

Incompetence as Encouragement - naftaliharris
http://www.naftaliharris.com/blog/incompetence/

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jiggy2011
There a couple of ways to look at this. Either incompetent people are
successful because the barrier to success is quite low; in which case this is
encouraging for competent people.

Or incompetent people are successful because the barrier to success is highly
arbitrary and only somewhat correlates to competence which is much less
encouraging.

Maybe you lose out on funding to a much less competent crew because you were
launching a B2B Web-based SaaS product on a month when everyone was crazy
about B2C mobile products for example.

~~~
d23
> Or incompetent people are successful because the barrier to success is
> highly arbitrary and only somewhat correlates to competence which is much
> less encouraging.

I think this is the case, which on the surface can be depressing. But it can
also mean that if you can just stick it out longer than most other people do,
and plant more seeds, it's only a matter of time until you get lucky.

~~~
jiggy2011
Yes, but the question is should you optimise for scattershot by planting many
low quality seeds or concentrate on quality?

~~~
d23
Plant a bunch of high-quality seeds :)

~~~
kaens
The question assumes that it's either not feasible or practical to do that.
That may or may not be the case, depending on the definition and context of
"high-quality".

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jrvarela56
I used to think this way, to a certain extent. These thoughts go away once you
realize why other variables besides skill have strong effects on the success
equation. Most are related to emotional intelligence: your ability to convince
others, to make them feel comfortable following your lead. Sadly what gets you
ahead the most are the soft skills many of HN users lack (stereotypically at
least). Remember not everyone has the same perspective: most of your
interactions occur with a computer - a machine without emotions. People are
different, they have kids, problems, and most importantly, feelings.

I agree, these things are important only because people aren't rational, most
times I just call them stupid. There's nothing you can do to change that. You
can only learn how to play the game and make sure you promote meritocratic
ideals through your work and any initiative under your responsibility. Create
a company and engrain these ideals in its culture. Try to be objective. Teach
others how to do this.

The most important actionable I think is this: polish your managerial skills.
Learn how to deal with people and you will become orders of magnitude more
resourceful. Managing people allows you to reap the benefits of becoming
specialised in several fields without having to spend the time needed to
benefit from such diverse proficiency. Im not saying you dont need a core
competence, my claim is that this is the only way to benefit from having
'several' core competencies without acquiring them.

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taeric
Maybe I'm just in an overly defensive mood for no apparent reason, but the
hubris in this post is somewhat off putting. Not up to your task does not mean
"incompetent." Hell, poorly written doesn't even necessarily mean that.

~~~
gcheong
Had the same reaction. A package that doesn't do what you want in exactly the
way you'd like it and not coded to youre standards does not signal
incompetence. Someone built something that was probably suitable for their
immediate needs and shared it in case someone else could use it and perhaps
build on it or, gasp, even improve it.

~~~
sneak
> and not coded to youre standards does not signal incompetence.

You are incompetent at making this determination. Dunning-Kruger in full
effect, here.

~~~
gcheong
Mis-application of Dunning-Kruger.

~~~
sneak
It's turtles all the way down.

------
Ixiaus
Your post is arrogant! That's okay though - I used to be arrogant too and
assumed my code was "wizard like" while other people's projects were crappy
and half-assed.

Quality is often subjective. These days software is scratching an itch and is
rarely done to the author's own standards of quality due to personal time
constraints!

I would rephrase your thought from: incompetence as encouragement to
improvement as encouragement (the desire to improve something as
encouragement).

------
dkrich
_If you think that the world is basically a meritocracy, as I do, then seeing
successful incompetents is actually very encouraging. Have you ever seen a
startup with the world's stupidest idea raise million of dollars? Well if you
have an actually decent idea, then it will be even easier for you to raise
millions as well._

I was actually reading a post by Patrick McKenzie the other day and I think
his commentary on this was one of the best I've seen. While it's encouraging
and optimistic to think like this, the reality is that 90% of the time,
mediocrity (or worse) is good enough. One example- most businesses run on
poorly-engineered, shitty legacy software systems stitched together over time
as a lineage of sucky-to-great programmers have come and gone and inherited
each other's garbage amid changing requirements. Early in my career I noticed
this and was brazen enough to think that there was obviously a much better way
to engineer the software, so why didn't the executives see it? Over time I
realized that I was naive- business managers care about increasing revenue and
profits. Quality code and engineering doesn't even register on the radar.

Incompetence in engineering is just one area of incompetence. It is important
to remember that incompetence in selling or networking, while probably a lot
harder for one to see in oneself, can be just as detrimental to one's chances
of success (perhaps more so). The point is that a crappy idea getting funding
does not in any way indicate that a better idea is more likely to get funding.

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hkmurakami
_> If you think that the world is basically a meritocracy, as I do, then
seeing successful incompetents is actually very encouraging. Have you ever
seen a startup with the world's stupidest idea raise million of dollars? Well
if you have an actually decent idea, then it will be even easier for you to
raise millions as well._

If only this were actually the case...

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chris_wot
I hate the tone of this whole post, for the following reasons:

1\. He contradicts himself: first he says he believes the world is a
meritocracy, but then he says it can tolerate a staggering amount of
incompetence,

2\. Someone put up their package for free, perhaps it wasn't great, but
incompetent?

3\. Startups with stupid ideas still raised capital and are attempting to make
money. Not incompetence.

------
Gigablah
Poor attitude from the author. I'm reminded of this incident a while back:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5106767>

It's good have confidence in your "competence". It's even better if you can do
it without being downright rude to the people who came before you.

------
michaelochurch
Agree and disagree.

I worked for a startup once where a mouth-breathing incompetent was promoted
to the top of the technical food chain to punish the unofficial VP/Eng with
the humiliation of a younger boss. The guy was promoted for literally no other
reason and everyone knew it. This made everyone suffer, and his
"rearchitecture" almost killed the company. It certainly didn't make me think,
"It could happen to me."

When I see idiots getting smothered with praise and rewards while someone like
me suffers, it reinforces social status and that I am, for whatever arbitrary
and pointless reason, not as high as the smiling imbecile getting showered
with gold while the rest of the world gets a golden shower.

That's where I disagree.

Now here's where I agree. I have a lot of performance anxiety and
perfectionism. Actually seeing what the state of the art is on many problems
_is_ encouraging, insofar as (a) it's not hard to spot improvements, and (b)
you feel less embarrassed when you realize that everyone makes mistakes and
misses things. I avoided open source for years because I was afraid of showing
code to the world, even though I'm objectively a good programmer. I didn't
even like to use my real name on the Internet before 25 (although, based on
what of my early history _is_ public, that was a good policy.) I'm getting
better at that as I get older.

I wouldn't use the word _incompetence_. There are a lot of trade-offs that
result in mediocre software or process and that's only one of them. But it can
be refreshing to realize that everyone else has warts, too.

------
rajacombinator
The world may be a meritocracy asymptotically. But life is a small sample.
Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good ...

