[HN Gopher] Jessica Livingston (2015)
___________________________________________________________________
Jessica Livingston (2015)
Author : cperciva
Score : 186 points
Date : 2023-06-23 17:33 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.paulgraham.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.paulgraham.com)
| telltruth wrote:
| I wish pg the best but I think everyone should know how much
| legal liability these kind of public writings creates. A person I
| know closely had 25 year marriage in CA and he always believed in
| love and lifelong relationship. But as their kids went to
| college, wife's priorities changed. She started affair, started
| helping out her partner financially etc. Husband discovered all
| these accidently from her phone. After many discussions, they
| decided to file for divorce. She apparently claimed in court that
| she owned majority of his company even though she didn't played
| much of the part. The guy had started the company even before
| marriage by his own money. She produced bunch of emails among
| friend where he appreciated her for help. That was the end of it.
|
| It's easy to swept away in "love" and all that but the reality is
| that 50% of marriages in Western world ends in divorce. Always
| remember that people change over time.
| smt88 wrote:
| Anyone this cynical about marriage just shouldn't get married.
| LukeShu wrote:
| That oft-cited statistic about divorce is misleading. Most
| _marriages_ end in divorce, but most _people who get married_
| don 't get divorced. It's that if you get divorced once, you're
| more likely to get divorced again; serial-divorcees produce a
| disproportionate number of marriages.
| mkmk wrote:
| While we're on the topic, she's also the author of this wonderful
| book of founder interviews, which is illuminating even 15ish
| years after publication.
|
| I highly recommend it if you haven't come across it yet:
| https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/...
| [deleted]
| bjornsing wrote:
| In my bookshelf. But haven't had the time.
| jedberg wrote:
| If you're an aspiring founder, you should definitely try to
| make the time. It's a pretty easy read and insightful.
| marban wrote:
| The whole ...at work series by Apress is excellent. VCs, Coders
| , etc.
| joshu wrote:
| I was interviewed for that book! Good stuff.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Thank you for delicious.
|
| Funny note: I went to jail for 10 years. One of only about
| three sites (out of thousands I had accounts on) that I could
| log into when I was released was delicious. Sadly 99% of my
| bookmarks now pointed to dead wood.
| jedberg wrote:
| Do you remember the other ones?
| billclerico wrote:
| Also worth mentioning her new podcast (along with Carolynn
| Levy), The Social Radars, which is sort of a podcast version of
| Founders At Work: https://www.thesocialradars.com/
| 2arrs2ells wrote:
| This podcast is wonderful - I'd recommend starting with the
| Paul Graham espisode.
| ericd wrote:
| Seconding that, it's easily my favorite
| business/entrepreneurship book. It's very helpful for getting
| in the mindset if you're trying to figure out how to start a
| company, but it's also just really interesting and entertaining
| in its own right.
| bluepod4 wrote:
| I understand the optics involved with the Wikipedia situation.
|
| But an automated script (AnomieBot) tagged that article because
| it met or rather didn't meet certain guidelines. It's a stub
| article and lacked certain citations.
|
| Why not just flesh the article out?
|
| The "Notability" tag on Wikipedia has a different meaning than
| "notability" in the dictionary.
|
| Either way, it seems like someone already removed the tag
| manually with the justification "clearly notable" and uploaded a
| better photo.
|
| There's still a lack of information though.
| starkparker wrote:
| > But an automated script (AnomieBot) tagged that article
|
| AnomieBot put a date on the tag, it didn't add it. The tag was
| added without a listed reason by an anonymous user while not
| logged in:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jessica_Livingsto...
| bluepod4 wrote:
| Ok, I see.
|
| But even though a valid reason wasn't listed, it appears that
| valid reasons did exist. "Valid" based on guidelines not
| personal opinion. The anon user still could have done this
| based on personal opinion and/or ill intentions.
| echelon wrote:
| The photo situation on Wikipedia is so weird.
|
| Editors often upload bad photos, even if better alternatives
| exist in the public domain or are fair use.
|
| But the thing that grates me more than anything is Wikipedia
| uses elderly photos of famous figures that were at the peak of
| their careers in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. The appearance of
| these public figures changes, and sometimes the changes are so
| dramatic that I have to question if these are the same person.
|
| Wikipedia should have multiple photos in the top info box, but
| if not, they should focus on photos of subjects when they were
| in their peak of public activity.
|
| Good:
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_Presley
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Moore
|
| Bad:
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Ramis
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Murray
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_Fisher
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Simmons
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Turner
|
| There are far worse examples, and a lot of them. I'm having
| trouble finding them on the spot, though.
|
| Edit: Another super weird case of this is articles on famous
| child actors that didn't go on to act later in life, but their
| photo is of them in their 40's or substantially after their
| heyday. There's so much of that. They're easy examples to find:
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Thomas
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Lloyd
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Mazzello
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Schwartz
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary-Kate_and_Ashley_Olsen
| renewiltord wrote:
| Do you have unencumbered photos for those? The last time I
| added a portrait photo I had to ensure license was good and I
| needed a model release as well. If you provide the
| unencumbered photos, I will attempt to contact them or their
| publicists for a model release if required. It will likely
| take months for me, though, since this isn't a top priority.
|
| But if you get me the photos, I'll take care of the rest. We
| can't make it the infobox because they're still living, but
| we can add the photo to show what they were like at the time,
| which is notable since that's what they're famous as.
| petesergeant wrote:
| Also surely their publicists can (and should) source
| professional photos of them and then license them so they can
| be used by Wikipedia
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Wiki has a guideline to use recent photos for living figures,
| and will use more hey-day pictures after the person passes.
