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Comment by tomblomfield | Hacker News Reader

Famously, the Traitorous Eight left Shockley to found Fairchild Semiconductor. This was essentially the origin story of Silicon Valley.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Law-Venture-Capital-Disruptio...

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Shockley inadvertently by being an asshole created more wealth for more people possibly than any other single person.

Shockley deserves as much credit for the creation of that wealth as the wind deserves credit for an amazing photograph of a beautiful summer sky.

How do you figure? He invented several kinds of semiconductors he assembled the team that went on to found an entire industry. Much of that wealth could have been held onto by him, had he been less of an ass.

People didn't leave over equity, or pay, they left because he was an asshole. Without him being a jackass, his company might have invented the things later invented at Fairchild.

Are you suggesting he was intentionally an ass to drive people away so that they could create something even greater? That truly is some 4D chess business.

You can get credit for mistakes all the time. Go speed past a cop, even by accident (distracted), collect your ticket and your credit for making the roadways a bit more hazardous and your police station a bit more wealthy.

He didn’t have to intend for them to leave to get credit for being the asshole that made them leave. :)

"At the time of his death, he was estranged from most of his friends and family, except his second wife, the former Emmy Lanning (1913–2007). His children reportedly learned of his death by reading his obituary in the newspaper."

Well, that says a lot.

Not to mention: "Shockley became widely known for his extreme views on race and his advocacy of eugenics". Sounds like a terrible person.

The question is whether we tolerate assholes for their inventions and brilliancy? What material damage his asshole-ness has caused compared to the benefits he provided to the world? It is quite overwhelmingly clear.

My take is that these are the people that herald the western civilization. The misfits, the weirdos and the, yes, assholes.

They have almost zero chance to convince everyone of their twisted views of Eugenics or what have you.

I am afraid, we've created a society where these people are shunned and IMO it is an overall net-negative. A lot of people in GNU org can be borderline fascist/communist/insert-extremist-movement.

Shockley is the exception to the 'tolerating assholes' rule, he was far enough outside the rails that he was largely shunned by his peers, subordinates, and everyone else.

But not Stanford University, where he continued to teach other students and be a professor until his retirement, and on whose website Shockley still prominently is posted: https://engineering.stanford.edu/people/william-shockley

So perhaps there are communities smack dab in the heart of Silicon Valley startup ecosystem that do tolerate even the most extreme assholes, still. It seems personal asshole-like behavior is tolerated or ignored in lieu of their "other contributions".

That is like attributing the Big Bang to why inflation is at 8.6% currently.

Well, inflation[0] did in fact start shortly after the Big Bang.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)

PBS has a great documentary about silicon valley that goes into some of this.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/silicon...

Did Shockley die though?

Shockley Semiconductor, the company? Yes, it eventually closed because of this. It took a decade of them floundering, but it did happen.

OK. Close enough!

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