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Comment by bitL | Hacker News Reader

It's probably common in technology area that due to Dunning-Kruger effect many super talented engineers have low self-esteem and real-life skills, and are attracted by "magical" personalities, forming narcissist-codependent pairs. I see it all around, it's sad, but unless engineers fix their broken "insides", it's going to happen. It's then pretty logical that the narcissistic part of the pair gets all the fame, spotlight, power, and the co-dependent part gets used, squeezed, depleted and thrown away once not useful.

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Many engineers spend their lives struggling to do great work within seemingly arbitrary constraints on budget, timeline, vision, or internal politics. Part of the power of Steve Jobs was that he removed many of those constraints, but in return demanded a very high level of innovation and quality.

Dunning-Kruger is the opposite (when unskilled individuals think of themselves as being much more talented than they actually are).

D-K goes both ways - unskilled think of themselves highly, highly skilled lowly. I often wonder if this is the ultimate joke of the Universe embedded deeply in the fabric of "matrix".

MarkTee is right - DK only goes one way. The other direction is called "Impostor Syndrome". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

I don't see how it's invalid to argue that they're just two sides of the same coin. If no-talent hacks think they're better than they are, how could the opposite not be true for the same underlying reasons?

Not logically ironclad, of course, but we are talking pop psychology here.

Is it not possible that what you describe as a two-way parasitic relationship is in fact one of symbiosis?

It`s almost a covalent bond. The same that diamonds are made of.

Why is the DK effect mentioned in every second thread here?

Because it's a fancy scientific-sounding way for nerds to look down on those stupid jocks who are so dumb they don't even know how dumb they are and thereby buoy our foundering sense of self-esteem.

It's also thrown out as a red herring pretty often around here.

Nailed it. Most of the Silicon Valley hotshots are those who've become extremely adept at exploiting talented people with low self-esteem.

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