| Compare the pictures for William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. I
| think this is a good balance - it acknowledges people change,
| and sets your expectations should you see the person on the
| news or something, and then later they're reflected as they
| were best known.
|
| Note that most of your good examples are deceased and most of
| your bad ones are living.
|
| I learned this when Elizabeth II passed, and her photo was
| updated very quickly to a much older portrait.
| [deleted]
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Words like "social" and "culture" and a ton of other now-taboo
| hiring ideas throughout this writeup. I wonder how much YC has
| changed over the last few years with regards to how it uses
| nebulous hiring practices like "someone's gut feeling" to reject
| or accept candidates. I also wonder what YCs diversity numbers
| look like.
| chinchilla_opt wrote:
| So pg had a secret weapon all along.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Or Jessica has a secret weapon...
| bell-cot wrote:
| 's/secret weapon/front man/'
| fragmede wrote:
| I wonder what her Social Radar picks up off cryptocurrency-
| adjacent individuals. Because she's seen their pitches to YC. And
| that Social Radar of hers should get a good read on crypto bros.
| And so the question is how many of them are grifters and con
| artists trying to cash in on the next Bitcoin, and how many of
| them are true believers of the ideals being spouted. And how many
| of them are, actually, honestly, good people.
|
| Because they're there, but they seem few and far between.
| teach wrote:
| (2015)
| telotortium wrote:
| Thanks for this - without the year, I thought Jessica
| Livingston had just passed away.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| I don't doubt Jessica is good at reading people, but I found out
| during hiring people is that it is the easiest/cheapest skill to
| hire. I am honestly curious about why pg skipped the most
| frequently asked question: Would Jessica be close to this level
| of successful if she was not his wife?
|
| Also I would be very curious to know about female founders that
| Jessica selected. According to [1], companies with at least 1
| female founder has <10% of valuation compared to YC companies
| with all male founders[2]. Just on casual looking all female
| founder companies is <2% compared to all male founder companies,
| which is below average for VCs.
|
| [1]: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/women-founders
|
| [2]: https://www.ycombinator.com/
| InitialLastName wrote:
| I see:
|
| Combined Valuation (all companies): $600B Combined Valuation
| (Companies with women founders): $45B
|
| Still unbalanced, but closer to 15:1 as opposed to 49:1.
|
| That's also a comparisons that is totally useless without the
| base rate. If half the companies had female founders, it might
| be valid to say "why are the companies with women raising at a
| lower rate" but I'd be willing to bet that the application pool
| is heavily skewed male, and thus that the accepted pools are
| also heavily skewed male. It wouldn't shock me if that skew
| were on the order of 50:1. It also wouldn't shock me if it were
| trending in a more balanced direction; that would lead to a
| fundraising bias towards older companies that have raised more
| money over time and are more likely to have only men as
| founders.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| I said 10% valuation for companies with at least 1 female
| founder compared to no female founder. And in that list, I
| could see something like 5:1 for company with at least female
| founder to company with all female founder. That is how I
| arrived with all female:all male ratio of 2% if we ignore
| mixed gender founder companies.
|
| Also I am not arguing whether female founders experience
| discrimination or not, I am just arguing YC's female ratio is
| not significantly higher than other VC's which pg hints at
| due to Jessica.
| saeranv wrote:
| Careful, this seems to be falling for the prosecutor's fallacy
| where the probabilities aren't normalized to account for base
| rates of the hypothesis occuring. So in this case, the percent
| of successful valuations that have a female founders will
| likely be extremely low simply because the gender ratio is
| disproportionaly male, and being successful is extremely rare.
|
| For example, let's say probability of being successful is due
| to random chance, and effects both genders equally. Then ratio
| of successful women to successful men would just reflect the
| ratio of women to men. Now imagine if the actual valuation of
| successful companies is exponentially weighted, so that the top
| 1 or 2 companies make up the bulk of the total valuation.
| Again, these two companies are more likely to be founded by men
| given the base gender rate, and now the percent of valuation
| attributed to men would completely dominate the valuation
| percent.
|
| To get the real effectiveness of female founders, we need to
| account for the low probability of success and low probability
| of being female.
|
| I think both can be achieved with Bayes theorem:
| p($_high|f) = p($_high) p(f|$_high) / Sum_i[p($_i) p(f|$_i)]
| p($_high|m) = p($_high) p(m|$_high) / Sum_i[p($_i) p(m|$_i)]
|
| The first equation gets the number of founders who are female
| and successful, and then divide that by the number of female
| founders in total, and the second one does the same for males.
| That should give you a apples to apples comparison.
|
| Note: p($_i) represents a sequence of valuation probabilities
| subdivided to reflect low valuation, moderate valuation etc. I
| think this should account for the exponential distribution of
| valuation, but someone correct me if I'm wrong.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| I commented the same thing in another thread. I am not
| arguing the base rate or whether female founders experience
| discrimination, I am just arguing YC's female ratio is
| definitely not higher than other VC's which pg hints at due
| to Jessica. In fact I think other VCs have something in the
| range of 20% IIRC(would not mind to be corrected though).
| hsjqllzlfkf wrote:
| [flagged]
| scg wrote:
| Why?
| fragmede wrote:
| Because she's seen all their pitches to YC. And that Social
| Radar of hers should get a good read on crypto bros, and so
| the question is how many of them are grifters and con artists
| trying to cash in on the next Bitcoin, and how many of them
| are true believers of the ideals being spouted. And how many
| of them are, actually, honestly, good people.
| gregmfoster wrote:
| This comment seems off topic?
| jedberg wrote:
| Even though this is old, I'm glad it's here again. Jessica
| deserves so much credit for the success of YC but she's far too
| humble to make a big deal of it herself. It's important for the
| rest of us to call this out once in a while.
