Nice guys finish first. Eventually.
wired.co.uk
wired.co.uk
There is a meme within the 'manosphere' that women spend their best years (youth) enjoying themselves with alpha males, and then settle with a beta provider when they realize that alpha males won't commit to them, while their looks are fading and their biological clocks are ticking.
If given the opportunity, they will cheat on their beta husbands with an alpha lover. So yes, the nice guys end up with the girls, but only because the girls settle.
With regards to leadership - Leadership will at times require tough decisions. People may have to be fired / laid off for example. Some people are not cut out for that - their delicate sensibilities couldn't bear the thought of firing someone. An 'asshole' would find it easier to make the necessary decision.
"Nice guys don't finish last. It just takes a while for the true value of positive, collaborative leadership to shine through."
It has become politically correct to emphasize collaboration and teamwork above individualism. I'm not arguing for either. I think that among us techies, who perhaps tend to be more intelligent and self-directed / motivated than average, 'strong' leadership may not be as necessary as among, for example, soldiers. War can't wait while every private gives their opinion to the Lieutenant.
"Nice" is not a positive thing. If someone calls you "nice" it's a sign you should change your personality. "Nice" is what you say about people you have nothing to say about: http://www.joelrunyon.com/two3/nice-people-dont-change-the-w...
To truly succeed you have to be aggressive. You must know what you truly want and have the courage to go get it. You must be confident in your vision and abilities. You can't worry what everyone thinks of you. You can't seek the approval of others. You must be able to express your thoughts and feelings without fearing to offend someone. If someone you hire sucks, you must be willing to fire them.
Kindness is a real, positive, desirable trait. Niceness is just the ability to be inoffensive and anonymous.
It's perfectly possible to be kind and aggressive at the same time. That's the perfect combination, the one you'll see in most successful entrepreneurs. Just look at PG for example.
There's a lot of conflation between dominance and selfishness. These two traits can look very similar at a shallow level, but are completely othorgonal.
Pure selfishness is when you act without concern for others to your own benefit. Dominance is the desire to win in competitions, demonstrate power and/or independence over others.
I've definitely met many kind, bold, dominant people in the start-up world. These people can both simultaneously piss people off, and go wayyy out of their way to help you.
Aggression, in its broadest sense, is behavior, or a disposition towards behavior, that is forceful, hostile or attacking. It may occur either in retaliation or without provocation. In narrower definitions that are commonly used in psychology and other social and behavioral sciences, aggression involves an intention to cause harm, even if only as a means to an end. It has alternatively been defined as acts intended to increase relative social dominance.
Not exactly an endearing definition. Dictionary.com has even less flattering definitions.
Passive (or passiveness) isn't the the antonym of aggression. Here's a few that I found: agreeableness, friendliness, friendship, gentleness, kindness, niceness. I would much rather be attributed those qualities.
There're a bunch of other situations where both extremes are bad. The opposite of indifferent is obsessed, and both are negative qualities in a relationship - you want to be involved. The opposite of flat is sharp, and both are bad - you want to be in tune. The opposite of hypo-anything is hyper-anything, and both are bad - you want to be healthy.
That's nice in theory, but there are a lot of people with dysfunctional upbringings for whom "jerks" provide the only role models for success.
So I may have misunderstood what you were trying to say but what I thought you meant to say was that those who have been brought up by assholes end up being assholes themselves. I disagree and I'm living proof. The person being brought up like that wants to develop those "jerk" traits that make their parent(s) successful but they end up getting developing habits like pleasing people and following orders without question that get in the way of what they want to do.
I really hate this analogy: Once the girls have had their fun, and are old, they settle with those who can provide for them And, although it has no direct relation, it always reminds me of Buffet and "saving sex for old age"[1].
But even then, it's not even always true. I'd wager the majority of these women end up in a cycle of jerks. You just selectively hear about the ones who give up, and settle. This isn't a matter of fate - it's a matter of perception.
[1]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/3073746/Buffett-on-Goldma...
Women and men change their expectations as they get older. It's part of growing up. Both sexes start to look past what is exciting RIGHT NOW to what is important to building a lasting relationship.
Anecdotally this has been the case for me. The women I personally am interested in dating now (@28) bear little resemblance to the women I wanted to date when I was fresh out of college (@23).
If you've ever been to a high school reunion, you'll typically be somewhat shocked at what happened to the jocks/jerks/(insert high school term here) that were seemingly head of the pack back then.
I find this phenomenon to also be true in the other phases of life as well. For example, Ive had to re-evaluate my career path after getting to know some executives that would surely satisfy the bad guy checkbox. Many of them have had qualities that may have been useful in getting them to where they are but in terms of general 'lifestyle' management I do not envy them one bit (family problems, addictions, etc etc.) As a note I am not saying all executives have huge problems - but the ones who were, for lack of a more friendly term, assholes have not had enviable lives when looked at from a holistic perspective in my experience.
