And I really believe that's why we seem to win girls' nationals sections pretty easily every year: most people won’t tell teenage girls (especially the together, articulate ones) that they are lazy and the quality of their work is unacceptable. And sometimes kids need to hear that, or they have no reason to step up.
This could apply to boys as well as girls, and indeed to anyone at just about any age; sometimes we need to be told that we're not measuring up. I am reminded of Philip Greenspun's story about the venture capitalists who wrecked ArsDigita, the company he had built (from http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/):
[F]or most of this year Chip, Peter, and Allen [the VC Board members and CEO] didn't want to listen to me. They even developed a theory for why they didn't have to listen to me: I'd hurt their feelings by criticizing their performance and capabilities; self-esteem was the most important thing in running a business; ergo, because I was injuring their self-esteem it was better if they just turned a deaf ear. I'm not sure how much time these three guys had ever spent with engineers. Chuck Vest, the president of MIT, in a private communication to some faculty, once described MIT as "a no-praise zone". My first week as an electrical engineering and computer science graduate student I asked a professor for help with a problem. He talked to me for a bit and then said "You're having trouble with this problem because you don't know anything and you're not working very hard."
This seems to be a common trend in the business world. Brilliant engineer/visionary offends coworkers with (perhaps deserved) criticism in an insensitive manner and the company flounders. It's only when said engineer/visionary learns to act more tactfully that the company flourishes.
Brilliant engineer/visionary offends coworkers with (perhaps deserved) criticism in an insensitive manner and the company flounders.
IMO the criticism was deserved; but your argument is basically that if the company flounders, it doesn't matter whether the criticism was deserved or not, since the bottom line is what happens to the company. I agree with that in principle, but only if the coworkers in question would have been capable of recognizing the deservedness of the criticism if it had been delivered more tactfully. I'm not sure that was true in the ArsDigita case, because it doesn't seem like the coworkers in question--"coworkers" is a weird term here since we're talking about a Board member talking to other Board members--understood the business they were in in the first place.
(Btw, the fact that it was a Board member talking to other Board members also gives the point about tactfulness less force, IMO. People who can't separate valid criticism from the way in which it's delivered, IMO should not be Board members in the first place.)
It's only when said engineer/visionary learns to act more tactfully that the company flourishes.
It looks like that never happened in the ArsDigita case. Can you give some examples where it has happened?
Did they actually say that theory, or was that his theory for why they "never listened to him"?
The article doesn't say explicitly, but I strongly suspect (having read a lot of Greenspun's online writing) that when he says "they developed a theory", he's basing that on things they said and did.
Also, of course, the objective data (plenty of which is given in the article) made it clear that Greenspun's criticisms were valid, so clearly the other Board members should have listened to him.
Maybe they did "listen" but couldn't do anything about it?
There's another side to that story, of course.[1] They were in the middle the dot-com implosion and all their customers were dot-com businesses. It's not hard to convince me that the professional managers were bozos (and the games they play to maintain board control should be required reading), but that boat was sinking no matter who was in charge.
Maybe they did "listen" but couldn't do anything about it?
Couldn't do anything because there was nothing that could possibly have been done, or couldn't do anything because they were the wrong people to be running the company? Certainly the dot-com bust didn't help, but you appear to agree that the "professional managers" brought in by the VCs were not up to the task, which leaves open the question of what managers that were up to the task would or could have done. Unfortunately we can't re-run the experiment to see what would happen if ArsDigita had not taken the VC investment and the original management had remained in charge.
There is another side to Ars Digita
True, and Michael Yoon's story is a good counterpoint to Greenspun's.
And I really believe that's why we seem to win girls' nationals sections pretty easily every year: most people won’t tell teenage girls (especially the together, articulate ones) that they are lazy and the quality of their work is unacceptable. And sometimes kids need to hear that, or they have no reason to step up.
This could apply to boys as well as girls, and indeed to anyone at just about any age; sometimes we need to be told that we're not measuring up. I am reminded of Philip Greenspun's story about the venture capitalists who wrecked ArsDigita, the company he had built (from http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/):
[F]or most of this year Chip, Peter, and Allen [the VC Board members and CEO] didn't want to listen to me. They even developed a theory for why they didn't have to listen to me: I'd hurt their feelings by criticizing their performance and capabilities; self-esteem was the most important thing in running a business; ergo, because I was injuring their self-esteem it was better if they just turned a deaf ear. I'm not sure how much time these three guys had ever spent with engineers. Chuck Vest, the president of MIT, in a private communication to some faculty, once described MIT as "a no-praise zone". My first week as an electrical engineering and computer science graduate student I asked a professor for help with a problem. He talked to me for a bit and then said "You're having trouble with this problem because you don't know anything and you're not working very hard."