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Comment by mise_en_place | Hacker News Reader

There is a phenomenon I have witnessed working both in high growth startups and traditional Fortune 500s. At some point, the company starts attracting Dark Triad personality types that cement themselves in upper management positions, usually starting at Director level. These people are extremely dangerous, one of them had access to my corporate laptop (as was standard policy for that company) and would torment me by screwing with me on a daily basis.

When an organization becomes too large or bureaucratic, these Dark Triad types hide and typically exert their influence and power and will behind the scenes. This is why these companies seem “evil”, but it’s usually not the founders’ fault, a lot of times they’re unaware of it, or one of the founders is also a sociopath and will protect the evil cabal. That’s my two cents about it anyway.

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Extremely insightful, I have had the same experience and I agree. I somehow have the ability to "sniff" out these types pretty quickly, something about their conversations give them away.

Here's an real life example: I worked for a small startup years ago and the founder invited the engineering team to lunch at a restraunt. The founder proceeded to berate the waiter for no reason and yell at him, it seemed like completely psychopathic behavior and then I caught the smallest of smiles from him after the waiter walked away beaten up(metaphorically speaking) by the barrage. I knew right then this person was not someone I wanted to work for and put in my notice shortly after.

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat service workers.

This happened at a company I was at. Hyper-growth startup, huge aura around it.

A few high-level folks arrived whose perfection in smooth talking was rivaled only by their enjoyment of wreaking havoc on teams & relationships. They brought in their friends, paranoia and rumors spread, culture went off a cliff, CEO was confused what happened. Mass exodus followed.

How do you filter against hiring these types given their talking and schmoozing get them over the HR guard as well as director and above interviewers?

How I find them is in their speech. They come across as extremely insincere and "out" themselves by how they talk to either the interviewer(focus alot on themselves) or someone they believe is beneath them(dismissive). If you are a gatekeeper for their employment or something they need expect flattery and overly kind words. If you are no longer that gatekeeper expect to never hear from them again or abuse. Also this type tends to lie alot, thats usually how they do get canned.

"Just call BS! Geez, that was easy. Why are all these HR people so incompetent?"

This assumes you are more intelligent than them, and can see through their insincerity during an interview process.

But have you considered that these "smooth talkers" can be smarter than you? Or at least have been perfecting their BS craft (while you perfected yours, such as programming), so that you are absolutely no match?

For sure. Standard lines of BS don't work well on me because they're optimized for other people. But I firmly believe that for every person, there's a line of bullshit they're vulnerable to. And the people most vulnerable are the ones most sure they're too sharp to be BSed.

I do it via interviews oriented on doing the actual work. The more an interview tests the ability to talk about work and be charming and persuasive, the more it advantages awful people.

For software development, that's the opposite of what I want. Some of the best people I've worked with were terrible at interviewing. But once we got into actual code, they settled down and their skills shined through.

You don't just filter to hire, you also unfilter employee concerns. Most people think that CEO's, founders, owners, "management" are not going to back them, and they're generally right. Therefore most problems never skip the chain, and end up being suppressed by their own supervisors.

I don't like letting people bring their own teams with them. It's a shortcut to a discontinuation of culture and a form of second-order nepotism.

Assess for technical skill and raw tactical ability. This would have the downside of filtering genuinely good leaders who've been too far removed from technology (and thus are pure people leaders) for too long. People that were once technologists, but no longer are, have a way of speaking that's easily clear to pick out. Also, some people move up but keep their technical chops along the way. An executive that can microscope on parts of the org, as needed, with a technical mindset, can provide material value.

You're absolutely 100% correct. About 2.5% of people have have an inverted viewpoint of their own survival. Meaning, they think they need to squash others down in order to feel superior. As opposed to the logical path which is raise your team together and effectively lead to greater prosperity for all.

I think the bug in most organizations is that performance is reviewed only by the people above with very little to no input from below.

edit: Took me down memory land to re-visit some truly incompetent and insanely unproductive bootlickers and fast talkers who would lose their job immediately after a 5 min confidential talk with any of their underlings.

For sure. A friend at Apple says that it was much better to work at when it was not as successful. Now that they have large piles of money, it attracts people who seek proximity to large piles of money.

Reminds me if Mao, he'd always say whatever it took to gain power. But when he had it, he used it solely for personal gain or for personal goals... regardless of how many people got hurt, or killed as a result.

Mao Zedong was a "founder" of a militant "startup" called the Communist Party of China during a vast civil war; his experience has virtually nothing in common with a non-founder career climber in 21st century SV.

Well, there could certainly be personality and technique overlap

Totally agree with you, most of the time founders are not aware this is happening down the ladder. I have seen this scenario with the middle layer management protecting their jobs and gate keeping in most companies today.

Either the founder isn't aware, then they just get egulfed in the new culture until they have, at some point, no power left. Or they are among the worst of the pack and drive the new culture. Given that Zuck somehow managed to retain 50+% of voting rights until now, I would put him in the second group. Jeff would be the same.

And then you would have the truly exceptional people, that manage to combine the ruthless drive needed to grow a successful company, care about their people and have the capabilities to keep those bad actors out, or at least in check. I saw maybe 1.5 of these people in management functions, middle management that is. Not sure of those black swan unicorns exist as founders so.

This is my life right now and it’s utter hell. The company is infested with these people and it’s astounding to me that nobody seems to care.

Game of survivor played out in real life.

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