Great post, as usual! Every time I see your post I anticipate reading it in delight, and am never disappointed. Hope you and Ruby will accomplish great things.
I cannot help but notice that all non-fictional sidekicks you mentioned are female. I tried to think of famous real-life examples of a dependable and trusted companion who makes the hero what he or she is, and had trouble finding more than one or two males. I wonder if this is more or female trait, whether by nature or nurture, or the result of the infamous patriarchy, or maybe I just don’t know of many.
Have you heard of Charlie Munger? Most people probably haven’t, which is part of why he’s a great (male, real life) sidekick. Munger is the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and has been Warren Buffet’s right hand man for decades. Munger is one of the examples in Michael Eisner’s (former Disney CEO) book on partnerships. One of the book’s main points is that 50-50 is a very unstable split in a business partnership, but if one of the partners is willing to stand half a step lower the couple can achieve more.
You see this example a lot in sports, and by “you” I mean me because I’ve met few rationalists who care about sports as much as I do :) Scottie Pippen would’ve been an excellent player on his own, but being Michael Jordan’s sidekick made him an all-time great.
Since professional sports is very competitive and rewards “alpha dogs” with all of the money and fame (endorsement deals, max contracts, hottest groupies), players who could have been amazing Robins become mediocre Batmans. If players were only paid based on winning championships, I’m sure that would change. If your goal is to savetheworld, that’s the only goal and no one cares about “individual stats”. With this goal drawing quite a few heroes, being a sidekick may well be the best, noblest, and most effective way to contribute.
Since professional sports is very competitive and rewards “alpha dogs” with all of the money and fame (endorsement deals, max contracts, hottest groupies), players who could have been amazing Robins become mediocre Batmans.
Startups generally give most of the fame to founders, but they give enough of the money to early employees that it seems better to try to be an early employee at a great startup than a cofounder of even a good startup (given what the difference between great and good cashes out to in startups). And so there’s the same issue of “are you optimizing for fame, or money/saving the world?”
Do start-ups distribute according to a power law? In that case they would be somewhere in the middle between sports and saving the world.
In American sports leagues there’s a salary cap that’s the same for each team (flat distribution). Being the second best player on a championship team almost always means less money than being the #1 star on a bad one. Usually athletes only start taking pay cuts to play for contenders towards the end of their careers. If start up earnings are distributed exponentially, it would seem that being #5 on a top 20 start-up is better than #1 on top-200 one. On the other hand, you mentioned other incentives, like fame (decision power, ego..) that would confound the issue. It’s hard to care about “the company” as a goal separate from yourself, otherwise being fired from a company wouldn’t change our opinion of it (for those who haven’t ever been fired: I have, it does). If you’re trying to save the world, the payoff distribution should be discrete: 0 if you fail, [your favorite number here] if you win. If Sauron wins, all hobbits are equally screwed. Once the ring was destroyed, did Frodo get a higher payout than Sam? Not if you derive positive utility from having 10 fingers :)
I think you’ve misunderstood the question. As I understand it, it’s not “is the distribution of startup values a power law” but “do startups distribute their profits to employees according to a power law”.
do startups distribute their profits to employees according to a power law
I hear that ownership is distributed roughly so that founders get 1/f, and early employees get 1/n^2, where f is the number of founders and n is the employee number (counting the first non-founder as employee f+1). (Both are obviously proportional; there’s some constant term in there.)
one of the partners … willing to stand half a step lower
That’s a great description of why my wife and I have adopted The Dictator Principle for joint projects. The principle is just that someone must be The Dictator and, as the project leader, must be ultimately responsible for all decisions. Being ultimately responsible doesn’t preclude delegation but it does prevent conflict arising from, e.g. “I thought you were going to do that! I thought you were going to do that!”.
I’ve also had this thought. A few people I’ve showed this too are explicitly bothered about the what-if-it’s-a-result-of-the-patriarchy; one person is tempted to identify as a Samwise character, but reluctant to because Sexist Overtones. I...don’t think this is the right response. It’s a bit like saying “no, I’m going to be a doctor instead of a nurse because women are pushed into nursing by The Patriarchy.” Maybe it’s true, but it’s orthogonal to whether an individual will like nursing or medicine more (although, honestly, they’re not that different).
Other thoughts: everyone who wrote publicly about this was female, but most of the people who have emailed me privately to thank me for the post are male. So… Men feel more shamed about wanting to be sidekicks than women do?
I’ve already had the thought that the message I’m sending might be bad if it spread to society as a whole, because women may be pushed harder away from being CEOs than from being their executive assistants (or whatever the dichotomy), and even a well-written and nuanced pro-sidekick message is going to get parsed as “smart lady says your place is as an assistant.” (If a man wrote this post, the message would be different, but I’m not a man.) I still this this message is pretty positive for the LW/CFAR/rationality community to hear; its biases run in different directions.
