
Be More Unlikeable - elijahmurray
https://www.gritlist.co/be-unlikeable/
======
hrktb
Money quote:

> Personally, I've long idolized Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. But most of our
> heroes got to where they are by being unlikeable, not likable.

I fundamentally disagree with that view of being an asshole as an important
part of success, but I also feel it has been rehashed an incredible amount of
times already.

A slightly different take on this is the "don't rock the boat" mentality. This
is usually a counter productive advice for anyone in a creative field, and
pushing against settled ideas, trying things that people are not comfortable
exploring is a valuable trait.

It can mean confrontation, refutal from a majority of people, and pushing
these ideas requires a strong character. But I think there is a fine line
between being firm and strong on ones opinion and being a jerk.

~~~
marcus_holmes
Every co-working venue seems to have at least one idiot wandering around in a
black turtleneck being deliberately selfish and rude to everyone.

Never seen one of them actually be successful at anything except annoying
people.

So far my personal "black turtleneck success ratio" is about 100:1
failure/success, and I never met the single success. I include Elizabeth
Holmes, who I haven't met either, on the failure side.

~~~
LinuxBender
They just get the order wrong. It's more like, being very successful means you
can get away with being an a-hole a bit more. Steve Jobs really put himself in
danger doing elevator interviews. That isn't someone I would mimic the
behavior of.

------
sillysaurusx
I don't think the current social climate is conducive to this advice anymore.
It was probably helpful in around 2008 to 2015.

It's hard to think of a situation where being unlikable is an advantage,
today. Even in situations pg likes to point out – for example, if you think
for yourself, you often upset others – you can do that privately rather than
publicly, and still get the same advantage.

EDIT: there is one situation where you must be “unlikable” in a certain sense:
if you think a company should do x, and someone else with equal authority
thinks it should do y, and the decision is important. But even then, it’s
probably easier to convince them with social aikido (or to let yourself be
convinced), not assert dominance.

~~~
prohobo
I think the article's title is click bait. It goes on to essentially say that
not conforming to others' ideas isn't necessarily a bad thing, and often
contributes to success. Seems pretty obvious to me.

The author misconstrues (maybe only in order to twist the message to fit the
title) being a jerk with being independent and taking risks.

Were some change-makers also jerks? Yeah, but it's not a rule, it's just more
visible when that's the case.

~~~
antepodius
If you're uncompromising on some issue, someone, somewhere will perceive you
as a jerk.

------
PragmaticPulp
For those who can't read the article (site is crushed under the load): The
article is about resisting pressure to cave to the status quo. It's not about
being a jerk for the sake of being a jerk.

I agree with the general message (don't unquestioningly accept the status quo
just because you want to be liked). I disagree with the idea that being a
pioneer in your field will necessarily make you disliked. If anything, the
society of 2020 reveres people who go against the status quo in a push to
innovate, even if they fail.

The trap is when people confuse being a jerk with being successful. Or when
they assume that being creative or successful is a license to be a jerk.
Neither are true. People like Steve Jobs are the exception, not the rule. If
you want to accomplish anything in a modern organization, you need to make an
effort to be at least somewhat friendly. This doesn't mean you should become a
pushover, a yes-person, or otherwise flatter people around it. It does mean
that you need to listen, demonstrate mutual respect for others, and behave in
a professional manner.

------
eat_veggies
This article is gross, and by this point, the advice is trite and
uninteresting. There have been hundreds of books and articles about the
benefits of being an asshole, but the author wants to be on hacker news
(pursuit of the approval of other users?), so here we are. Maybe that
impression means the author is winning.

The central point: "praise by the masses won't make you successful" and within
the same breath, "Movie stars, professional athletes, and a business
visionaries–we all want to be them." Perhaps they're more likeable than you
think? I promise you you're not alone among the legion of boys who idolize
Elon Musk.

Conflating being likeable, popular, and conformist, is reductive and wrong --
but maybe it's accurate through the narrow lens of how Silicon Valley defines
"success" and "progress."