|
| Thank you Jessica for everything you've done and do.
| swyx wrote:
| ngl i had a mild heart attack seeing her name at the top of HN
| AmericanOP wrote:
| This was like the golden age of individuals furthering the
| zeitgeist of entrepreneurial discovery. A glowing
| recommendation from a luminary was like finding a missing piece
| of the puzzle.
| callistus wrote:
| https://blog.samaltman.com/pg-and-jessica
| [deleted]
| alexpotato wrote:
| _One of the things she 's best at is judging people. She's one of
| those rare individuals with x-ray vision for character. She can
| see through any kind of faker almost immediately. Her nickname
| within YC was the Social Radar, and this special power of hers
| was critical in making YC what it is_
|
| A manager at a past job also had a similar "x-ray vision".
|
| During interviews, she would always sit in with another
| interviewer and never ask any questions of the candidates. She
| would just observe.
|
| Over 5 years of working with her, every single person she said we
| should hire turned out great. Every person she said was no good,
| turned out to not be great.
|
| This was particularly fascinating to watch when she was the lone
| dissenter either way. e.g. there were times where 7 out of 8
| interviewers said "pass", she said "hire" and she was always
| right.
|
| The first time I read pg's essay about Jessica, it immediately
| reminded me of my old manager.
|
| It also reminds me of a story from, I believe, Malcolm Gladwell's
| Blink about the tennis coach who knew before a tennis player
| served if they would double fault.
|
| Some people have either a natural gift or their brains have
| picked up a set of weights for their internal neural network that
| make them fantastic at this kind of thing.
| asveikau wrote:
| I am extremely skeptical of someone who claims this ability in
| themselves or others. What this tells me is that someone is
| misjudging a lot of circumstances very confidently. You just
| can't understand people on a snap judgment, there are too many
| outliers.
|
| Imagine if we applied this kind of thinking in courts. We would
| convict a lot of innocent people. We wouldn't feel that we need
| to wait for all the facts and evidence to come in, because our
| radar for people is so good. We don't do it that way, because
| it's nonsense.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I feel like anyone who fits the categorization (so called
| INFP/F types[0]) are unlikely to the ones to tell you.
|
| That's why people who _claim_ to have this ability almost
| never do. Its not in the nature of someone who can to really
| talk about it this way.
|
| I'd also argue that courts are definitely not the place to
| have this. There's good reasons why this is likely to fail in
| a stressful setting (convicting someone of a crime or
| reviewing evidence) vs a situation of neutrality. Once you
| start mixing in other factors I imagine this gets blurry real
| fast. Its all _very_ context dependent.
|
| To tack on further, courts by structure also have a burden of
| proof aspect to limit / remove the human element as much as
| possible (in theory anyway) and that is very important.
|
| [0]: https://www.simplypsychology.org/infp-personality.html
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Why is Myers Briggs being referenced when it has zero
| substance to back it up? I thought it was common knowledge
| that pop psychology stuff was garbage, at least amongst
| this website's readers.
| cm2012 wrote:
| That "common knowledge" is wrong. Myers briggs is not
| great for scientific studies since it splits people into
| 16 buckets instead of sliding scales (like the Big 5,
| which is used in research). But MB is an incredible
| mental toolkit to have.
| sneak wrote:
| MB is astrology for nerds.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Astrology has a one in twelve chance of accuracy since
| the only variable is birthday.
|
| With the four discrete variables in MBTI, I can type
| people with 90% accuracy after a conversation.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Isn't this often just the Barnum effect, especially when
| ground truth is established by asking people if you are
| right? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect
| sneak wrote:
| The buckets themselves are also false, so no.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Why would something with no evidence behind it be an
| incredible mental toolkit?
|
| See the whole criticism section.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_I
| ndi...
| nvy wrote:
| >INFP
|
| Hasn't Myers Briggs been debunked as a load of
| pseudoscience shit?
| cm2012 wrote:
| 100% right. My wife is an INFP and in 16 years of being
| together, she has not been wrong about someone once, even
| when I vehemently disagreed with her at the time. But she
| would never say she's good at reading people to a stranger
| lol.
| retrac wrote:
| You're probably on to something. I frequently get
| impressions like, good Lord, can't you tell this person is
| schmoozing? Or that they're trying to hide their agitation?
| Same with people prone to black and white thinking. And it
| comes after just a minute or two. And it's often right.
| (Though I constantly doubt myself and possible confirmation
| bias.) I wouldn't say it's preternatural but better than
| most people, apparently. I almost never vocalize these
| impressions. Because the reasons why are inexplicable, and
| few have any reason to trust my gut instinct over any other
| person's.
| skilled wrote:
| Meh. You're underestimating how simple people are and how
| easy it is to read intonation and general presence of a
| person. Combined with questions that apply pressure it is
| _very_ easy to read a person because the very basics of a
| human being are inherently simple.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > snap judgment
|
| What this manager did isn't practically different from what
| all interviewers do, except the particular manager wasn't the
| specific target of the usual manipulations[0] candidates will
| do to seem better. The manager is likely to have a better
| understanding of how the candidate bullshits (or if they do)
| when they're not the target of the bullshit.
|
| [0] Used as a descriptor; e.g. "manipulating" someone to
| decide they should see a doctor for their toe infection isn't
| bad.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > except the particular manager wasn't the specific target
| of the usual manipulations[0] candidates will do to seem
| better.
|
| There's merit to this argument.
|
| Consider people who get scammed or catfished -- it's
| obvious to an outside observer. You're less likely to fool
| yourself when you have no skin in the game.
