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Comment by nikz | Hacker News Reader

It's very interesting to note the backgrounds of the various people involved in this debate.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanielwhittemore would lead me to believe Nathaniel is not a "code"/execution person (I could be wrong, obviously).

Whereas the people on the other side of the debate seem to be largely execution guys - coders or self-styled "product" guys (YCombinator, Eric Ries).

It's almost a tautology - the execution guys say the execution is most important, the idea guys think it's all about the idea.

Like most things, the "best" answer probably lies somewhere between the two extremes.

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This is an absolutely true point - and I am definitely more on the idea side. In a lot of ways though, it's not so much the "MBA vs Coder" debate as much as the "designer vs coder" debate. I do the high level product design and actually UI for the product, so obsess about things like user behavior. Before I was doing this, I was designing programs for university students that were again, driven by thesis about behavior.

I hope the piece doesn't come off as thinking it's all about idea and no execution. The "in between" for me is that they're part and parcel of the same thing.

> It's almost a tautology - the execution guys say the execution is most important, the idea guys think it's all about the idea.

Isn't that opposite of what you'd expect? I'd expect in general for people to think their part is the easy part, and the other part is the hard part. After all, presumably that's why the execution guys can't come up with the ideas, and the idea guys can't come up with the execution. If the other part were easy they'd do it themselves.

I think there's a more succinct explanation of this somewhere, but I think people usually overvalue their own contribution whilst simulataneously undervaluing that of others (see: http://books.google.com/books?id=YywIHNBn_YEC&lpg=PA147&...).

So perhaps it's the cynic in me, but I would expect people to be justifying their own importance. I do agree with you though - it should be the reverse!

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