It is an ideology of individualism and cancerous growth, and it is a culture
that hates difference, community, and visible flaws (from the article: "Change
comes from differences", "Society can't exist without collectively agreed upon
rules," "Be likable and hide your 'flaws'"). _Of course_ you'd associate the
rejection of those traits with success if you've measured your self worth in
units of Elon Musks.

You can be likeable, even with flaws and differences. You don't have to be an
asshole about it. Be better.

------
MrLeap
It's 404ing for now, so maybe the contents actually defy the title when I
finally will get to RTFA. I have to say, I'm amused by a lot of the contrarian
articles showing up on HN recently. There seems to be a growing tendency to
shed a lot of the saccharine optimism of the last decade.

    
    
       "Work on unimportant problems"
       "Be more unlikeable"
       "How to cope with <insert worksplace horror>"
       "Why you should kill your parents"
    

I wonder if these are portent to the developing zeitgeist.

~~~
bserge
> the saccharine optimism of the last decade

You and I must've hung out in completely different circles, including online
:D

But yeah the media is like this because once some "trend" gets oversaturated,
someone starts another one (or more likely, revives an old one) and soon
everyone jumps on that ship. Actually, it applies to most things. Personally I
can't wait for flat design to die out.

~~~
MrLeap
Probably so! Just HN/Youtube as far as my media consumption goes for the last
while. HN has tended very much towards the optimistic entrepreneurial advice
end of the spectrum for a decade, for understandable reasons. My youtube
channels are nearly devoid of the shrill screech of contemporary political
discourse. It leaks in occasionally, like witnessing an occluded star by
gravitational lensing. I don't know how people stand the unoccluded version.

I've been doing my part to help kill flat design by pitching depth and shadows
every chance I get.

I'm nearly in the stockades. :D

Also, down with the cult of monochrome!

------
crdrost
Gcached version:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.gritlist.co/be-
unlikeable/&prmd=ivn&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

In terms of the content, I was hoping for more concrete data rather than
speculation. I myself come from a worldview where this is somewhat alien, in
that, in my understanding of Christianity I am not trying to be this big
achiever that the article wants to be. Likeability however is not directly a
virtue in itself for us, and indeed our other virtues like being present in
the moment and authentic with others sometimes require unlikeable
conversation, for example “hey, I noticed that you have been on your phone
composing this post to tell someone on the internet that they are wrong for
about an hour, and I don't think you are getting as much out of that as maybe
you seem to think... maybe let it go and let them be wrong and have the last
word and trust that onlookers will judge properly without trying to sway their
judgment?” rarely goes over well until sometime gets some more distance from
the addiction.

So, like, I would have been really interested in the precise deployment of
unlikability to further wisdom, but this article is about the shotgun
deployment of unlikability to further personal achievement.

------
jbay808
CEO of a company that I used to work at is one of the most likeable people
I've ever met. He spoke softly and gently with sage wisdom, kindness, and
careful consideration. And when he wanted something done it got done, and when
he suggested an idea, people listened.

There's more than one way.

------
bena
Like others who have posted here, I don't think you _have_ to choose to be
unlikable to be successful. And I don't think being unlikable is the key to be
successful.

The advice to be more unlikable is akin to the Galileo defense. "Galileo was
persecuted for his correct beliefs. I'm being persecuted for my beliefs,
therefore they must be correct." They believe that something is related when
it is not. Because as Sagan later said, "But the fact that some geniuses were
laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They
laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright
brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

I think the key to being successful is to be ok with not being liked.

The big difference with people like Galileo is that he was right. Jobs may
have been an asshole, but he was right more often than wrong. Gates was an
asshole, but he was often right as well. They were not concerned with being
liked, they were concerned with being right. And not "being right" as in
"winning the argument", but "being right" as in "coming to the correct
conclusion".

You don't _have_ to be a contrarian to be successful, but you can't be afraid
to be either.

------
SirensOfTitan
I think skillful communicators are brave enough to express their opinions and
endure critique of those opinions. And I certainly think those people are
willing to engage in meaningful conflict to find better solutions. With that,
I also believe that a person can be compassionate and cordial while engaging
in conflict (and I think the people who are tend to be conductive to better
solutions). It's quite a slippery slope to conclude that unlike-ability is the
secret sauce here.

