
ESR: Ego is for little people - jgrahamc
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1404
======
davi
On the one hand, I kind of know what he means. What he's calling "A-listers",
I call "graceful overachievers". People who get an _incredible_ amount done,
but never seem to break a sweat; who are occasionally irked, but have taken
the measure of their own capacities, and are well satisfied by them, and by
using them.

On the other hand, this writing doesn't feel like the work of a graceful
overachiever. It feels like a rationalization of the man's own loneliness. The
graceful overachievers I know are _warm_ people, who see the good in the
people they're dealing with, warts and all, and who respect that good.

~~~
bmj
I agree that his basic point is correct. If you spend time in any subculture
that has some sort of skill stratification, you will notice that most of the
people at the top lack an ego. It's typically the people that are trying to
reach the top step that do.

~~~
dan_the_welder
Yeah sure when you are on top but then there is the fall from grace. As you
become less relevant or get superseded. That's when the ego comes out,
tantrums, destructive behavior, etc.

~~~
gonzo
I'm not sure that esr reached "the top". Perhaps on the speaking gig tour, and
yes he's written a couple books.

But he's never achieved what he so likes to claim.

He claims to be a "core linux developer", yet he has no code in the kernel,
and CML2 was flatly rejected.

He used to claim that he contributed to GNU starting in 1982, but when I
showed that was impossible, he corrected to "mid-80s" (its 1987.)

I think he feels he was on the way up, met his limitations, and has since been
scrambling in an attempt to maintain the position he held in 1999.

------
cortesi
Eric S. Raymond has become such a ludicrous parody that it just seems cruel to
make fun of him.

------
RyanMcGreal
> I’m going to use myself as an example now, mainly because I don’t know
> anyone else’s story well enough to make the point I want to with it. I’m the
> crippled kid who became a black-belt martial artist and teacher of martial
> artists. I’ve made the New York Times bestseller list as a writer. You can
> hardly use a browser, a cellphone, or a game console without relying on my
> code. I’ve been a session musician on two records. I’ve blown up the
> software industry once, reinvented the hacker culture twice, and am without
> doubt one of the dozen most famous geeks alive. Investment bankers pay me
> $300 an hour to yak at them because I have a track record as a shrewd
> business analyst. I don’t even have a BS, yet there’s been an entire
> academic cottage industry devoted to writing exegeses of my work. I could do
> nothing but speaking tours for the rest of my life and still be overbooked.
> Earnest people have struggled their whole lives to change the world less
> than I routinely do when I’m not even really trying.

[no audible dialogue]

~~~
jacquesm
Really makes you wonder who he's trying to impress with all that.

And at $300 / hour he's having a whole population of lawyers laugh at him to
boot...

------
jacquesm
What's with the vendetta John ?

Your Alan Turing efforts put you in a class of your own, this ESR bashing is
detrimental.

Let him stew, outcode him or ignore him, it's not worth it.

~~~
jgrahamc
I didn't post this because of a vendetta. I thought he had some good points
about A-listers and it was interesting for HNers.

Clearly, I don't agree with his self-assessment as an A-lister, but the
article has some interesting points. But that's partly because my evaluation
of him is that he's not, and partly because I don't think self-assessment
really counts.

~~~
csbrooks
It's my experience that most decent programmers, and even some crummy ones,
think they are in the top 1%. It's a lot like poker - everyone thinks they're
way above average at it.

~~~
billswift
I saw a study a few months ago on that, I think it was linked on Overcoming
Bias,but I'm not sure. Apparently, most people rate themselves in the 3rd
quartile; everyone under average thinks they are somewhat above, and people in
the upper quartile generally over-estimate the average, thinking most are more
like themselves, so only those who are actually in the third percentile are
(accidentally) accurate in their self-assessments.

------
jordanb
Raymond's point about people at the top not needing to to self-promote is
something I've heard described many times before. I would call it trite,
actually, but my googling is failing me so I can't find examples to back that
up.

One very eloquent description I've seen is "The luxury of humility."
Basically, a guy like Einstein had the luxury to declare himself horrible at
math (for example) because his reputation as a physicist and mathematician was
so solid that nothing he said could possibly dent it. Instead, any self-
deprecation he did would simply bolster his reputation for humility.

An unproven physicist, on the other hand, would not be advised to mimic
Einstein in declaring himself bad at math because people would be more likely
to take it seriously and dismiss his work as probably containing errors.

That said, Eric Raymond used to annoy me, then he became this sort of
perversely amusing thing (about the time ELER was running). Now I have to say
that I can't read this kind of stuff without feeling sorry for him. He's a
textbook example, or at least his writing is, of false bravado vainly trying
to mask almost limitless amounts of insecurity.

~~~
l0stman
Einstein was certainly a great physicist, but not a mathematician. He was
really bad at math, it wasn't false modesty.

------
awolf
This is one of the most egotistical and self centered writings I have
(partially) read in a long time.

I quit reading when he started using himself "as an example". Talking about
himself seemed to be the point of this post.

~~~
gaius
Everything ESR has written about hacker culture boils down to "hey, people
like me are really awesome!" and often not much to how things really are...

------
tptacek
_You can hardly use a browser, a cellphone, or a game console without relying
on my code._

Any guesses? I'm pretty sure this phone doesn't use fetchmail.

~~~
jgrahamc
I believe he's referring to the fact that he was at one time the maintainer of
giflib (or libgif) and that he contributed some code to libpng. Since these
are, he claims, vital to all those items you mention then we are all using his
code.

~~~
davi
That's right. People asked about this in the comments on the post. His answers
are here:

<http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1404#comment-242133>

<http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1404#comment-242156>

Bottom line: libgif and libpng.

~~~
tptacek
_CompuServe described GIF, and then Gershon Elber and I made an open-source
implementation that became ubiquitous_

Worth noting that multiple years span the time between when Elber actually
wrote giflib and when ESR added 2 functions and 3 utilities to it.

------
danut
There is no such thing as an A-list. If you think that you are in the A-list
because you are a worldwide renown developer, you can always be better, and be
one of the best developers of all times. Or one of the biggest people of all
time. You can always be better.

So you think you are the best mathematician all around? You can still compete
with Gauss.

------
chasingsparks
IMO, Ken Burnside's comment on ESR's post (#5) was better than the article.

~~~
zzkt
"It’s tempting to pigeon-hole Eric’s history as 'loud self display' and
'overinflation of accomplishments'"
<http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1404#comment-242109>

------
bayareaguy
Although I've never met Mr. Raymond, since his own measures (self-display,
insecurity, constant approval-seeking, overinflating one’s accomplishments,
etc) would lead most to the obvious conclusion that the he is either a small
person or a hypocrite, I think he may actually be attempting some kind of
transcendent Andy Kaufman performance humor - the real joke being the
predictability of everyone's reactions.

------
billswift
I think that the real reason the best of the best don't display much ego, is
that they are primarily focused on whatever it is they do, rather than on
themselves; that is how they got to be the best in the first place.

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Melchior_K
I am redoubling my efforts to actually learn programming, for the sole purpose
of outcoding this yahoo. Shouldn't be hard.

------
zby
I would like to hear what Alan Kay has to say about that (or Terry Pratchett
or ... ).

------
gonzo
Why does Eric Raymond remind me of Glenn Beck?

------
zzkt
ESR: What an Ego!

------
etherael
it does seem faintly absurd that he's pushing satori whilst citing examples of
the pursuit of boats and hoes.

------
Gibbon
If you have to declare yourself a member of the A-list, you aren't.