| bolangi wrote:
| > I am extremely skeptical of someone who claims this ability
| in themselves or others.
|
| Have you never heard of someone being a good judge of
| character?
| asveikau wrote:
| I've heard of many kinds of things. You've never heard of
| someone being wrong?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Have you never heard of someone being a good judge of
| character?
|
| I've heard of people claiming to be a good judge of
| character, or claiming other people are, usually without
| evidence and as an excuse for actions which involve
| disregarding objective indicia of character as it relates
| to the decision at hand, and very often as an excuse
| specifically for making decisions that seem to amount to
| disregarding objective criteria to favor their own and/or a
| generally-socially-favored race, ethnicity, subculture,
| etc.
| shrimpx wrote:
| "I felt the gut-feeling that the guy sucked, so I didn't give
| him a job, told my connections he sucks, and lo and behold he
| didn't succeed, so I was right."
| asveikau wrote:
| There's another variant of this that occurs after hiring.
| You don't trust them to take on a big project, so you give
| it to somebody else. At review time, you dock them for not
| having any big projects. Clearly a bottom performer.
| notatoad wrote:
| Yeah, this always seems like a truism. If you give people
| opportunities, they will tend to succeed. If you deny people
| opportunities, they won't. So anybody in the position of
| giving or denying opportunities to people will tend to be
| "right" most of the time.
| saeranv wrote:
| Good point. So when we try and evaluate a person's "social
| radar", we should probably limit ourselves to cases where
| they are the minority dissenter and the person they dislike
| is given the opportunity, since it gives us the most
| controlled scenario in which we can evaluate their
| hypothesis.
| mxstbr wrote:
| There are people that can do this, that are "social radars."
| It's rare, but I've seen one and it's mindblowing to observe.
| 100% hit rate.
|
| (that doesn't mean we should do it in courts to convict
| people)
| asveikau wrote:
| And I'm saying a 100% hit rate is not possible. Your
| ability to determine an accurate numerical hit rate is also
| very difficult to impossible.
|
| If we treat this kind of thing as an oracle rather than
| admit that it's a flawed heuristic, even a good heuristic
| being ultimately flawed, I think that's pretty dangerous.
| One has to be extremely humble at the task of evaluating
| people, because it's difficult and error-prone.
| as_bntd wrote:
| Well, it isn't possible because humans are not
| deterministic, but I imagine the manager in question
| could possibly have a high 'hit rate'.
| alexpotato wrote:
| You bring up a good point in that false negatives could
| never be tracked.
|
| E.g. if the manager in this story said "no" and that
| person wasn't hired, how would you know she was correct?
|
| I will say that there was a non-zero number of "she said
| 'no', person was hired anyway and it turned out to not be
| good". As sister/cousin threads have pointed out: this
| might be a self fulfilling prophecy.
| stcroixx wrote:
| Agreed, this sound like astrology for the Stanford set.
| Baffling.
| neilv wrote:
| This sounds sorta like one of my observations about someone I
| worked with: she'd go into an enterprise prospect/relationship
| meeting, and come out with better insights than the other
| people from our team. And the insights rang true.
|
| (And it was unfortunate that she wasn't listened to more,
| because a higher-ranking person would more often miss cues
| about customer thinking, or would come out of a meeting seeming
| to feel a gist biased more towards what they wanted it to be.)
|
| For that skill/quality and others, I later tried to recruit her
| as a startup CEO.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _It also reminds me of a story from, I believe, Malcolm
| Gladwell 's Blink about the tennis coach who knew before a
| tennis player served if they would double fault._
|
| I believe it was from watching the serve, but not seeing where
| the ball went. As someone who has played tennis for many years
| (but not remotely professionally), it always seemed to me that
| the coach could simply be reading the player's expression. When
| you're serving, you can typically tell based on how the contact
| felt, and the sound it made, whether your serve was going in.
| It wouldn't be surprising if that could be 'read' from your
| face.
| cutenewt wrote:
| Fascinating story!
|
| Your x-ray vision manager: what (interview) questions or
| criteria did she use?
| p0pcult wrote:
| Not op, but
|
| >she would always sit in with another interviewer and never
| ask any questions of the candidates. She would just observe.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Maybe the secret to being a good evaluator is to not do a
| distracting different task at the same time.
| alexpotato wrote:
| Chris Voss talks about this in his book "Never Split the
| Difference".
|
| He advocates for teams of people handling a negotiation
| with the most experienced negotiator just observing.
|
| The reason: it's incredibly difficult to be process,
| crafting and delivering responses in real time. If your
| primary goal is to observe the other side, that should be
| your sole focus. It's also incredibly valuable to have
| that observation hence why you should negotiate in teams
| (or at least pairs).
| alexpotato wrote:
| You are correct.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Basically anyone who can do this kind of thing falls into INFP
| or INFJ in Myers-Briggs. They're just incredible at reading
| people. Based on the article I'd be shocked if Jessica wasn't
| an INFP.
| choppaface wrote:
| False. First, one person's Myers-Briggs score can drift over
| time. Any of those letters can flip; being an "empath" is
| learnable. Second, people like Jessica and other evaluators
| do a lot (both reported and unreported) to set and move the
| goalposts that define success.
|
| What this article and discussion shows is less of a "some
| people are magic" phenomenon and more of a "a lot of
| evaluators and leaders have huge blindspots" phenomenon. Most
| all panels bias towards false negatives; there's a lot of
| support for having too narrow a perspective on any given
| candidate.
| scarnz wrote:
| Fascinating. I've never heard this about INFP/F types, though
| I am one. Can you describe more about your experiences or
| point me to some examples?