------
snowwrestler
It's astonishing to me that people believe that Steve Jobs was unlikeable or
that Elon Musk is unlikeable.

These are people who have consistently been able to recruit, hire, and retain
a lot of very high-performing people... the kind of people who can choose
where to work. And as leaders, they have been liked and admired by the vast
majority of their staff, and millions of customers and fans.

Furthermore these are people for whom being popular is incredibly important,
and they have spent a tremendous amount of energy on it. Steve Jobs was famous
for how much personal time he put into marketing, press relations, and his own
personal brand. Same with Elon Musk, which is why he is so active on Twitter,
for example.

Were they nice to every single person they ever met? No, and sure, that's good
advice: don't feel like you need to suck up to everyone. But IMO that's very
different from the idea that one should strive to be unlikeable.

PLENTY of people are unlikeable already, with not much to show for it. What
made Steve Jobs and Elon Musk remarkable was that they were _right_ so often,
about complicated and important things. So: maybe we should instead strive to
be more right about things that matter.

------
adrianmonk
Balance. As in most things.

Were you raised to have a pathologically strong need to be liked? Find it
prevents you from speaking up when something needs to be said? Does your need
to be liked control you?

Then you should probably fix that.

But not by going to the other extreme. The criterion for success shouldn't be
whether you are ruffling feathers often enough. It should be whether, when you
need to, you are willing and able to do it.

Everybody loves simplicity and certainty, but with social interaction you need
to navigate complicated situations and make a lot of judgment calls. If a
source of info (whether people respond positively) is weighted too heavily and
your response is to completely remove it from the equation, then you've thrown
out a simplistic rule that you were taught and replaced it with a simplistic
rule that you invented.

Also, whether you are liked is a very self-focused way of evaluating others'
reactions. Sometimes being positive/nice/friendly/whatever is about building
rapport, encouraging cooperation, etc., not about how it affects your
feelings.

------
elgfare
It's a bit imprecisely worded, but the message isn't very controversial I
would say.

To get things done you can't be afraid of disagreeing with people. You can be
a jerk about it or not. If you're a jerk you likely free up resources for
getting things done since you're not spending energy being sensitive to other
people's feelings. On the other hand, if you're a jerk, people might work
against you just because they don't like you. Also, it's easier to effectively
lead if you're not a jerk, which is more effective than working on your own.

Most people can be adults about it, disagreeing civilly, and laughing about it
afterwards. But the people who change the world are the ones who care enough
to risk becoming jerks over the things they care about.

------
ny2ko
The only grime I have to pick with this article is it's applicability to all
groups. The ability to behave as a jerk or be unlikeable without experiencing
retaliation (not simply push back) is a privilege that a lot of
underrepresented minorities don't have

~~~
ngngngng
> underrepresented minorities

To paraphrase Brene Brown, any conversation on privilege that excludes class
is bullshit. The ability to be unlikable without it ruining your life (never
mind using it to your advantage) is largely a privilege of class. No one in
2020 is immune to being "cancelled". But if you have money, it won't ruin your
life.

~~~
082349872349872
The list of "non-cognitive" soft skills in one of yesterday's posts contains a
substantial number that could be described as "being likeable", and I supposed
that made them parochially targeted at children who will need to have a
middle-class job:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23809211](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23809211)

As far as cancellation being a 2020 thing, Orwell observed in 1948 that: "As a
rule, luckily, there is more than one group, but also at any given moment
there is a dominant orthodoxy, to offend against which needs a thick skin and
sometimes means cutting one's income in half for years on end."

[http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part50](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part50)

Diogenes: _eating lentils_

Aristippus: You know, if you learned to be ingratiating to the king, you
wouldn't have to continue eating lentils.

Diogenes: _chewing_ If you learned to eat lentils, you wouldn't have to
continue to ingratiate yourself to the king.

