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Comment by mdkess | Hacker News Reader

Another question: What do you do when you hire people worse than you?

It's hard being around people smarter than you though, even if we all know it's a good thing and important. It's easy to say that we want to be the dumbest person in the room, much harder to actually believe that. I consider myself a passionate and disciplined programmer, but I meet people on occasion who are objectively far better programmers than I could ever be. If I spent my whole life trying, I wouldn't be as good as these people. And while the objective side of me says "hey, I'm productive too, and the world needs all of the smart people it can get.", it does make me question sometimes the purpose of what I'm doing.

But you know, fall seven times, get up eight.

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I've always thought "being the dumbest person in the room" was a bit of overstatement to the truth. It's probably more accurate to say you don't want to be the smartest person. Not so much because you avoid having a target on your back if something fails and a scapegoat is needed, but more because you not only have the ability to teach those that know less than you, consequently reinforcing things in your head and giving yourself a better understanding, but also having people around that you can learn from.

I can say being the smartest person in the room gets really old fast because you always feel like you have your hands tied behind your back and as much as X may be a better solution to a problem you have to fall back to something the entire team can understand.

The general environment would probably make a difference too. If you in an environment with people that enjoy learning and sharing the knowledge they gain being the dumbest person in the room probably isn't as bad. I can't say I've met a work environment that is like that, though.

Being the dumbest person in the room gets real depressing real quick.

I went to MIT, you get over it (felt as the dumbest person in the room always). Its actually pretty great that anybody in the room can teach you something. Now that I left I hate it, I have to argue about things that seem trivial to me all the time.

For my startup the answer to that is while I can't afford the rockstar. If you are bootstrapping then you are likely pretty budget conscious and it makes better practical sense to hire an intern or apprentice in this situation. I've actually took kindly to the idea of hiring people who are worse then me due to lack of experience and making an effort to teach them what I know. The downside is that eventually if they become better then me and leave I will have lost my investment, but at least I made an impact for them and I like to tell myself that for most people that is something that transcends financial gain so I'm also investing in karmic opportunities that I'm not aware of yet.

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