| cm2012 wrote:
| There's a lot of sources out there on this topic, but
| Psychology Junkie is way better than I would have expected
| from the name. Two articles that mention these traits:
|
| INFJ: https://www.psychologyjunkie.com/understanding-infj-
| intuitio...
|
| INFP: https://www.psychologyjunkie.com/the-infp/
| scarnz wrote:
| Thanks, I appreciate the links.
|
| I happen to be in a new leadership role and in the middle
| of a hiring decision.
| vladd wrote:
| https://www.16personalities.com/personality-types is a
| pretty good (and free) resource to get started in this
| field.
| neilv wrote:
| I've tested as INFP and INTJ. I'm not going to deny the
| Introvert theory part. The rest of it, I don't know how
| seriously to take it. I haven't studied the academic
| literature, and the occasional pop-psych writing about it
| bears some similarities to astrology writing (e.g., appeal to
| being special, being deep, having powers, navel-gazing,
| etc.).
| cm2012 wrote:
| If you're not sure about the tests, you can use this quick
| framework in this comment to help you find your letters.
|
| _Extraverted (E) vs Introverted (I)_
|
| "E" generally means gaining energy from other people, while
| "I" means people drain your batteries. This one is not
| always immediately obvious for people. In general "E"s talk
| more when with groups of people and "I"s think more. Even
| though I spend a lot of time at home with my wife, I'm an E
| - I get energy from social interactions.
|
| _Sensing (S) vs Intuiting (N)_
|
| This is about how you process new information. S people see
| what's actually in front of them - they think and talk more
| in specifics. In general, S types are better at detail
| oriented work.
|
| N types intuit things, so they sometimes aren't great at
| focusing at what's in front of them, but are great at
| coming up with ideas and next steps based on what they see.
|
| _Feeling (F) vs Thinking (T)_
|
| Everyone feels and everyone thinks. A good way to judge
| this is people's reactions to situations. Feelers react
| with empathy first, thinkers react with problem solving
| first.
|
| Very basic example: Your friend comes in with their arm
| bleeding. Is your very first reaction?
|
| "Oh no! What happened?" - Feeler
|
| "You should go to the hospital!" or "Let me get something
| to wrap that", etc etc.
|
| In general feelers are more likely to feel empathy for
| someone, even if they they think they are dead wrong or
| disagree with them.
|
| _Judging (J) vs Perceiving (P)_
|
| This is about how you make decisions. And it has nothing to
| do with the dictionary definitions of judging and
| perceiving.
|
| Some defining traits of Js:
|
| Achieving the goal is more important than the process.
|
| You are comfortable making decisions with limited
| information.
|
| For Ps:
|
| Being true to your moral system is more important than
| achieving the goal.
|
| You prefer to collect more information before making
| decisions.
|
| The side effect of these two things means Js tend to have
| steadier lives with more commitment, while Ps tend to have
| a broader range of experiences and a bigger variety of life
| experiences.
|
| ---
|
| Lastly, the temperaments:
|
| ExxJ - Organizes people
|
| IxxJ - Keeps systems running, also good at absorbing and
| teaching information.
|
| ExxP - Collectors of experiences, achievements, pleasures,
| etc.
|
| IxxP - Being true to your convictions
|
| ---
|
| Now, people who study function stacks are going to shit on
| this comment, saying the letters don't mean anything, its
| all about functions like Extraverted Thinking, etc. But I
| find these letter rules make a great shortcut for 97% of
| people.
| neilv wrote:
| > _Sensing (S) vs Intuiting (N). This is about how you
| process new information. S people see what 's actually in
| front of them - they think and talk more in specifics. In
| general, S types are better at detail oriented work._
|
| What about someone who is strong intuitive, but starting
| the next moment they're very detail-oriented, and also
| the person you'd most trust for meticulous coding that
| had to work?
|
| > _But I find these letter rules make a great shortcut
| for 97% of people._
|
| Do we want to try to hire people who have qualities that
| would spanning these headshrinker buckets? If so, maybe
| we're dealing a lot with that missing "3%", so trying to
| pigeon-hole people would frequently be counterproductive?
| cm2012 wrote:
| It's like being right or left handed. And you wouldn't
| want to box against George Foreman even if he uses his
| off hand.
|
| Intuitors just start with the big picture as their basic
| instinct, then fill in the details. Sensors start with
| detail and build up to the big picture.
| neilv wrote:
| Is that closer to the actual cognitive mechanics, or
| closer to a myth that's nevertheless useful for
| classifying people?
|
| For example, in some empirical behavior research, person
| A seemed to have better snap decisions but poor at
| follow-though, and person B seemed to be asking about
| details... Has that nailed some key innate difference in
| how A and B actually think, or merely -- for purposes of,
| say, assigning military conscripts to jobs, or a huge
| corporate hiring machine that can't care beyond
| commodities -- at least it's _a_ classification?
|
| Maybe it's better than chance at predicting exhibited
| behavior (absent training), and we don't know that it
| reflects the actual cognitive mechanics?
| shrimpx wrote:
| Meyers Briggs is good conversation fodder, but otherwise it's
| on the same legitimacy plane as astrology.
| saghm wrote:
| > During interviews, she would always sit in with another
| interviewer and never ask any questions of the candidates. She
| would just observe.
|
| I'd honestly be a little unnerved by this as an interviewee.