------
lapcatsoftware
Power differential is everything. Jobs and Musk founded companies. They were
always the boss. The boss can afford to be belligerent. Can employees afford
that?

Here's my question: Did Jobs and Musk allow their employees to berate them as
much as they berated their employees? If so, then good for them! But I suspect
not, in which case, they're just hypocrites and bullies. If some belligerence
is required for success, who gets to succeed? Only the boss?

------
rusabd
> Humans evolved as social creatures and we crave attention from each other

this is not entirely true. Humans evolved to crave attention from their tribe
or extended family. Since we don't have tribes anymore we try to please random
people who do not care about us. The instinct to be likeable is a correct
behavior from evolution point of view, but is bad in a modern society.

------
darth_avocado
> Actually it's more likely that popularity will prevent you from being
> successful.

What a load of BS. Maybe in some specific cases. But in almost all of
corporate culture and politics, success is mostly a popularity contest. The
more popular you are, the more likely you'll have people not p __ __*g over
your success.

------
andreygrehov
I _think_ that being unlikeable is a side effect of having a strong opinion
that many people do not agree with. Simply being an asshole won't help. But if
you have a goal, if you strongly believe in that goal despite everyone else
telling you to stop, then yes, be an asshole and tell them all to f*ck off.

------
senectus1
You're only an asshole when you're in opposition to me :-P

------
munificent
Another one of these articles. There is unfortunately not much real content
here. The advice to be your own person just like Elon Must or Steve Jobs is
oxymoronic on its face. And certainly the advice to be less likable _without a
concrete reasony why_ is unhelpful.

Here's my take:

If you place a premium on pleasing everyone around you all the time, you have
effectively taken away your own agency and given to them. You are under the
control of everyone else's emotional reactions. That's not mentally healthy
for you, nor is it good for achieving your own goals. It also makes you a
giant target for the kind of emotional vampires who prey on people like this.

At the same time, if you simply disregard the consequences that your actions
have on the emotional states of the people around you, you become a selfish
sociopath. Remember, for every Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, there are a million
petty assholes who make the world worse every time they open their mouths. If
you are unlikeable, the odds are very much _not_ in favor of you being a
visionary genius. You're probably just that jerk that no one wants on their
team.

If you are _choosing_ to be unlikeable because you think it improves the
chances of you being great, I think that is a sign that you are _less_ likely
to be that. Real visionaries don't decide to be unlikeable. They are unable to
be likeable because they are so consumed by their passion. Opting to be a jerk
is not going to magically create space in your life for brilliance. If the
brilliance is there, it will have already driven out the compulsion to be a
constant people pleaser.

The advice I would give is this:

1\. Surround yourself with a small group of trusted friends and family whose
regard deeply matters to you. These people exist to help maintain your moral
compass. If you do something they don't like, you really did fuck up and you
want them to hold you accountable.

2\. Try to be a good person who improves the lives of all people you
encounter. Default to likeable.

3\. Sometimes you will have to make choices that harm some people. Pay full
attention to the cost to those people and make sure the benefits to the world
and not just yourself clearly outweigh it.

4\. Accept that some people simply won't like you through no fault of your
own. These people are relatively rare. If you find yourself frequently placing
people into this category, reflect that it may be you who is the asshole.

------
jacknews
The author looks like he speaks from experience at least.

------
softfalcon
This reminds me of a short documentary called "DICKS: Do you need to be one to
be a successful leader?"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRRvjZ_XNog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRRvjZ_XNog)

tldr; You don't have to be a dick, but being a strong and passionate leader
will result in making tough choices that will inevitably not make everyone
happy.

tldr 2; People don't want a boss who is a friend, they want a leader with a
vision.

------
mdszy
"Some number of successful people were assholes, therefore in order to be
successful you should be an asshole."

I cannot fathom how this logic even works.

~~~
neatze
Even you look from perspective of warfare evolution it does not work nor make
sense.

But objectively, you can play this game of cooperation to see when to be
assholes is favorable strategy.

link: [https://ncase.me/trust/](https://ncase.me/trust/)

