It's a journal site where curators share bite-sized quotes and excerpts from the books they've read on business, philosophy, psychology and everyday life.
This makes the mistake of correlating monetary success with wisdom.
Those are all salesmen. Go read Hatching Twitter. Jack Dorsey doesn't come off well. Ed Catmull was extolling the virtues of the creative environment at Pixar in Creativity, Inc. while John was regularly harassing women there. I like Paul but he's one for big claims and the other end of that is where you have to beg on HN to get Coinbase to give you your own money.
These guys are all impressive in their own right, but they should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Too much recency bias. I'd suggest that none of them belong in the same thought process as Marcus Aurelius, and they are put on the same level here. If they do belong there, you'll know an about 500 years. As it is, I'm not sure how much more to trust them than John McArthur, Creflo Dollar, or a random HN commentator. Hero worship is dangerous.
This is one of the Catmull quotes presented in full:
The takeaway here is worth repeating: Getting the team right is the necessary precursor to getting the ideas right. It is easy to say you want talented people, and you do, but the way those people interact with one another is the real key. Even the smartest people can form an ineffective team if they are mismatched. That means it is better to focus on how a team is performing, not on the talents of the individuals within it. A good team is made up of people who complement each other. There is an important principle here that may seem obvious, yet — in my experience — is not obvious at all. Getting the right people and the right chemistry is more important than getting the right idea.
How that could be written while sexual harassment was going on is boggling.
Yeah, but this is just a web site. Odds are it won't be around in 5 years, much less 500, so I'm not sure that recency is a problem... this is all just a snapshot of our current time. Which makes you quite correct that it focuses too much on monetary success... but again... it matches the problems of our time.
Paul Graham, Jeff Bezos, Charlie Munger, Naval Ravikant, Sherlock Holmes, Richard Feynman, Edwid Catmull, and so on... the majority of the people on the list are most certainly _not_ salespeople, and many of them are world leaders in their respective fields.
Sure, it's unlikely any of them will be remembered as Marcus Arelius (Feynman has a decent shot, though). But that is an incredibly high bar that leaves behind much potential insight. It's also definitionally not attainable by someone who is still alive today, so we have to keep that in mind.
Holmes is fictional. Graham and Bezos are salesmen in every sense of the word. See my post for Catsmull.
It's not so much about having an incredibly high bar (though I'll admit it's unfair), but just being aware that what they are selling you as insight might not be as insightful as you think it is. Most people don't have the experience to know whether they are wrong (I don't), this is the inherent danger. We also tend to gloss over when they are wrong.
Skepticism is warranted, though maybe not the cynicism.
You can make the argument that Bezos is a salesmen. But that is not certainly NOT his primary role... so it's a misleading statement and it doesn't support your main point.
I would argue that this collection of content has a fairly high signal to noise, for someone who is sifting through it critically.
You believe selling is not his primary role? You used a double negative in your comment so I’m unclear.
Anyway, as his duty to Amazon is selling equity and debt to drive growth - and has been for the last 2 decades, if not 3 - I’d conclude that sales best defines his primary duty.
Sure, he manages and directionally pushes the organization, but he’s doing that to improve his ability to raise capital, increase shareholder confidence, and build a tappable revenue pipeline.
How would you argue he’s not primarily a salesman?
He drives the vision and values of the company, makes major strategic decisions, and so on. He decided to reinvest all profits into the growth of the company for more than a decade, despite immense whining from investors. And he drove the internal systems to be so well decoupled that AWS could spring out from internal infrastructure as an amazingly successful secondary business. And countless other things.
It sounds like you are describing the generic, money-manager CEO that is brought in to run an existing stable business. I don't think Bezos fits that mold.
Even in your own description, you said:
> build a tappable revenue pipeline.
which is much beyond the capabilities of a pure salesperson.
I totally agree that great CEOs need to be great salespeople (the good kind... not the slimy kind). But that is only one aspect of what they need to do -- especially for complex, changing domains like where Amazon operates.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 30.2 ms ] threadThose are all salesmen. Go read Hatching Twitter. Jack Dorsey doesn't come off well. Ed Catmull was extolling the virtues of the creative environment at Pixar in Creativity, Inc. while John was regularly harassing women there. I like Paul but he's one for big claims and the other end of that is where you have to beg on HN to get Coinbase to give you your own money.
These guys are all impressive in their own right, but they should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Too much recency bias. I'd suggest that none of them belong in the same thought process as Marcus Aurelius, and they are put on the same level here. If they do belong there, you'll know an about 500 years. As it is, I'm not sure how much more to trust them than John McArthur, Creflo Dollar, or a random HN commentator. Hero worship is dangerous.
This is one of the Catmull quotes presented in full:
The takeaway here is worth repeating: Getting the team right is the necessary precursor to getting the ideas right. It is easy to say you want talented people, and you do, but the way those people interact with one another is the real key. Even the smartest people can form an ineffective team if they are mismatched. That means it is better to focus on how a team is performing, not on the talents of the individuals within it. A good team is made up of people who complement each other. There is an important principle here that may seem obvious, yet — in my experience — is not obvious at all. Getting the right people and the right chemistry is more important than getting the right idea.
How that could be written while sexual harassment was going on is boggling.
Yeah, but this is just a web site. Odds are it won't be around in 5 years, much less 500, so I'm not sure that recency is a problem... this is all just a snapshot of our current time. Which makes you quite correct that it focuses too much on monetary success... but again... it matches the problems of our time.
Sure, it's unlikely any of them will be remembered as Marcus Arelius (Feynman has a decent shot, though). But that is an incredibly high bar that leaves behind much potential insight. It's also definitionally not attainable by someone who is still alive today, so we have to keep that in mind.
It's not so much about having an incredibly high bar (though I'll admit it's unfair), but just being aware that what they are selling you as insight might not be as insightful as you think it is. Most people don't have the experience to know whether they are wrong (I don't), this is the inherent danger. We also tend to gloss over when they are wrong.
Skepticism is warranted, though maybe not the cynicism.
[0] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11505/11505-h/11505-h.htm#TH...
I would argue that this collection of content has a fairly high signal to noise, for someone who is sifting through it critically.
Anyway, as his duty to Amazon is selling equity and debt to drive growth - and has been for the last 2 decades, if not 3 - I’d conclude that sales best defines his primary duty.
Sure, he manages and directionally pushes the organization, but he’s doing that to improve his ability to raise capital, increase shareholder confidence, and build a tappable revenue pipeline.
How would you argue he’s not primarily a salesman?
He drives the vision and values of the company, makes major strategic decisions, and so on. He decided to reinvest all profits into the growth of the company for more than a decade, despite immense whining from investors. And he drove the internal systems to be so well decoupled that AWS could spring out from internal infrastructure as an amazingly successful secondary business. And countless other things.
It sounds like you are describing the generic, money-manager CEO that is brought in to run an existing stable business. I don't think Bezos fits that mold.
Even in your own description, you said:
> build a tappable revenue pipeline.
which is much beyond the capabilities of a pure salesperson.
I totally agree that great CEOs need to be great salespeople (the good kind... not the slimy kind). But that is only one aspect of what they need to do -- especially for complex, changing domains like where Amazon operates.