I went to school at MIT with tons of people who had world-class intelligence, productivity and even accomplishments, but imposter syndrome was still rampant.

Even if someone happens to be exceptional at everything you choose to do and thus have confidence, they can only do so many things. And that means that for every thing they are exceptional at, there are a thousand things where they are unimaginably outclassed by others. MIT was awful for that.

For me personally, the more I learn about my areas of expertise, the more I realize how clueless I am about so many other areas. But if the knowledge of your general cluelessness makes you timid outside of your domain of expertise, it limits how much you can accomplish.

Also, I didn’t really read ‘fierceness’ to mean ‘assholeness’. I’ve been around some people who had ideas that they desperately wanted to see out into the world. They were fiercely passionate and they did have a tendency to interrupt, but they definitely weren’t assholes.

> I think PG is trying to justify some kind of assholish behaviour in his past by reframing it as a virtue.

I couldn't help but read part of it as a response to/rationalization of the recent pushback he (and other "fierce nerds") have been receiving lately...the former underdogs are now the establishment.

The bad news is that if it's not exercised, your fierceness will turn to bitterness, and you will become an intellectual playground bully: the grumpy sysadmin, the forum troll, the hater, the shooter down of new ideas.

I think "shooter down of new ideas" is getting unfairly lumped in with those other actually-bad traits. If there's one thing a lot of "idea guys" and optimistic entrepreneurs tend to lack and need, it's a skeptical partner who keeps them grounded in reality. Someone who is experienced, seen it all, constructively critical. Someone who will say "Wait a minute, this was tried in the '80s, and it won't work. Maybe try this instead." If you lump "people who push-back" in with haters and trolls, you're going to end up surrounded by yes-men.

The tech landscape is littered with failed projects that could have been stopped early if the idea person had a sounding board that keep him/her realistic.

Absolutely agree. The best and most creative environments I have worked in have been full of people who you could turn to and say "What if we did X?", and they would immediately come up with reasons that X would fail or be impossible. If your idea hadn't been absolutely annihilated after 5 or 10 minutes of this, it was probably pretty decent.

Yes, it is true that new ideas need criticism. However, if one is almost always critical of new ideas, especially ones that push beyond your wheelhouse, then that is a problem because you'll never innovate. PG lumps it with haters and trolls because that's what being a negative person entails. The point is the extremity. There is nothing wrong with being a hater, proportionately, as you can only love something if you hate its opposite.

Sounds like the VC business model!

Overconfidence and self-doubt can go hand-in-hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulnerable_narcissism

Wow this describes me to a T. My parents were constantly praising me and making me feel like a genius. Yet in the real world I'd estimate I'm around 120 IQ. So definitely not genius level.

It's almost like a positive form of gaslighting which unfortunately still has negative consequences like you've pointed out.

Is there a clear definition of self-doubt that doesn’t overlap with underconfidence? Because if the terms we’re using are so broad that a person can both be described as overconfident and underconfident, then as I say elsewhere this just looks like cold reading.

People are really complex systems, they don’t just have one emotion, even at one time. I know several people who seem to swing between overconfidence and self doubt, sometimes very suddenly. Maybe some will eventually settle in the middle. But if someone has something in their psyche that just keeps pushing them back into an overconfident mindset, then it’s hard to see how they wouldn’t also experience regular injections of humiliation leading to growing self doubts over time.

It's the difference between feeling and acting. A person can feel a lack of confidence and feel doubt and still act confident or overconfident.

Lots of people, like artists, visionaries, and weirdos who make strides to live a unique life have to act confidently to get to that life yet many also have a lot of self doubt. They just do the brave thing to move ahead with their vision even though it could likely end in failure. For many it does, whether they are remembered posthumously or not.

> A person can feel a lack of confidence and feel doubt and still act confident or overconfident.

This is essentially the pathology of a narcissist.

Everyone who says they suffer from impostor syndrome are both overconfident and underconfident, unless they are lying.

I’m not saying you can’t be both under- and overconfident. I’m saying that if you’re using terms so broad and vague, you could probably describe anyone that way.

> I think PG is trying to justify some kind of assholish behaviour in his past by reframing it as a virtue.

I wonder how much Bill Gates triggered this write up.

If we really want to go in this direction and criticize other people calling famous tech businessmen assholes, at least give credit where it's due - Jobs deserves this much more than Gates. Gates documented unethical behavior was mostly against other companies, not so much individuals, with a few notable exceptions.

I doubt Jobs--who died nearly ten years ago--was as likely a trigger for this essay as Gates, who is currently in the daily news due to his alleged bad behavior.

On the other hand, Gates' recently reported "bad behavior" seems to be largely stuff like infidelity and inappropriate sexual relationships which is not what the essay touches on at all. Jobs' assholery is exactly business & engineering related in the way that PG is talking about.

Wozniak was the nerd. Jobs was just a manipulator. As a nerd he never progressed beyond assembling circuit boards.

PG also recently came to the defense of Antonio García Martínez:

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1392756490138791937

It appears he sees himself as the shop steward for the Silicon Valley Asshole Union.