Ask HN: Is it possible to create something significant without being a jerk?
It seems almost all famous leaders of IT companies had quite bad personality and squeeze people to get shit done. Do you believe it is a must for any great company?
"SAS ranks No. 2 on 2014 Fortune list of Best Companies to Work For in the US"
http://www.sas.com/en_us/news/press-releases/2014/january/gr...
Or take a look at what David Duffield has done, with both PeopleSoft before and Workday now. He's known to be an exceptional nice guy.
"Workday Named #1 Best Place to Work in the Bay Area"
http://www.workday.com/company/news_events/press_releases/de...
Gordon Moore was the President and then CEO of Intel for years, and is a nice guy.
Pierre Omidyar founded and ran eBay early on, and is a nice guy.
Jan Koum and Bryan Acton are not jerks, they created a vast success with WhatsApp.
Jerry Yang and David Filo are nice guys.
Kevin Systrom of Instagram isn't a jerk.
Nick Woodman of GoPro isn't known for being a jerk.
There are a lot of good examples.
The truly amazing leaders are the ones who you will not only follow into the fire, but when you come out burned you are already signed up for the next round. They aren't abusive, jerks or anything of the sort. Unless they do this to you needlessly and repeatedly, then they are not even respectful of themselves.
I personally have lived by this rule, I won't ask anyone to do something I am not willing to do or help them do. Doesn't mean I can do it necessarily, but I would do my best. For me, this generally removes people feeling squeezed, they may feel I am a pain sometimes, but they know I will do it too. I do my best to listen as well, but I do feel that people have taken advantage of me at times because I will generally give them the benefit of the doubt for a little to long.
What you need is to deliver. An easy way is to treat them poorly, and it works to some degree. The hard way is to treat them with respect and support, but that takes more work; although offers better results.
And it's mostly because of the way capitalism works. Once you enter the market, you're automatically forced to turn a profit or get investments. If you don't, you die. Competition is also pretty fierce. You may choose to play by the rules, but others choose not to. So you can easily get killed.
Customers also become your worst enemy. They are forced by the market to buy cheap instead of good. So you're now in a race to the bottom. Plus, the entire market is volatile. Things can change almost instantly. One well targeted review or article can either make you or break you.
So when your entire success is built on a tower of cards, only by being ruthless can you make the climb. We could have had megabit internet 30 years ago. But instead we got AOL and Comcast. People can spin it any way they like. But in the end, actions talk louder than words.
Every successful person is a jerk?
>Customers also become your worst enemy. They are forced by the market to buy cheap instead of good.
Price is not the only metric by which people buy a product. There are a large amount of variables which play into a purchasing decision. Also, no one is forced. You choose what to purchase.
>So when your entire success is built on a tower of cards,
Another large and untrue generalisation.
>We could have had megabit internet 30 years ago. But instead we got AOL and Comcast.
Please explain this further.
You start a company and become a success - you get a lot of enemies that want to destroy you. Overtime you try the best you can but you cannot please everyone.