YOU ARE SLEAZY for not speaking/writing the truth.

If you choose to build your career on helping others avoid the consequences of their mistakes, then you are part of the problem.

Everyone, throughout their career, is going to see people excel that they feel are undeserving. The whole point of this article is that subconsciously, we all imagine so-and-so and think, "Yes! Yes! That's why they did well! They were just a narcissist. And me, not being a narcissist, I could never have adopted those strategies, I couldn't have lived with myself. I'd rather have my character than a career."

What does it change? Does it make you feel better?

The prevailing thought around SV, or at least around the blogs of people in YC, is to make lossy generalizations about the types of people who should be accepted into an organization. They'll say, "Don't work with assholes". To be fair, I think that's pretty good advice for picking founders and early employees of a company. At the same time, I'm convinced that George Patton was an asshole and a bit of a narcissist, and was simultaneously a great asset in WWII for the US, and to accept both of these as true requires more room for nuance. The organizational structure of the military is not fundamentally different than any organizational structure.

This article tries to paint our inability to weed out strong personalities as a bug in human relationships, instead of a feature. I think that's just plain wrong. Humans have had a lot of time to develop instincts when it comes to interpersonal relationships, and we would have a better sense of sniffing them out if it truly was as bad as it seems. It's definitely not fun to not be a narcissist and see one excel, but that doesn't mean that narcissists are toxic and detrimental to every organization they find themselves in. Sometimes, when the stakes are high, you need a George Patton to win a war. I think the corollary of this is that when business is good and the stakes are relatively low, you really don't need or want narcissists. The problem is that it's hard for an entire organization to know what camp they fall into.

I disagree with this take fundamentally and that's because I want to see the whole world grow kinder. Maybe your goals are different. I'd rather weed out "the assholes" than clamor to them for whatever skillset they possess. If they want to learn the ability to work with others, kindly (also a skillset), while contributing their knowledge, welcome them. But if they continue to harm others on their solo trip to glory, they should be struck down, admonished, called out.

What's kind about that? Well, you've just saved tens, hundreds, thousands more from enduring their harm. We can imbue these qualities of kindness into our workplaces, our families, our communities by saying, "No, you will not," to the narcissists of the world.

Human progress is good. It does not require the sacrifice of our innocent or benign to Moloch to fuel its engine.

Not sure why the above comment by @emptysongglass is being downvoted. This is what we should be striving for.

It might not be grandiose narcissism at display it does have a little hint of vulnerable narcissism.

Because it's envisioning a false utopia where no one gets their feelings hurt, which is a subjective measurement. This reality doesn't exist, nor will it ever.

What one person sees as narcissistic or asshole behavior the other person might not. Sometimes whether it makes people feel bad is irrelevant.

I would just argue that sometimes the ends justify the means. Had Patton been given more authority and given less reprimands (eg: for slapping lower soldiers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton_slapping_inci... ), the war could very well have ended a year earlier. Everyone else was fine with fighting a war of attrition, whereas Patton recognized that aerial support had the potential to dramatically change the calculus of war. The Nazi camps could have been cleared months (if not years) earlier. You're speaking about tens, hundreds, thousands, but in this case we're talking about hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of lives could have been saved.

It's nice to imagine a world where someone would have that sort of insight and also would be a nice person, but I think history teaches us that the two are inextricably tied together. Bill Gates built Microsoft while being ruthlessly cruel to people. Patton slapped soldiers. I don't think we can will these people out of existence. I think if we could, it would have already happened.

> Had Patton been given more authority and given less reprimands … the war could very well have ended a year earlier.

The war started because another arsehole was given more authority and less reprimands.

The Enabling Act of 1933 was pitched as a temporary measure to "to Remedy the Distress of People and the Reich""

So no: its never worth giving a chop too much power.

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/the-law-that-enabled-hitlers-dictators...

Here are the data points:

- giving Hitler authority caused WWII and Holocaust, killing millions of innocent people (bad)

- giving Patton authority could have ended WWII early, saving millions of innocent people (good, hypothetically)

The first data point alone only proves that giving authority is SOMETIMES bad, which no one would argue with.

If the second data point is a true statement, then it clearly counters the assertion that giving authority is ALWAYS bad

Maybe granting authority is never worth the risk, but I think it required a more nuanced analysis than just bringing up Hitler.

The nature of adult behavior in workplaces fascinate me. It's a deep game of tap dancing. I'd love to find places to discuss this at the meta level. I cannot stop watching all the weird games people are playing to get by..

You'll be wanting https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-... - The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office” - the ultimate meta discussion of office politics.

it seems interesting but I fail to interpret his definition of sociopath/clueless/losers (I only saw the uk version btw)

it also avoids topics like the need for humans to belong, feel safe emotionally, feel valued/listened

Leaders vs front-runners.

The outgoing, confident person will look great when everything is going well. They get promoted because they've been busy tending their internal resume. They have great answers to the "what have you accomplished this quarter?" type questions during their quarterly reviews. It doesn't really matter if they were the one responsible, there are millions of ways to spin it. Even so, they're practically winning by default with how much care the average employee puts into the corporate game -- and this isn't even playing politics.

So when things are going well -- great, I need a promotion, bigger team, and more responsibilities.

When things aren't going well -- I need a bigger team to address this problem, quickly followed by the obvious promotion for someone leading such a big team.

