Do you actually know any of those people, or are you simply repeating media noise?
Because there are several first hand reports from employees about Gates' meanness ("That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard"). Woz said himself how he had to give part of his equity to the employees Jobs screwed over. The whole Uber PR debacle has been going on for months. Zuck's money fight with Saverin is well reported in his gchats. Same thing with the Snapchat guys. And so on...
Anyway, I think this is a poor article simply because it seems to depict people as being in extremes (you're either black or white), as if a "good person" won't do mean things and vice versa. There's an old saying that goes something like "the opportunity makes the thief".
There's no point in arguing though. People will continue to believe what they want to believe regardless of truth or evidence. (e.g. http://www.newsweek.com/why-we-believe-lies-even-when-we-lea...)
I have no stake in this argument, but this tactic is kind of weak. "I would argue with you, but you suffer from a cognitive bias that makes you irrational (which, by the way, I do not)."
That might even be true, but you can't accuse someone of being irrational before they've actually done it.
Someone could just as easily accuse you of being blind to the evidence that goes against your own anecdotes and personal experiences. In other words, your personal experiences of these people could be positive but not represent other parts of their character that you haven't seen.
(For what it's worth, I think that a "mean people" / "good people" dichotomy is far too reductive to actually have any meaningful conversation about).
If it makes you feel any better, I'm mostly criticizing myself for engaging in a pointless and unwinnable debate :)
For that to be true, you need to point to a study that shows that the founders of highly successful tech startups - including the ones YC has funded like Airbnb, Dropbox and Stripe - tend to be sociopaths.
In fact, probably the only people in the world who have the hard data to find such a correlation are the psrtners of YC; the success of their organisation relies on it. Aside from being incorrect, it would be counter to the commercial interests of YC to write this essay if it were false.
To my knowledge, the research you're referring to is based on large bureaucratic corporations like banks, in which it pays better to be a shrewd political operative than a skilled practitioner of a craft and a hard-nosed-but-ultimately-well-intentioned innovator and leader.
But as this and many other PG writings explain, modern startup culture, at its best, embodies a transition away from that kind of corporate culture.
With that in mind, even if it were true that people like Gates and Jobs did mean things 20-30 years ago, it doesn't mean it's the optimal way to be in the startup world of today and the foreseeable future.
In other words, people are complex, but public opinion is not.
Personally, I don't believe that it's a useful distinction to classify a person as "mean" or "nice". Actions may be mean. A person commits so many actions that how could any person possibly understand and tally up all of them?
For sure, few in history have ever deserved such a binary distinction: Everyone mortal has made mistakes in their life, carried regrets, and so on.
However that itself puts into scrutiny what the point of Paul's piece even really is -- if that piece were randomly posted by some nobody, I would honestly have assumed that it was a passive-aggressive retort to someone who they felt wronged by. But instead it's actually a genuine claim that so-called mean people don't succeed. That is absurd. Again, there is a strong, demonstrated, studied correlation between success/entrepreneurial efforts and sociopathic, and even psychopathic, tendencies. To just outright claim that no, only good people succeed, is simply outrageous.
But I also think that most of the comments on this article are specious as well. It's silly to argue about whether Bill Gates is naughty or nice - you will never agree, and the comments you get say more about the worldviews and experiences of the people commenting than about Bill Gates.
I was once talking to a psychologist I know about corporate CEOs, and she said that there've been meta-analyses done in the psychological literature about what traits make a good leader. And what they found is that across the whole body of the field, 1000s of studies, there was zero correlation between any personality trait and leadership. What they did find, however, was that there was a strong correlation between the personality traits possessed by the study's author and the personality traits they found in the leaders they studied. In other words, everybody saw themselves in leaders. Smart people looked at famous figures and said "They're all of above-average IQ", ignoring the counterexamples that are really quite dumb. Determined people looked at leaders and said "They're all really determined", ignoring the ones that lucked into their positions. Folks who were afraid to take a leadership position projected their inadequacies onto leaders and claimed they were lucky, or sociopathic, or had other reasons why they themselves would never want the position.
Worth keeping in mind when you're reading essays on the Internet about what makes a good founder, or, for that matter, if you're an investor trying to pick out good founders to back. If you're that founder, well, the only trait that all leaders share is that they got someone to follow them.
You've spun a pretty broad claim out of a conversation you had. Yet you can find countless studies on the personality traits of leadership. This isn't just people projecting their inadequacies, but instead is educated people trying to figure out what makes the social hierarchy of our society work.
Knowing how people rise in the ranks, and how cult of personality figures gain their powers, is of obvious importance. And a pretty consistent finding is that negative personality traits -- primarily the willingness to use and discard others -- is highly advantageous in such situations.
