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My Life as a Con Man

swyx on June 14, 2020

First, My Story "How confident are you?" My boss would often ask this question of me, his eyes trying to pierce through mine into the ...
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djsullenbarger profile image
David Sullenbarger β€’

Well said

War stories of huge wins and terrible losses were way more interesting than slow and steady gains in-line with peers.

Yup and there's a of insight in that realization too. I tell my wife all of the time "Don't be afraid to let people disappoint you" (i.e. the expectation was the mistake and that's on her).

I appreciate personalities like his (G) because they seem to work in the system we have and the system is working well for me - though I usually don't care for their company.

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swyx β€’

totally. he's a very good friend and mentor and I channel him often when called upon. People don't know I channel him and just think I am super confident haha

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David Sullenbarger β€’ β€’ Edited

As much as I dislike cliches I'm going us use one anyway: "Fake it till you make it" is real. I used to me a miserable SOB and (long story short) I started smiling by default. The resulting changes to my personality were subtle but, over time, I really did change.

I'm super confident and very happy now ... no faking required, it's really me! I never even think about the way I used to be unless I'm in a conversation like this .. it feels like a very foreign way of thinking these days.

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swyx β€’

good! :) tho having some self doubt is always healthy.

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djsullenbarger profile image
David Sullenbarger β€’

yeah, of course (I doubt myself ALL of the time .. kinda), but when it leads to indecisiveness you're suddenly in a a bad place. Confidence is being able to say "I made the best choice I could at that time" and being able to live with the consequences. Regret sometimes comes with the territory while dwelling on it is a different kind of mistake :-)

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Marco Slooten β€’

Funny how the things you found out at the hedge fund translate to most other aspects of life. I've seen first hand that objectively worse ideas were presented with lots of confidence. I don't even know if everyone is aware of their bias, it might just be they have an idea and go into full confirmation-bias research mode and of course end up with the outcome they thought they would. And like you mention, they get rewarded too. Especially when outcomes are difficult to measure, it seems managers love to take confidence as the prime metric in the absence of other metrics. The crazy thing is that taking the confidence of people that don't try to game the system might actually not be a very bad metric, but doing that will open the gates for the bullshit artists.

I'm glad I have a good manager who seems to see beyond that. He's given praise for people saying they don't know instead of bluffing their way through. It seems so basic but it goes wrong all the time. So in terms of fixing this, I think it helps to have people around you be aware of these biases and educate them on it if they aren't. It also helps to ask critical questions. We had to make a web app responsive retroactively once, and there was one voice very loud and confident. Once we started asking questions, it became apparent he'd never worked on responsive websites. Seeing as the team lead at the time almost followed his lead made me realize just how prevalent this is.

So thanks for posting this, really loved reading about your background and the dynamic with your boss and G.

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swyx profile image
swyx β€’ β€’ Edited

thanks for reading! sounds like you have a great manager :) i'm sure they'd love to hear that, make sure to tell them you appreciate that!

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Doaa Mahely β€’

The people who shout the loudest get the most attention on social media.

So true. This line in particular made me think of The Loudest Voice, a book and tv series about how Fox news became the highest rated cable news program in the US. It displays a lot of the same ideas you mentioned.

Very insightful article.

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swyx profile image
swyx β€’ β€’ Edited

hadnt heard about that! I'll keep a look out for it.

thanks for the kind words!

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Daniel Leong πŸ‡ΈπŸ‡¬ β€’

Awesome to be reading this article. Have experience this in various aspects of my life. Things that I have picked up along the way.

Came to find that if you are working on something that you love, that confidence will grow on you. Nothing will change that. If you are just doing a 'job' that you are barely interested in, you will never get any confidence in it as you keep doubting yourself.

When working in a team, always challenge any ideas propose, thus the team could learn and grow together with the 'correct' way forward. When you are proposing, never self-doubt and take it personally, as it is a way for you/team to grow. Overall, you learn a new solution to the problem.

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Joe Zack β€’

Excellent and insightful read, thanks for sharing!