I dabble from time to time into listening to Buddhist instructors and a message Ive been able to take away from those is that cruelty to others is also directing cruelty toward yourself. I wish I had a great logical analysis to prove this but I do find it to be true through my experiences.
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/halevy_nice_2011.h...
Some choice excerpts:
"Our findings show that people want respectable and admired group members to lead them at times of peace, but when 'the going gets tough' they want a dominant, power-seeking individual to lead the group,"
"...sharing one's resources with both in-group members and outsiders had the most dire net outcomes on a person's status. The researchers discovered that universal generosity decreased perceptions of both prestige and dominance compared with those who shared resources only with members of their group."
They want a stable leader during peacetime and a victorious leader (who will bring back stability by defeating the enemy) during wartime.
"...sharing one's resources with both in-group members and outsiders had the most dire net outcomes on a person's status. The researchers discovered that universal generosity decreased perceptions of both prestige and dominance compared with those who shared resources only with members of their group."
Sharing with outsiders increases the power of outsiders at the cost of the power of the group. Historically, that leads to destabilization as the now-more-powerful outsiders could supplant the group, or the now weakened group could be attacked by an existing enemy.
Take that science!
This is the echo chamber they speak of.
https://student-3k.tepper.cmu.edu/gsiadoc/WP/2011-E34.pdf
It was pretty badly misinterpreted by the "nice guys finish first" post, and we're heaping more layers of misinterpretation on top of that.
For example, the study found that people who contributed to the group at the expense of outsiders (perceived as medium-dominance) fared better in leader elections than the more "dominant" individuals who kept all resources for themselves.
The group-minded individuals also were less likely to be voted out of the group than the "pure-dominant" individuals.
A tangent thought: I think the nice/jerk dichotomy/model is somewhat misleading. It's really compressing two separate axis into one. I think a better way to think about it is this: you have a kind-unkind axis and a dominant-weak axis; and "nice" tends to be in the kind/weak sector while "jerk" tends to be dominant/unkind sector. You still have two other sectors though, and I think that's really where you're going to find your heroes/villains.
Newt Gingrich: cruel, weak.
Mitt Romney: kind, weak.
Ron Paul: kind, dominant.
(Actually, I'm probably trying to fit square pegs in round holes here. Ignore.)
Don't let them get away with not defining their terms because we all have a fuzzy feeling of who the nice guy is (me, not him).
I just don't think business works like that.
(1)
When I was in 6th grade, they had some "kid executives" thing where we got to spend a day shadowing a local "businessperson." I got to follow around a senior VP of Bank of America. Not exactly the bank with the best reputation. But while I was there, when I was away from the SVP, a junior level guy walk talking with me, and I must have asked something about needing to be a jerk to succeed in business, because he told me something I never forgot: "you know everyone says you need to be a jerk to succeed, but this guy is the clearest example that that's not true." Anecdotal, yeah, but it stuck with me even as I grew up (read: became slightly more cynical). I've since met far wealthier, or far more recognized individuals. Maybe hearing that once when I was young enough to embrace it encouraged me not to write off all powerful people because of the actions of a notorious few.
(2)
I think the study has some flaws. When I was an undergraduate, I worked in a psychology lab that did studies like this. They don't bring in a bunch of "powerful people" or anything like that. They have a bunch of other undergraduates play the Prisoner's Dilemma with 5 bucks. Here's the methods for one of the experiments[1]:
Participants and Procedure. Sixty-six Stanford University students (62.9% female; age: M = 21.2, SD = 3.1) were recruited from a large subject-pool. They arrived at the laboratory in groups of 8-12 participants and were each seated in a private cubicle. Participants read the instructions, made their decisions and responded to the post-decision questionnaire using the computer. The Intergroup Prisoner’s Dilemma (IPD) game. Participants learned that they had been randomly assigned to a four-person group, and that their group was randomly yoked to another four-person group. They did not know who was in their group or in the other group and could not communicate with any of the other participants in their session. Each participant was endowed with 10 game chips and had to decide how to allocate them. Each chip that was kept paid $2 to the individual; each chip that was contributed to the group pool added $1 to each in- group member including the contributor; in addition, it subtracted $1 from each out-group member. Thus, the same action simultaneously benefitted in-group members and harmed out- group members.[sic]
My problem with studies like this, while commendable for trying to experimentally control possible factors, is that the context is super important. An analogy might be measuring the speed of light in the same gas several times to control for external effects, but not realizing that the speed of light through a gas changes based on the gas. One such context, as the David Hornik pointed out, is a temporal one: people who screw everyone over once might seem aggressive and powerful, and are signalling that they're independent, whatever. People who screw everyone over for years might get left behind or ousted.