And it's obvious certain personality traits benefit both the striving for leadership, and entrepreneurial efforts. For instance a pretty common startup thing is claiming broad innovations when there is, really, none -- when you shamelessly claim wizardry, it gets you press and mentions and from that success, even if the root of your accomplishment is absolutely banal. Most of us have an internal voice that says "eh...sure most people will fall for it, but other people might look down on us" and will add disclaimers on our claims. No one wants to talk about that.
The claim "people who are mean (by the YC partners' standards) to the YC partners or in their presence are unlikely to succeed in YC or the scene which has emerged around it" is a bit more reasonable.
It's not so much that pg has tunnel vision as it is that every founder has tunnel vision for YC's money and the smart ones structure their interactions with the moneyholders appropriately.
My view of Zuckerberg being mean comes from personal experience. Zuck was not that mean, nothing like Walter Isaacson's description of Jobs. But at the time (years ago), he was probably 90th percentile in terms of meanness of the people I have known. He could sneak in barbs and be quite disdainful to people who he viewed as less than him (in one case shouting a person down and calling them stupid).
In a previous comment, you wrote that "but it's a mistake to believe you know someone based on a collection of sensationalized stories." This is correct. But is there any evidence that the stories about Jobs or Bill Gates were sensationalized? "Sensationalized" is the operative word. If the stories are true, then the person is in fact mean, and it is a mistake to view them as not mean, simply because they are always nice around you.
If we are to assume that pg is in fact correct in his conclusion, then what are the examples (data points) that would bring one to this conclusion?
That's a general principle, I don't know about the particular cases you allude to.
Personally I think in any situation where a company strategically outmaneuvers another company it is going to come off somewhat as mean (e.g. Microsoft in the 90s protecting their turf). The idea that a company/person succeeds because they are mean, however, is far too simplistic.
There are hundreds of reports from colleagues, family, friends about the characters of each of these people. They are completely different.
There is video evidence confirming these judgement. There is video evidence of Woz going around being a pretty sweet guy. There is video evidence of Jobs berating people and being mean.
Should we--the unconnected public--pretend that we can't know anything about these people just because we haven't met them?
It's not true that you have to know someone personally to judge their character.
We, the masses, don't judge people by how they treat their friends, superiors, or other rich, connected, powerful people (like you).
We judge them by how they treat the little people.
Being mean is like being trustworthy. Sometimes it only takes one sufficiently mean act to become a mean person--especially if that mean act is toward a little person who can't do anything to fight back.
You're a modern aristocrat, Paul, whether you like it or not. Not every aristocrat is abusive but one trend throughout history is that the kind aristocrats usually protect the evil ones. The servants know the difference. The nice aristocrats are ignorant. The mean artistocrats pull the wool over the eyes of the nice ones. If the servants complain about the mean ones, the nice ones side with the mean ones. Class solidarity, willful ignorance, or both?
I am very sure this is what is happening in Paul Graham's case, and likely yours too. You are apologizing for the cruel aristocrats because they don't show you their true colors.
Note: edited to remove identifying information.
This describes 96% of my interactions with all people, everywhere. It's nice that there is the other 4%, but they're not important in daily life.
If that surprises you, you may still be a young person who hasn't learned to see past the routine, reflexive veneer of niceness the 96% erect. Or I may be tragically cynical. But either way, once you adjust your expectations accordingly, disappointment and shock become less of a useless distraction.
Actually, telling it might be fine. Believing it, not so much.
I know how fashionable it is to hate on <company>, but is this what it's come to? An unsubstantiated story about how someone felt "vibes"? When the CEO didn't actually do anything?
Judge a person not by how they treat their superiors (Jessica, Paul) but how they treat those weaker than them, or those who can't do anything for them.
You are happy to take Paul's intuitions as data, but the intuitions of real people NOT in a position of power, who interacted with this guy in a place where he will show his true colors, you will dismiss.
I've edited my comment to remove identifying information because I don't feel like getting into more detail, and I agree that anonymous character attacks on the Internet are not that helpful.
"Sue didn't work as hard as me"
"Bobby isn't the idea man"
"I don't owe Claire anything, she took 2 days off sick last year"
"Carl's only a contractor, I can pay him 2 months late"
"Jay only contributed a tiny amount at the beginning, now he does nothing, it's time to cut him loose"
"Sally just isn't a cultural fit any more"
Or simply "I worked so much harder/am brighter/deserve it more than most people, I'm allowed to be a bit selfish".
It's the same thing as power being corrupting.
And as I've said in my edit, why does he use "good" and "benevolent" as antonyms instead of "polite" or "diplomatic"? Why "x-ray vision for character"? "they're usually trying to improve the world"? "you win not by fighting to get control of a scarce resource, but by having new ideas and building new things"? "People need to feel that what they create can't be stolen."?
pg was clearly not talking about name throwing or spite. He's talking about moral character. He is repeatedly making positive judgements about how great these founders are. Not how they don't belittle other people for kicks.