| I've seen interview shadowing before for people first starting
| to interview (and in the past have both shadowed and been
| shadowed), but having someone watch me like that not to learn
| how to interview but to just focus on monitoring me would feel
| very different. I definitely have an above average amount of
| social anxiety though, and one of the biggest things that
| induces it for me is not getting feedback about whether I'm
| communicating clearly, so maybe this is specific to me and not
| generally how people would react,
| gus_massa wrote:
| My guess is that this kind of people will add a few remarks
| here and there, look at the persons doing one question, look
| at you while you answers, look at the other person doing the
| question, smile, look at you while you answers, make a small
| nod, ... Not stare at you with the eyes open like a cartoon
| character.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I would hope someone would introduce the person as, "just
| observing."
|
| My past few jobs required interviewer training, which
| involved observing interviews. So pretty much any interview
| I was involved in had an observer.
| iamwil wrote:
| The YC interviews at the time were with 4 to 6 partners. So
| given 10 minutes an interview, it's natural that not everyone
| asks questions. Jessica almost never said a thing, but would
| be quite attentive. So it wouldn't be unnerving that there
| was someone that didn't get to ask questions in the
| interview.
| geodel wrote:
| I mean it is all fine. There are other more suitable
| candidates for them and other more suitable jobs for you.
| Else we would be totally fungible which I am sure employees
| wouldn't want (though employers may).
| burnished wrote:
| For another data point I'm not sure I would notice until
| later unless there were cues that one person wasn't simply
| taking the lead.
| [deleted]
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| Not to be argumentative, but how did someone get hired if 7 out
| of 8 interviewers said "pass"? What's the point of having 7
| interviewers if only one of them gets to decide?
|
| Definitely agree with your point that some people have a gift
| for this kind of thing, so just genuinely curious how the 7 of
| 8 thing worked.
| morley wrote:
| I've read before -- though right now I can't think of the
| source -- that if a group of interviewers are weakly against
| a candidate but one is strongly for them, you should trust
| the instincts of the person who's "strongly for." When
| hiring, I'd probably have that than a room of people who are
| weakly for a candidate on the basis that you'd rather have a
| person who's great at one thing than someone who's okay at
| everything.
| tomhallett wrote:
| Are there any books on this topic that anyone would
| recommend? As a manager, this is where I struggled the most
| - naturally i am someone who strives to be a consensus
| builder, but it's hard to know when to put your thumb on
| the scale vs not.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Read this and you will understand why consensus often
| doesn't make sense in hiring:
| https://erikbern.com/2020/01/13/how-to-hire-smarter-than-
| the....
| [deleted]
| dan-robertson wrote:
| You might take lots of peoples opinions into account but that
| doesn't mean you should do so by majority vote. Some of those
| people may have been more confident than others. And it could
| make sense to allow for more variance in hiring (eg for
| hiring interns, or at an investment bank or big law firm
| where many new hires are sent out after a year so the cost of
| a bad hire isn't so high)
| ccooffee wrote:
| The point isn't that only one person is the decider. When
| someone trusted has a very strong conviction about a hire, it
| may be worth rolling the dice.
| [deleted]
| spoonjim wrote:
| She's probably the most senior one. So she can override
| anyone but doesn't always do it.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Or, 7/8 people were "weak no", they heard her argument,
| then changed their minds to "weak yes."
|
| The whole point of a committee is to reach consensus. I've
| flipped my beliefs on many candidates before after hearing
| what other interviewers think. I think most of us
| understand that interviews aren't exactly the best way to
| judge a candidate - at least I think that way. So I'm
| pretty open to forming consensus when I'm "weak" and they
| are "strong" in opinion (especially if I respect their
| judgement).
| alexpotato wrote:
| This happened after the manager already demonstrated a track
| record of 100% for picking candidates that turned out to be
| good. This happened in situations were the "hire" count was
| the majority.
|
| I do also agree with you that "only one person gets to
| decide" is a bad idea in general (and is usually a red flag
| for someone trying to be a dictator).
| kimixa wrote:
| Depends on why they "pass" - it might be "They're solid, but
| not a good fit for my specific team". Assuming each
| interviewer is focused on their specific group and the skills
| they actually use and need day-to-day.
|
| Different groups requiring different skillsets certainly
| isn't unusual.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| At a company I worked at in the past we had a "champions"
| rule:
|
| 1. First, only select few interviewers with a great track-
| record could be a "champion".
|
| 2. If this interviewer was going against the rest of the
| interview panel, they could choose to be that interviewee's
| "champion". This means they are essentially saying "I have
| such a strong conviction that this person will do well that
| I'll put my professional reputation on the line for them."
| E.g. this person agreed to be that person's mentor when they
| started, and if things went south they would carry the burden
| of additional mentorship or finding the least problematic way
| to fire that person.
| dpflan wrote:
| Devil's Advocate: what are the counter examples for her x-ray
| vision for character?
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Founders at Work starts with the assertion that a sprinter is
| never faster than out of the blocks.
|
| As a one time sprinter, i read that, knew it totally false,
| and it invalidated my trust in reading further. So i wasted
| money buying that book.
|
| If one publishes so carelessly, it's sad.
| slushh wrote:
| Not necessary a counter example but with all the Reddit drama
| right now, I would like to know her opinion on Steve Huffman
| and if he is fulfilling expectations.
| thebigwinning wrote:
| I can take a wild guess about some traits she never selected.
| neilv wrote:
| > _e.g. there were times where 7 out of 8 interviewers said
| "pass", she said "hire" and she was always right._
|
| Just noting: that situation around that assessment can affect
| the outcome.
|
| For example, hired person appreciates the opportunity/faith
| extended to them, or otherwise picks up on the need to rise to
| the occasion.
|
| Or a manager or other staff sees/treats the person differently
| because of the circumstances (e.g., gives the hire more
| guidance because they think the hire will need it, wants the
| hire to succeed because a founder has blessed them, or just
| sees the person more favorably because they trust the opinion
| of someone else).