To be fair, the authors of the study acknowledge (but do not address) the temporal issue in their conclusion. And model systems like the Prisoner's Dilemma are important in any field. But twitchy when lab results like this are applied willy nilly into complex social interactions. Nice guys, bad guys, both evolved under intense evolutionary pressure for a reason.
[1] http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/halevy_nice_2011.h... (link to study on right)
I think this too can be viewed as the strongest leaders are best characterized by being able to maintain control / manage a situation toward a required direction; It's of course easier to do this if you want to be domineering, so that would create a statistic that shows more 'strongest leaders' as those who are domineering, merely because it's the easier way to do something - but takes much less and skill and nuanced behaviour and understanding.
For example, from Buffett's 1985 letter to shareholders [1]: "I won’t close down businesses of sub-normal profitability merely to add a fraction of a point to our corporate rate of return."
I recommend reading the complete section in that letter headed 'Shutdown of Textile Business' - it shows just how painful it was for him to liquidate that business.
For those of you objecting to the lack of cited evidence for my point of view, please keep in mind that this was a short magazine piece, not a long form blog post. My point of view is certainly aspirational. But it also reflects my experience in the venture capital industry over the last decade.
You can be the perfect guy in every other respect and still never make it if you never get to see the good opportunities.
If you either remain a total unknown, or get a reputation for being horribly unfair to founders, it will likely eventually come back to bite you. That doesn't mean you should be a pushover, though.
In a way that means this article is really self-serving. Whether or not he's a nice guy, writing about how he wants to be nice is likely good for his deal flow.
(generalizing like that is not the best way of thinking about people - people are more complex that "nice/bad" dichotomy)
That's usually the part where you begin citing evidence that has convinced you. Unfortunately, it's where this article ends. I'm convinced this article is wrong.
See how that works? If you don't put any effort into backing up your statements, they can just as easily be rejected.
While total "nice guys" tend to finish last in a population of "bad guys", a localised population of "fool me once guys" can, given time, push out the "bad guys", and become a dominant population.
This works when the benefits of working together outweigh the benefits of screwing over the other guy. While a population of bad guys is busy screwing each other over, the fool me once guys are busy working well together, unless they get screwed over, in which case they can refuse to do business again. An outcome that makes it harder for bad guys to keep screwing people over.
Which evolutionary strategy succeeds is entirely dependent on the environment. Capitalism and the modern metropolis is the perfect environment for sociopaths to thrive, and research on sociopathy shows it is increasing in the West.
The simple fact of the matter is that when a sociopath is discovered, the discoverer will avoid the sociopath but WILL NOT WARN OTHERS due to fear of retaliation.
Fear keeps the sheep in check, and allows sociopaths to move from one sucker to the next. Each sociopath may only get to exploit a given mark (Mark1) two, three, or five times, but then that sociopath moves on to the next mark, and a new sociopath takes advantage of Mark1.
In this way sociopaths in our anonymous, private society run amok and their evolutionary strategy is highly successful. Sociopaths are found in large proportions among those who worked their way to wealth - ruthlessness and a willingness to exploit is highly lucrative in our private culture that has no accountability.
Dr. Martha Stout in The Sociopath Next Door gives the example of a sociopath who lied and blackmailed her way into a position as a clinical psychologist in a mental hospital despite having no qualifications.
Colleagues and patients became aware of the sociopath on multiple occasions, but when they would complain to the administration they hit a stonewall because the forward-looking sociopath had sexually blackmailed key individuals.
The sociopath worked as a psychologist for 14 years before a wealthy and connected patient was exploited and harmed by her, upon which time the wealthy patient's father threatened the hospital with a public lawsuit if they did not pay him.
The hospital administration paid a settlement to the wealthy client and fired the sociopath, but did not report the sociopath to ANYONE, including its own staff. The sociopath then simply went and worked at another hospital.
Over and over again in our society the pattern of the sociopath is that when they are discovered they simply move on to the next sucker.
This did not happen in traditional cultures. Dr. Martha Stout explains how in Inuit culture sociopaths would be ritualistically murdered by a group of men in the tribe. In 19th century America, if a sociopath scammed some people in a town, those people would capture and lynch the sociopath even if they did not engage in strictly illegal behaviour.
This selection pressure prevented the proliferation of sociopaths, but now our society rewards sociopaths and has no protective mechanisms. More often than not, sociopaths use their lack of conscience as a business advantage and rise quickly in organizations through charm, blackmail, politics, and ruthlessness.
We live in the age of the sociopath. Bad people are not punished but rather rewarded at every turn. A huge proportion of corporate and government leaders are diagnosed sociopaths, and they got to where they are because the good people they fucked over along the way either did not speak up or were ignored and ridiculed when they did.