I am not going to generalize from myself, only think aloud. I think I could feel comfortable as a sidekick, but it seems like in many situations I don’t get this option.
Part of that is related to gender stereotypes: In the past, whenever I stopped being a leader in a relationship, my then girlfriend usually quickly replaced me with a guy who enjoyed that role. (I know there are also relationships with the opposite dynamic, but I never experienced one.) Another part is about money, which indirectly is also related to gender stereotypes: I feel a pressure to make a lot of money (maybe it’s just in my head, but so far I haven’t met any volunteer to pay my bills, so I treat it as real). Leaders make more money than sidekicks.
Sometimes I get into leading position by being the first one or among the first ones who care about a problem. If there are other people interested in the position later, they usually easily succeed to push me away, because I am not good at status fights and I don’t enjoy them. Sometimes I am even happy that someone else took the role instead of me, although I may complain about some consequences later (such as completely losing the ability to influence things).
But this is all along one dimension. I would actually prefer a role of an expert: to be fully responsible for one aspect of the problem where I feel most competent, and leave other aspects to people who feel competent there. No a second-in-command, not a general-purpose assistant, but a domain expert: making decisions within my domain, and only providing suggestions elsewhere.
Unfortunately, it often doesn’t work this way. I understand that even with domain experts, there needs to be a role of a leader: someone to make decisions outside of domains of all experts, someone to decide situations where two experts disagree, someone to choose project priorities and budget, etc. But, as Dilbert has shown us is various colorful ways, it often ends by the leader questioning all decisions of the domain experts, effectively wasting their contributions. In open-source programming I usually took the role of a translator, sometimes of an internationalization expert.
I think I am an egalitarian by nature. I am not professing a political opinion here; it’s simply how I naturally behave unless forced to act otherwise. Sometimes it seems like people really don’t understand this: they instinctively understand the roles of the master and of the slave. (Ironically, even people who publicly profess equality often have strict hierarchies; just different than their perceived enemies.) It’s probably a very strong human instinct. And there are the few weird people where this instinct somehow fails; they passionately refuse to be slaves, so they are pattern-matched to masters, but they also fail to behave like real masters, which confuses and irritates the others. On the other hand, I suspect that egalitarianism doesn’t scale well. So, my optimal role would probably be a member of a small group of equals; a specialist at some domain.
I can’t think of specific individuals either, but that’s not surprising; fame tends to go to the hero rather than the sidekick.
I can think of a male archetype that fits it, though: classical Japanese samurai. It’s an aesthetic that I actually find really appealing, albeit not something I think I could ever follow myself.
Great post, as usual! Every time I see your post I anticipate reading it in delight, and am never disappointed. Hope you and Ruby will accomplish great things.
I cannot help but notice that all non-fictional sidekicks you mentioned are female. I tried to think of famous real-life examples of a dependable and trusted companion who makes the hero what he or she is, and had trouble finding more than one or two males. I wonder if this is more or female trait, whether by nature or nurture, or the result of the infamous patriarchy, or maybe I just don’t know of many.
Have you heard of Charlie Munger? Most people probably haven’t, which is part of why he’s a great (male, real life) sidekick. Munger is the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and has been Warren Buffet’s right hand man for decades. Munger is one of the examples in Michael Eisner’s (former Disney CEO) book on partnerships. One of the book’s main points is that 50-50 is a very unstable split in a business partnership, but if one of the partners is willing to stand half a step lower the couple can achieve more.
You see this example a lot in sports, and by “you” I mean me because I’ve met few rationalists who care about sports as much as I do :) Scottie Pippen would’ve been an excellent player on his own, but being Michael Jordan’s sidekick made him an all-time great.
Since professional sports is very competitive and rewards “alpha dogs” with all of the money and fame (endorsement deals, max contracts, hottest groupies), players who could have been amazing Robins become mediocre Batmans. If players were only paid based on winning championships, I’m sure that would change. If your goal is to save the world, that’s the only goal and no one cares about “individual stats”. With this goal drawing quite a few heroes, being a sidekick may well be the best, noblest, and most effective way to contribute.
Startups generally give most of the fame to founders, but they give enough of the money to early employees that it seems better to try to be an early employee at a great startup than a cofounder of even a good startup (given what the difference between great and good cashes out to in startups). And so there’s the same issue of “are you optimizing for fame, or money/saving the world?”
Do start-ups distribute according to a power law? In that case they would be somewhere in the middle between sports and saving the world.
In American sports leagues there’s a salary cap that’s the same for each team (flat distribution). Being the second best player on a championship team almost always means less money than being the #1 star on a bad one. Usually athletes only start taking pay cuts to play for contenders towards the end of their careers. If start up earnings are distributed exponentially, it would seem that being #5 on a top 20 start-up is better than #1 on top-200 one. On the other hand, you mentioned other incentives, like fame (decision power, ego..) that would confound the issue. It’s hard to care about “the company” as a goal separate from yourself, otherwise being fired from a company wouldn’t change our opinion of it (for those who haven’t ever been fired: I have, it does). If you’re trying to save the world, the payoff distribution should be discrete: 0 if you fail, [your favorite number here] if you win. If Sauron wins, all hobbits are equally screwed. Once the ring was destroyed, did Frodo get a higher payout than Sam? Not if you derive positive utility from having 10 fingers :)
Paul Graham thinks so.