On the other hand, a personal first hand account on how BG was a super nice guy would be a lot less relevant in my opinion.
You're right though that it comes down to definitions. I think the prevailing definition here is some closer to villain.
If Uber, as a company, strikes you as "not mean", you're delusional.
My only hope is that uber doesn't take down too many innocent bystanders as it steamrolls taxi industries across the world.
Unfortunately it's not in uber's, as a business, best interest to give two fucks about innocent bystanders (I think, -we'll see how the "nicer" new taxi company replacements do over the next decade).
One of the big arguments for Uber being mean, is that they recruited drivers from competitors. The goal there was to help extend an economic opportunity (the alleged benefit of capitalism) to more private contractors. We complain when large tech companies collude to keep salaries down, and I embrace companies who work to counter that. The fact that Uber appears to be doing that for tens of thousands of people every week puts them in the "not mean" category for me.
It's very possible that we have different criteria for what is mean or not mean. I'm basing mine on the facts I have, rather than sensationalist reports from blogs masquerading as real journalism (the fact that obvious hit piece have been written about Uber doesn't put them in the "mean" category for me, although it makes me wonder about their competitors who would do that). I haven't seen Uber playing dirty in the press, with their riders or with their drivers. They seem to genuinely be making the world a better place, with a focus on helping both sides of their marketplace. That said, I'm open to other points of view. Am I missing something?
We've managed to set up our civilization such that improving the world is usually the best way to gain power and wealth. While the ancients may have gone in for conquest and pillage, now the best way to make it big is to figure out how to give people what they want in a way that nobody else has done before. But that doesn't mean that the people working within this arrangement are good people.
If you've never been on the other side of the news, you may not understand the difference.
You have a double standard: You certainly won't be coming to the defense of alleged misogynists and sexual harassment, for example, with cries of "but you don't really know the person" and talk of "fictionalized characterizations".
At the same time, I know it's pointless to argue with people who already know the answer, so I'm probably wasting my time.
Because it is widely perceived as socially indefensible and because of YC's support for women in particular.
Perhaps it is an unfair to apply these generalizations to you, however I seriously doubt you (or any public figure) would depart from them.
Nonetheless, the point was more general: Obviously you form opinions of people without knowing them personally.
> In this particular case I commented because I have direct experience with some of the people being discussed and am familiar with the ways in which the popular group-think diverges from reality for this group.
I pointed out that your experience may not be informative because of the particular power relations of your interactions. I think that is a fair observation.
This group is ill-informed, has poor reasoning skills and poor judgement. That doesn't have any bearing on the question of whether successful people are more likely to be sociopaths.
> I know it's pointless to argue with people who already know the answer
You could apply the statement equally well to yourself.
My purpose in all of this is not to "prove" that these are all nice people, but simply to point that you are all speaking with great confidence about the characters of people that you really know nothing about.
It's not right when people unjustifiably get socially lynched by the mob and it happens often. However, many successful people really are sociopaths --- which might be expected from a person who puts success before anything else --- and I don't think anyone ought to give up forming opinions on anyone else just because the mob often gets it wrong or because we don't know every detail of the lives of the accused. If that weren't the case then we couldn't pass judgement on many of the people we "obviously" want to (despots, etc).
(And disagreement, in particular defending tech executives, is not socially indefensible, defending sexism is).
You will be astonished at how different the two can be.
Nobody here is saying the YC and VC community are all evil super-villians. But as PG's essay and your views here indicate, there may be a startlingly shallow understanding of the nuances of human behavior in the YC community as a whole.
Techies such as ourselves tend to be very optimistic and trusting people. We always give our friends the benefit of the doubt when we can. But you and PG are seemingly taking this way, way too far in spite of mountains of contrary evidence (and I'm talking evolutionary biology, not just anecdotal).
Humans are primates who form status hierarchies and ruthlessly enforce them via any means necessary. This includes power asymmetry, extortion, bribery, status signaling, and a whole host of others nasty behaviors (watch Game of Thrones for the full gamut). That PG and yourself apparently deny this basic biological fact for a certain group (i.e. YC founders) does not make it less true.
I have to disclaim here that I'm a huge fan of yours Paul, and I know much about the incredible struggles you've faced in life. I know the only way to move forward is to be relentlessly positive, and this is also my own personal philosophy. However, part of being a rational person is trying to see the empirical world for what it is, not what we want it to be. I think this is the only thing PG is guilty of; He wants founders to be above average in altruism, when the reality may be the opposite.
All the best, and forever a fan.