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Comment by ZephyrBlu | Hacker News Reader

I don't believe that 20 year olds with good leadership skills even exist.

Lafayette was a major general in the American revolution at 19, he had plenty of leadership skills in his 20’s. Not saying it’s _common_ but historically it seems at least possible.

A title is meaningless without context. Knowing he was a major general does not tell me anything about his leadership skills.

Often at companies (And I presume in other situations as well), people are thrust into higher level positions purely because they happened to be in the right place at the right time and someone above them left.

I’m saying he had the skills because after he was thrust into the position, he lead military operations, then left for France to convince them to contribute more to the American revolution (which they did). Maybe that doesn’t count as true leadership to you but I know it would clear the bar at any company I worked at.

Realizing how often people exaggerate their own abilities and working in a "good" company seeing how Senior+ devs operate, I no longer trust any claim of someones skill unless it's by someone who I already trust or there is sufficient context and evidence to support the claim.

Too many people/companies claiming to be "world class" or whatever when they are above average at best.

I have no knowledge of Lafayette (Not American) and no context or understanding what he did, so my default judgement is that his skill is exaggerated.

I'm not American, but Lafayette was certainly successful at achieving his military and political goals.

It's worth noting he had been trained in a French military academy for officers since 11, and was commissioned as an officer in the French Musketeers at 14.

Additionally he was extremely well connected in the French nobility and clearly had the expectation that men would follow him.

As for his leadership capabilities, Washington cited him in a letter to congress when he was still officially an adviser for rallying US troops during a retreat after being shot in the leg. His record is pretty good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_du_Motier,_Marquis_de_...

Sounds like I'm likely to be wrong in this case then :).

I’m pretty sure Lafayette had been training for this since he was around 12-13 years old.

Did you ever play sports as a child? It’s clear even in kids under the age of 10 that some people have natural leadership skills and some don’t.

I played sports at a relatively competitive level for a long time. I do not remember seeing players with significant leadership ability.

Maybe this is true on a relative scale (E.g. good leadership skills for their age), but I don't believe it's true on an absolute scale and an absolute scale is the only useful scale in a professional environment.

I also believe that leadership skill is domain-specific, so having significant experience in your domain along with good leadership skills (Real skills, not from courses or workshops or whatever) does not at all seem feasible by the age of 20.

A person with leadership skills can still benefit from experience.

My current company is lead by someone with good leadership skills, and successfully managed a commercial team. Now he's trying to lead a company, and it is clear that he does not have the necessary experience to make the correct decisions.

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