Concerning Marie Curie, maybe if we could agree on another example than one 120 years ago, that would revive the proof. As far as I’m concerned, every time someone cites Marie Curie, it rather confirms that we don’t do that anymore, otherwise you’d cite a contemporary example. But the problem of contemporary examples, is that we’re here to analyze them, and they don’t generally hold the scrutinity. I don’t know for Marie Curie, I wasn’t there.
>> she hates bragging. In anything she does that's publicly visible, her biggest fear is that it will seem ostentatious (…) She has a horror of ostentation so visceral it's almost a phobia.
> Who can afford to be silent about their successes? Someone who has a habit that her successes will he recognized...
You have already convinced me that you have very little conception of "non-alpha" people. Ditto of introverts. Ditto of those with shyness or social phobias. {Etc.}
> she hates bragging. In anything she does that's publicly visible, her biggest fear is that it will seem ostentatious (…) She has a horror of ostentation so visceral it's almost a phobia.
Who can afford to be silent about their successes? Someone who has a habit that her successes will he recognized. No-one ever wants to be bragging about themselves. But it’s made necessary so that our participation to society is recognized. I admire those who can afford to be recognized by others and not say anything themselves. Men tend to create startups precisely because they’re underestimated for their talent in companies (unless they’re braggers, in which case they’re promoted as managers - welcome, circle of hell), but actual freemarket recognizes the value of men’s work much higher than their peers.
> She also hates fighting
Who likes fighting? No-one. Who does? Boys. Because no-one will defend them but themselves. Who doesn’t fight? People who have the utter luxury of being defended by external people. Bragging that you “don’t like fighting” is like bragging you gave a 43 billion dollars to charities. Only rich people can do that. Generosity is more a demonstration of social status than a proof of ethics; The blokes at the bottom of the social ladder, they all vote extreme-right because they can’t afford to lose one more penny to foreigners.
Second, ideas are worth nothing without execution.
I’ve always watched my sister’s career with circumspection: She acted like she wanted to be on the sidelines, quality assurance manager in restaurant chains, in beer brands, etc. Would she want to be a doer, actually being chef? Noooo. Criticizing the chef? Yes. From a position of power? Aw yes, they kiff that.
By comparison, I’ve always succeeded on humility. Whatever small was my career as a software engineer, I took care of creating good features. I was depressed and humiliated by the smallness of my impact in society and the narrow scope of projects people would give me, which frustrated me to no hell, but I’ve always been on the production side, not on the watch and criticize how men do it bench.
On the long run, I now have power in society, she has none. (Except she’s a mother, where she has the biggest impact in society, but overlooks it to envy instead the power than men have).
Don’t assume that apparent positions of power like QA, anything-manager, HR, or even giving advice to the top CEOs, beats knowing how to do stuff yourself. And more specifically:
“Providing all the reasons for the startup to be successful” doesn’t equate to building the startup and doing the hard work yourself.
When I was at $GreatFamousCompany, we were free to launch projects and review other’s code. But in the end, when tough decisions came about corners to cut, features, scope, there was only one rule: The one who does the grunt work, decides.
I loved the wisdom of this rule.