

The Ying-Yang of CEOs and Engineers - freework
https://gist.github.com/3805751

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vitno
I know several charismatic "type-A" personality people who are amazing
programmers...flat out amazing. Just because you have social skills doesn't
mean that you automatically suck at programming. These are extreme over
generalizations and don't actually correlate with reality.

It seemed in many ways to me that this article was written in a rather bitter
mood. The core of the article is really summed up with this sentence:

    
    
      Despite my awkwardness at the interview, I still was hired. 
      But after 4 months, it had become obvious that I wasn't 
      a cultural fit and my employment was terminated.

~~~
vm
"The best business guys are dumb as hell" -- this generalization in particular
is egregious.

It's easy to dismiss something that you don't understand.

This article may have been the least thoughtful one I read on HN this year.

~~~
freework
I didn't mean that as an insult at all. I'm not dismissing business people at
all. Heck, if I could trade my computer skills for charisma sills, I'd do it
in a heartbeat.

As the "business guy" in a startup, your job is to be enthusiastic and
positive so you can get investor money. Intelligence only gets in the way of
that. The more you understad, the more you have to worry about.

To the people saying "I know lots of Type-A programmers who are great
programmers", well I disagree. I've never worked with a programmer who was
great and charismatic. A good musician becomes his instrument. A good artist
becomes his paint and paintbrush. A great programmer becomes his computer.

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diego
This is one of the most naive articles I've seen on HN. And that's saying a
lot.

"CEO: Dumb as hell / Compulsive Liar

Engineer: Compulsively Honest / Genius"

Have you heard of Bill Gates? Eric Schmidt? Is Mark Zuckerberg dumb as hell?

Flagged.

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alexschiff
I'm a CEO and the part that I take issue with is not any of the bad
characterizations of CEOs (my engineers are absolutely 10x smarter than me)
but the insinuation that all engineers need to be "Type Bs" that don't know
how to talk to people. My co-founder is probably the best engineer I know and
he brought in one of our biggest investments because he's capable of
communicating our vision as a company and talking to people.