I think you’ve misunderstood the question. As I understand it, it’s not “is the distribution of startup values a power law” but “do startups distribute their profits to employees according to a power law”.
I hear that ownership is distributed roughly so that founders get 1/f, and early employees get 1/n^2, where f is the number of founders and n is the employee number (counting the first non-founder as employee f+1). (Both are obviously proportional; there’s some constant term in there.)
That’s a great description of why my wife and I have adopted The Dictator Principle for joint projects. The principle is just that someone must be The Dictator and, as the project leader, must be ultimately responsible for all decisions. Being ultimately responsible doesn’t preclude delegation but it does prevent conflict arising from, e.g. “I thought you were going to do that! I thought you were going to do that!”.
I’ve also had this thought. A few people I’ve showed this too are explicitly bothered about the what-if-it’s-a-result-of-the-patriarchy; one person is tempted to identify as a Samwise character, but reluctant to because Sexist Overtones. I...don’t think this is the right response. It’s a bit like saying “no, I’m going to be a doctor instead of a nurse because women are pushed into nursing by The Patriarchy.” Maybe it’s true, but it’s orthogonal to whether an individual will like nursing or medicine more (although, honestly, they’re not that different).
Other thoughts: everyone who wrote publicly about this was female, but most of the people who have emailed me privately to thank me for the post are male. So… Men feel more shamed about wanting to be sidekicks than women do?
I’ve already had the thought that the message I’m sending might be bad if it spread to society as a whole, because women may be pushed harder away from being CEOs than from being their executive assistants (or whatever the dichotomy), and even a well-written and nuanced pro-sidekick message is going to get parsed as “smart lady says your place is as an assistant.” (If a man wrote this post, the message would be different, but I’m not a man.) I still this this message is pretty positive for the LW/CFAR/rationality community to hear; its biases run in different directions.
Maybe because most LW readers are male? I am not sure it necessarily leads to the conclusion that
I am not going to generalize from myself, only think aloud. I think I could feel comfortable as a sidekick, but it seems like in many situations I don’t get this option.
Part of that is related to gender stereotypes: In the past, whenever I stopped being a leader in a relationship, my then girlfriend usually quickly replaced me with a guy who enjoyed that role. (I know there are also relationships with the opposite dynamic, but I never experienced one.) Another part is about money, which indirectly is also related to gender stereotypes: I feel a pressure to make a lot of money (maybe it’s just in my head, but so far I haven’t met any volunteer to pay my bills, so I treat it as real). Leaders make more money than sidekicks.
Sometimes I get into leading position by being the first one or among the first ones who care about a problem. If there are other people interested in the position later, they usually easily succeed to push me away, because I am not good at status fights and I don’t enjoy them. Sometimes I am even happy that someone else took the role instead of me, although I may complain about some consequences later (such as completely losing the ability to influence things).
But this is all along one dimension. I would actually prefer a role of an expert: to be fully responsible for one aspect of the problem where I feel most competent, and leave other aspects to people who feel competent there. No a second-in-command, not a general-purpose assistant, but a domain expert: making decisions within my domain, and only providing suggestions elsewhere.
Unfortunately, it often doesn’t work this way. I understand that even with domain experts, there needs to be a role of a leader: someone to make decisions outside of domains of all experts, someone to decide situations where two experts disagree, someone to choose project priorities and budget, etc. But, as Dilbert has shown us is various colorful ways, it often ends by the leader questioning all decisions of the domain experts, effectively wasting their contributions. In open-source programming I usually took the role of a translator, sometimes of an internationalization expert.
I think I am an egalitarian by nature. I am not professing a political opinion here; it’s simply how I naturally behave unless forced to act otherwise. Sometimes it seems like people really don’t understand this: they instinctively understand the roles of the master and of the slave. (Ironically, even people who publicly profess equality often have strict hierarchies; just different than their perceived enemies.) It’s probably a very strong human instinct. And there are the few weird people where this instinct somehow fails; they passionately refuse to be slaves, so they are pattern-matched to masters, but they also fail to behave like real masters, which confuses and irritates the others. On the other hand, I suspect that egalitarianism doesn’t scale well. So, my optimal role would probably be a member of a small group of equals; a specialist at some domain.
I can’t think of specific individuals either, but that’s not surprising; fame tends to go to the hero rather than the sidekick.
I can think of a male archetype that fits it, though: classical Japanese samurai. It’s an aesthetic that I actually find really appealing, albeit not something I think I could ever follow myself.