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Comment by dschobel | Hacker News Reader

It sounds crazy but I've seen this in action. At my last job they brought in a guy who was unmitigated disaster for a technical leadership position.

In short, he was the most arrogant, buzz-word filled SOB I ever had the displeasure of meeting,

After he finally got booted when people realized he didn't know a damn thing about technology I flat out asked the VP of engineering: "What did you ever see in him?".

He said: "You know, you're going to think I'm crazy, but he was exactly the same in the interview as he was around here daily, and I really thought that cockiness would mean he would take the lead on issues and be able to guide the younger guys".

So remember that kids, if you want to be seen as leadership material, thoughtfulness and pensiveness are not the way to go about it.

Just look at CTOs at companies you respect for further proof and see how many timid figures you find.

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Sounds crazy but I've used this in action. How do you think I got such high karma here? ;-)

Thing is - it works. Both online and in-person. I'd much rather be honest about how little I know (and often am when I'm working long-term with someone), but I've found it's a losing strategy in most situations. If you do know your stuff, you'll just get shouted down by idiots. Better to shout the idiots down first and then do the research to make sure you're not wrong. If you screw up everything, you'll probably get another chance simply by virtue of confidence (look at John Meriweather, who nearly brought down the global financial system three times and is still managing money), but if you appear timid and then screw up, people are all like "I knew he didn't really know what he was talking about..."

+1 for ballsiness

(look at John Meriweather, who nearly brought down the global financial system three times and is still managing money)

An important example. Chutzpah beats expertise in that domain.

Yes, it's much better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

I mean, become a cocky bastard who also knows his/her stuff, and have all the fun, rather than whining about how the cocky bastards have all the fun.

If everyone actually knew how little they know, they wouldn't be cocky.

There's nothing wrong with being self-assured in what you do know, and honest about what you don't, but cockiness does seems to be a good indicator of an individual's ignorance of his (or her) own ignorance.

I've found it's a losing strategy in most situations.

Prisoner's-dilemma problem: being honest about your level of confidence is better for everybody, but if other people aren't doing the same, it's worse for you.

The confidence thing is probably another leftover from the Stone Age. It probably works better for combat and mammoth hunting.

Actually, I find confident people much easier to evaluate - over time it's pretty easy to tell a bullshitter from someone who knows their stuff. When talking to people who hedge their bets too much (or worse still, don't speak up at all unless I have the time to prompt an answer out of them), I'm left with an unclear idea of their original position, so it's much harder to decide whether to trust them.

My favourite people are still those who state their conclusion, but will happily rattle off the list of assumptions they used to get there as well as how confident they are in that conclusion. But those people are pretty rare.

> Actually, I find confident people much easier to evaluate.

The same goes for why we may like extroverted people more than introverted types. Because with most extroverts, you're getting a relatively good impression of what they're about...because they're putting themselves out there (expressing their opinions); whereas with introverted types, you're using mental cycles trying to figure out what's their view/what do they want

May well be true, although there's a difference between being introverted and not having an opinion.

There are no shortage of extroverts who aren't going to let not having anything to say stop them from saying it. On the other side of the equation, if you manage to persuade your introverts to share their conclusions, you can get a beautiful signal-to-noise ratio.

"A bias for action" - if you try something, you can learn. But if you are (rightly and accurately) timid, you're less likely to.

One might think that bullshitting only works with people, and that if you act over-confident/over-optimistic with the computer, it won't be impressed - but it is. When I've approached programming problems is an aggressive way, I learn more, see better solutions and perform better. There's still a need to clean up the disasters afterwards, and it does make me feel dumb to make mistakes - but it's a more effective way of learning. For me, timidity is a mistake.

Being so timid that I don't try anything until I understand it 100% perfectly is not as effective. But I do like timidity. It's more authentic and accurate.

PS: @nostrademons: that confirms something I wondered about you... :-)

Some guys who are cocky like that are insanely driven to justify their cockiness. I'm sure that's exactly what your VP was looking for: a classic driven, workaholic, alpha male executive.

This is an interesting topic from a geeky point of view, since geeks tend to be the opposite of cocky guys like this. Geeks tend to be meek and have bad posture and avoid boasting. The downside of this is that some geeks manage to avoid ever being in a position where they have to stretch themselves to live up to their boasting. Competition and arrogance drive a lot of achievement.

this is an excellent point.

At least if someone is confident and then wrong you can learn not to trust them. Someone who always hedges may never be quite as wrong, but is far less useful to a manager.

In an organizational structure it's not about one person being right, it's about the organization making a decision.

Exactly right, and a self-deprecating meek geek with bad posture who comes to realize that the world works this way can use this information to his advantage. First, observe that social skills can be learned the same way as anything else: by making empirical observations and performing experiments, and combining this with analysis and theory. More specifically: Actively seek out friends and opportunities for socialization and force a constant minimum level of social activity [empirical observations]. Push your boundaries and don't fear unfamiliar social situations [experiments]. Observe yourself in social situations and (dispassionately) note what you could have done better [analysis]. Read everything from pop psych self-help stuff (e.g. succeedsocially.com) to social psychology and evolutionary psychology (e.g. books and papers describing nonverbal communication and social signaling) [theory]. Learn to project confidence yet be your own worst critic. Be extremely aware of the breadth of your ignorance but don't be sheepish about what you have learned and done. Understand when to be a little hubristic and when to be a little deferential. These are things that we all do automatically to one degree or another, but we can all be more effective by actively observing ourselves and deliberately making adjustments. The downside is that getting better at these skills will necessarily involve a lot of fucking up, but the alternative is to just stay where you are without improving things.

I've recognized that what holds me back is what I fear and in some cases I feel default non-optimal social habits are my default because I am addicted to the feeling of being a lone wolf, the wallflower in a social situation.

As you point out, hacks only work if you iterate on them. You can't unit test social graces you can only have good exception handling. And good exception handling may come down to experience handling situations earned by actual trial-and-error and as this article says - a certain amount of cockiness.

It doesn't sound crazy at all. This (particularly in the software development world) is exactly the sort of situation I had in mind when I read and posted the article. It seems to be a particularly acute problem in an industry where those responsible for who gets promoted know little about the technology involved.

I think a reason why cockiness is enjoyed by the more thoughtful types is that it gives them an illusion of choice. By restricting the problem down to a couple of different solutions, thoughtful types figure that one has to be more optimal than the other and is therefore the more reasonable solution. The "reasoners" may be good at comparison study, but are often paralyzed when it comes to devising completely new solutions. A cocky leader, while maybe a technical ignoramus, at least narrows the choices down a bit.

> The "reasoners" may be good at comparison study, but are often paralyzed when it comes to devising completely new solutions.

"A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week."

-General George S. Patton

Yeah, right. Operation Market Garden, anyone?

Ambitious goals, insufficient supply, unexpectedly capable enemy resistance. Why, in this context, was that a "good" plan?

You are right. I used to think as a kid that technical fields would be devoid of this kind of bullshit, but it turns out that almost any type of organization of people with more than 20 members has some these types in prominent positions.

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