The narcissist doesn't care if they are actually leading the team to solutions or whether they are running out front of it claiming the credit. The senior management's lack of ability discern the difference paves the way to the top.

Companies seem to have a very weak understanding of what their workers do day to day, so rely on being told.

That was another new to the workforce lesson about industry for me. My direct managers often don’t know what I did last week beyond the general assigned project.

I don't know… I feel like this statement pairs aren't mutually exclusive:

>a) I have a natural talent for influencing people b) I am no good at influencing people

Maybe someone is good but has no NATURAL talent.

>a) When people compliment me I sometimes get embarrassed b) I know I am good because everyone keeps telling me so

You can be embarrassed by compliments and still take them to heart.

>a) The thought of ruling the world frightens the hell out of me b) If I ruled the world it would be a better place

Being scared of ruling almost sounds like a prerequisite for being a good ruler. That can help keep you honest and humble. Being scared doesn't imply that you think you'd necessarily be bad.

>a) I insist on getting the respect that is due to me b) I usually get the respect I deserve

Maybe I usually get the respect I deserve, but on the few occasions I don't, then I insist on getting the respect that is due to me. :-)

If someone asks you "are you good", you should say "yes" or even better "very good". Humility gets you nowhere.

edit: Assuming you are actually good, but also recognizing that on the bell curve of competency, most people aren't noticeably better than one or another, despite a generally held belief otherwise.

Tell me about this, after an egotistic crisis I went full humility, I'm now at the bottom of the ladder, watching lazy, vaguely competent people whining about why 2-3x the average salary is not enough for their performance.

Thing is, I cannot let myself play politics and mental games just to swim warmer waters. I find it even sadder.

Except when you’re not in a toxic environment. Those are rare, but should be recognized very fast if one wants to stay there.

Throwing away humility is a sure way to be paired with one-uppers for the rest of one’s life (and then say with utter confidence that nobody cares about humility)

The "are you good" question is toxic anyway, so unless it's some "are you good at X" where X is not the work you are assigned to do, if people are asking you it it's because the environment is toxic.

On "are you good at X", it actually means "are you capable and willing to do X from now on?", so treat it accordingly.

Disagree. It's hard to compare the merit of two people, especially if they work in fields that you're not an expert in. Asking someone their own self evaluation opinion is reasonable.

If A is confident about their competency and B says "I could be better"... you're going to go with A. That is how humans work. No toxicity required.

Humility is nice and all but it blends deeply with insecurities and a lack of confidence

I like marcosdumay’s point very much. In itself asking people to boast is a recipe for disaster.

I make the parralel with your “A is confident about their competency”: have they more to say about their confidence ? what did they actually do and do you have trust they did it well ?

Digging further, if you end up at a point where both A and B did roughly the same things at the same level but B shows critical sense about what they did and trusts you enough to talk about it, B is to me the obvious choice. When shit hits the fan, you don’t want people who’s first principles are to cover themselves.

But this is all based on you going past confidence displays and caring enough to dig further. Which concede is not something we’ll do all the time; if I need to buy some coffee I actually don’t care much if it’s from A or B, and could easily go with A (or choose B by pure curiosity or any other reason, who knows)

depends if that gets you more work or get asked work you couldn't yet do

On the contrary I find if you're perceived as the most competent person you have the most authority in declining a request. You don't say "I can't do this", you say "We can't do that, but we can do this instead".

I think some of the blame here should also go to the fact that people appraising performance often have very little idea about the facts of someone's work, and are in fact simply praising personality. In a perfect world, a narcissist couldn't get very far on confidence alone.

This is an important point. One of the biggest reasons for management hatred is that actual workers can see that narcissists get promoted while doers don't.

Workers thus end up losing trust in upper/mid management. Don't do any work and instead waste their time aping the narcissist.

The problem often is merely management. But the asymmetry of power prevents the bad apples in management from getting exposed and removed.

Some of them do. The others are content to float around their entire career doing nothing as long as they can blame their failure on anybody but themselves.

Two things;

Majority of comments seem to assume narcissist is also incompetent or unskilled.

If this study is accurate and you want advantage in career then you could do worse than adopting the narcissist behaviors linked to advancement by study.

> MacRae’s second suggestion is to use a diverse hiring panel and to note how the candidate responds to people of different status within the organisation. “Narcissists are very good at 'managing up', but then tend to treat people they perceive as lower status very differently. But if you don't have any diversity of evaluators in the hiring process, you're unlikely to pick this up.”

I think this is a bit silly. Fine to have different people interview, good idea, but I doubt many narcissists will treat interviewers that differently.

Some interviewees quickly decide who's the boss, or primary decider in the interview, and then totally focus all their charm on them.

Seems pretty obvious to me

Right? A bit like the Gervais princple. [0]

But in response, I like this HN comment on it. Do our best to be kind. [1]

[0] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25487605

Thanks for the Gervais article. Good one.

I wonder what happens when the 'clueless' layer is replaced by a clueless machine intelligence. I like the idea of the work-at-home folks talking to a sort of cartoon head on a screen about their bug list or how much time they spend on Facebook.

That doesn't mean it's not worth studying. Gravity is obvious as well, but if we stopped before Newton we'd have never gotten to Einstein.

Because nobody pulls the ladder out from under them, causing them to fall and crack their heads open, making one last ugly mess for everyone else around them to clean up?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com