| jxf wrote:
| > For example, hired person appreciates the opportunity/faith
| extended to them, or otherwise picks up on the need to rise
| to the occasion.
|
| I don't think it would make sense to tell a hired person "you
| barely got in here, everybody hated you except for one
| interviewer".
| cbzoiav wrote:
| Depends how you phrase it.
|
| "Jessica is the reason we hired you - she says you'll be
| great here and when she says that she's always right"
| technically says "we weren't going to hire you", but also
| "we all believe in you".
| neilv wrote:
| Many people can pick up on that situation, during or after.
| Jarwain wrote:
| I mean yes, but not everyone succeeds despite best efforts,
| and a good social radar might imply detecting whether they
| Will rise to the occasion or not
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I can only imagine this is related to PG's recent tweet about how
| the Wikipedia article on Jessica has "questionable notability"
| warning due to sexist nonsense.
| tptacek wrote:
| Anybody in the world can put a notability tag on an article in
| Wikipedia. The notability tag is properly read as a "this
| article needs more sources and more claims of notability" call
| for help, not a "get this article off the site" argument.
|
| Livingston will have no trouble maintaining a Wikipedia
| article; she's had profiles written about her in mainstream
| sources.
|
| A big chunk of complaints about Wikipedia notability come from
| people who don't quite grok the dynamic of how biographical
| articles like these get added to WP. Usually, someone writes a
| stub article with few sources and no clear statement of what
| the person is notable for. Those are bad articles! They
| actually need the notability tag! That's how they turn into
| better articles!
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| Anyone who's seen an article covering a topic of personal
| interest removed due to "lack of notability" would be
| forgiven for assuming the bar is "important to an arbitrary
| few editors", because that is the bar.
|
| From the examples I've encountered over the years, once an
| article is deemed irrelevant, it is deleted permanently with
| little to no opportunity for recovery (unless some event
| makes the subject suddenly more noteworthy). The reality is
| the most active Wikipedia editors make great contributions to
| the world's knowledge, but aren't exactly the most
| representative sample of humanity.
| tptacek wrote:
| Cite examples, so we can look at the deletion log and the
| AfD and make up our own minds.
| cubefox wrote:
| I always found it a mix of amusing and annoying that my
| complaints about Wikipedia are usually self-defeating: "This
| article is bad! They should have ... okay, I should ...
| nevermind."
| bluepod4 wrote:
| Exactly. I left a similar comment.
| renewiltord wrote:
| The typical Wikipedia complainant simply is a talker, not a
| doer. I have started Wikipedia pages, edited controversial
| ones (including the Derek Chauvin page), and fixed things
| very straightforwardly. I would have fixed this one, but
| someone was faster than me.
|
| My experience with this is quite simple: it is really fucking
| easy to do all these things but that 1% rule is real
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
|
| Most people cannot _do_ things. They simply cannot. There 's
| always a reason they can produce: "Oh it'll just get
| deleted", "oh I don't want to get into a fight", "oh the
| editors will delete me". You can see this because they cannot
| provide situations where this happens because they cannot
| try. They will Google to show "there is some evidence this is
| happening" and produce some newspaper article where the
| reporter has not tried it either.
|
| But the reality of the thing is that they cannot do it. The
| faculty it takes to see a problem and make it not a problem
| is not available to them. Presumably, at work they are told
| what to do and they just do it - execution agents incapable
| of autonomous operation.
|
| Of course pg cannot modify his wife's page. But I see it a
| lot.
| cperciva wrote:
| Posting this here because (as pointed out by pg's recent tweet
| about Wikipedia) many people don't realize just how important a
| role Jessica Livingston has played "behind the scenes".
| tough wrote:
| I think anyone who's read enough of Paul's and knows a bit of
| YC's backstory would understand that Jessica was the human
| between all the nerds making things stick together.
| francesca wrote:
| Thanks for posting this. I always wondered why Jessica wasn't a
| bigger part of the YC story that so many people told.
|
| This line stood out to me in particular: _It's not just because
| she's shy that she hates attention, but because it throws off
| the Social Radar. She can't be herself. You can't watch people
| when everyone is watching you._
|
| No matter what you get acknowledged for I think it's so
| important to always be yourself but to know what makes you
| strong is so challenging.
| stcroixx wrote:
| Wouldn't be HN content without using the word orthogonal
| somewhere in there and this didn't disappoint.
| [deleted]
| leshow wrote:
| > The qualities of the founders are the best predictor of how a
| startup will do. And startups are in turn the most important
| source of growth in mature economies.
|
| Ah yes, "growth" in our economy is all because of a select few of
| super special amazing people. It seems obvious to me this is a
| post facto rationalization.
| hoofhearted wrote:
| dang, I'm still on track to help Paul out with an upgrade for his
| website!
|
| Things are moving way faster than I ever imagined :)
|
| https://youtu.be/l6vIsmru34I
| Euphemistic wrote:
| [flagged]
| carlysagan wrote:
| [flagged]
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| [flagged]
| carlysagan wrote:
| [flagged]
| danq_ wrote:
| It's so weird that women automatically get placed into these
| "social judgement" roles as if they're superior at it or more
| empathetic then men, then men get are automatically assigned the
| more technical questions.
|
| I mean you're getting into sort of sexist territory here where
| it's perfectly fine to say women are more socially intelligent
| then men but it's not okay to say men have better general
| intelligence. Let's just ignore this etiquette for now because it
| distracts from the facts.
|
| Neither gender has enough ability to make a social judgement call
| based off of interviews, there simply isn't enough information.