I'd settle for a source for this, actually:
A huge proportion of corporate and government leaders are diagnosed sociopaths
Particularly the "diagnosed" part.
Ah, name-calling. Excellent rhetorical technique.
You cited a source for a long anecdote (which is evidence of pretty much nothing), but no sources or even actual numbers for claims like:
research on sociopathy shows it is increasing in the West
Sociopaths are found in large proportions among those who worked their way to wealth
More often than not, sociopaths use their lack of conscience as a business advantage and rise quickly in organizations through charm, blackmail, politics, and ruthlessness
A huge proportion of corporate and government leaders are diagnosed sociopaths
I'm ignoring a lot of other claims that are just pure opinion and speculation, but these four should be able to be backed up by actual data. Unless they're pure bullshit. Which I'll assume they are unless you can cite some kind of source.
I cite an extensively researched high quality source, which actually addresses and supports every single statement I made.
And then you have the arrogance to tell me I didn't cite a single source?
Not only did I cite a source, I wrote a fucking essay based on real research, based on established high quality experts. Where is your evidence? Where is your research? Where is your support?
This is a discussion forum. Do you go around harassing everyone who says anything for sources? 99% of posts do not cite sources on Hacker News.
BUT I DID!
I'm just about done with this anti-intellectual community because of people like you. Inserting [citation needed] after every post you disagree does not contribute to the discussion. I'm a highly educated expert on this subject with exemplary sources that are entirely based on hard science and little know-nothing blogger peons like you follow me around saying [citation needed] EVEN WHEN I CITE GREAT SOURCES.
Time to check out of HN.
(Of course, given the number of people here with 'capitalist' in their job title — venture capitalist — when you mention something unflattering about capitalism, you'll generally get demands to provide evidence beyond what's normal for this site. ;)
In a market economy, one's often punished for being concerned about the costs to others (so-called "externalities"), so even normal people are rewarded for acting sociopathically...
There's nothing abut your essay to indicate that the book you mentioned was a source for anything other than the anecdote about the sociopathic clinical psychologist, and the Inuit culture. Is that book the source of every claim you made? That's not even remotely clear to me from reading your post. Most of your claims are all extremely vague and you don't connect them to the book at all, so they sound like you just spouting your opinions.
Where is your evidence? Where is your research? Where is your support?
I don't need any evidence, research, or support, because I didn't make any claims. You made some extraordinary claims, so you need to provide the support.
I'm a highly educated expert on this subject
If you're a "highly educated expert on this subject", I'd expect a little more actual data. For example, you could say something like "37% of those who worked their way to wealth are sociopaths" instead of "Sociopaths are found in large proportions among those who worked their way to wealth". If you're an expert you should probably at least roughly know that number, and without out, I don't know what "large proportion" means. Does that mean 40%? Or does it mean 1% and that's a large proportion because that's 20x the rate that sociopaths are found in society at large?
exemplary sources that are entirely based on hard science
Sorry, but none of this is based on "hard science", because psychology isn't a hard science. There's not even an accepted definition and difference for sociopath vs. psychopath and neither is a diagnosis in the DSM, which is part of why your post was confusing. Though some psychologists use the term differently, sociopaths are generally considered to be more fringe and abnormal, whereas psychopaths are more likely to appear charming and successful on the outside. Which seems like it would apply to most of your claims far more than the term sociopath. But perhaps Ms. Stout uses the term interchangeably.
...I'm just about done with this anti-intellectual community...
...little know-nothing blogger peons like you...
You might find a more receptive audience in this community for your extraordinary and unsupported claims if you took the time to give actual statistics, cited your sources, and refrained from name-calling. Just a thought.
This is false.
Nothing bothers me more than people making statements as if they are fact, especially with no evidence whatsoever.
I am living evidence of the opposite of your statement.
I played in a band professionally for a few years, and got to learn a few sociopaths very well: my ex-bandmates, of course, some worse than others. There came a point where I could not idly stand by while they manipulated and harmed unknowing people day after day. Not all of it was terrible but it really adds up after a while.
So I decided to leave the band, and the night before the last show on a tour, I let everyone in the band know exactly what I thought of them; and after I left, I told all of their friends and some fans who wanted to know why I left what they had been doing to people.
There was no fear of retaliation. And to this day, a year and a half later, no attempt at retaliation has been made.
I'm not aggressive, but I am dominant. Aggressiveness, sociopathy, and dominance do not go hand in hand.
My old band has accomplished nothing since I left, and I bet they've learned a little something from the experience. We may not be able to lynch sociopaths anymore, but we can sure teach them lessons if we use our brains and refuse to put up with it. Calling them out on any and every occasion is probably the best thing one can do.
Everybody wants to 'finish first' - that is to act selfishly, and it's not a bad thing. It's just a matter of where you place the finish line.