| You need to spend a lot of time with someone to really "GET" who
| they are. Any call made during an interview is largely a shot in
| the dark. Even if women were slightly superior to men at judging
| these things an interview simply isn't enough to make valid call
| for anyone but a mind reader.
|
| Women though are very very judgemental to a degree greater than
| men. They have a higher degree of paranoia as well and they
| typically end up being a little more alarmist then they need to
| be. Things like walking home alone in the dark and other
| activities with low probability of danger they just are more
| reactive to it for various reasons. I would actually have a
| slight bias against what women think due to this. During these
| interviews there's a tendency for women to end up raising red
| flags where no red flags exist.
|
| Either way, Jessica occupies the same zone as, Obamas wife, or
| Bill Gates's wife. That kind of thing. There's no real raw
| qualification here and the automatic assignment of her as the
| "social" guide for the team is likely only done because she's a
| woman or because she's non-technical and that's the only role she
| could fill because she's only their by virtue of being Pauls'
| partner.
| fairity wrote:
| > No one understands female founders better than Jessica. But
| it's unlikely anyone will ever hear her speak candidly about the
| topic. She ventured a toe in that water a while ago, and the
| reaction was so violent that she decided "never again."
|
| I wonder how much wisdom has been lost bc of this effect.
|
| I feel like society needs to create a much larger incentive for
| thoughtful people to share their wisdom. Today, you stand to gain
| status & wealth, but a lot of thoughtful people like Jessica
| don't care about that.
|
| I think the only solution is to somehow protect them from the
| disincentive (backlash from the internet mob), but I don't know
| how.
| burnished wrote:
| Doesn't the phrase 'pearls before swine' refer basically to
| this situation?
|
| Basically I don't think it's something you can do in the
| presence of a thing like twitter because of the participants
| whose goal isn't communication.
|
| Which is fine. The wisdom isn't lost, its just not as widely
| available.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > Which is fine. The wisdom isn't lost, its just not as
| widely available.
|
| It's not fine though. Our political and economic spheres have
| been run by the swine for too long, and the planet's back is
| breaking. The second order effects of only giving the brash
| and thick-hided a voice in society are everywhere, causing
| permanent harms.
|
| Let's start making space for the wise and sensitive types,
| and make pearls abundant.
| [deleted]
| Jun8 wrote:
| For the curious, I think this is what pg is referring to:
| https://valleywag.gawker.com/paul-graham-says-women-havent-b...
| (so glad that "news site" is dead BTW). He made some Summers-
| like foray on female founder's abilities, I remember it was a
| big deal at the time, now I don't know if many people remember
| it (note to self about any moral battle du jour that seem so
| important). I have no data to back this up but always thought
| that this brouhaha was a big reason pg moved on from YC, not
| that he was ousted or anything, but didn't want to deal with
| this crowd. Jessica Livingstone got embroiled, too.
|
| Here's a more recent, gossipy take:
| https://news.yahoo.com/y-combinator-entrepreneurs-were-kicke...
| [deleted]
| balls187 wrote:
| I doubt the violent reaction was based on anything other than
| gender.
| carlysagan wrote:
| This is honestly infuriating. Why wouldn't you realize that all
| of the characteristics of Jessica are why women are pushed out of
| the start-up world from the very first day they start? Why
| wouldn't you realize from this experience that women are the ones
| providing all the reasons and ideas for why a startup might be
| successful, but then are swept under the rug as a wife/family
| member/outside consultant/etc?
| eastbound wrote:
| [flagged]
| bell-cot wrote:
| [flagged]
| doctormanhatten wrote:
| Honestly this seems likes a horrifically sexist piece of
| commentary.
| jedberg wrote:
| > By comparison, I've always succeeded on humility.
|
| Are you the most humble person you know?
| carlysagan wrote:
| It sounds to me like you are admitting that women often
| provide the crucial ideas and then are dis-credited. What
| direction would any work take without the initial idea? Lol.
| Even when a female has the idea and does all the work (ah-
| hem), a man will come along, steal the idea, claim it as his
| own, and suddenly be the one with a multi-million dollar seed
| deal or Nobel Prize or whatever. That is the reality that I
| have seen over and over.
| eastbound wrote:
| You have a selective vision of the world if that is your
| conclusion. Plenty of examples of the opposite, I can't
| convince you with just one example, so you'll have to take
| a friendlier look at men, and once you find the pattern
| where men aren't recognized for a particular deed, you'll
| find it everywhere and in as great quantity as women.
|
| Concerning Marie Curie, maybe if we could agree on another
| example than one 120 years ago, that would revive the
| proof. As far as I'm concerned, every time someone cites
| Marie Curie, it rather confirms that we _haven't been doing
| that for the last 120 years,_ otherwise you'd cite a
| contemporary example. But the problem of contemporary
| examples, is that we're here to analyze them, and they
| don't generally hold the scrutinity. I don't know for Marie
| Curie, _I wasn't there_.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Yes, but let me suggest:
|
| sed 's/women/everybody who does not come across as an
| extroverted, eloquent, assertive, attractive white(-ish) male
| (of the correct age, social class, educational background,
| etc.)/g'
|
| Humans are, sadly, extremely good at twisting things to
| allocate most of the power, wealth, opportunities, rights, and
| credit to a small subset of the population - which they either
| are a member of, or closely identify with. It's not _merely_ a
| sexism thing.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| People don't know what they don't know.
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| You should downvote your own comment so that the comments which
| promote her work and career are above yours.
|
| The article mentions specifically in the note about backlash
| and vitriol that feminists need to give room for someone like
| her to 'exist' in the public eye.
|
| There is also the important fact that this was written by her
| husband and founding partner.
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(page generated 2023-06-23 23:00 UTC)