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A comment on It's More Important to Be Kind Than Clever.

Re:It's More Important to Be Kind Than Clever by sbierwagen on Friday August 31, 2012 @01:50PM (#4460817)
Using Bezos as an example of "kind over clever" is a mistake.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2012/0423/ceo-compensation-12-a...

  #6 “Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove we’ll 
  settle for intense.”
   
  Data reigns supreme at Amazon, particularly head-to-head tests of customers’ 
  reactions to different features or site designs. Bezos calls it “a culture of 
  metrics.” With dozens of these gladiator-style showdowns under way each week, 
  there isn’t much time for soothing words or elaborate rituals of social 
  cohesion.
  
  [...]
   
  Feisty debates over what metrics to watch are Amazon’s way of life. “There’s 
  an incredible amount of challenging the other person,” says Manfred Bluemel, 
  a former senior market researcher at Amazon. “You want to have absolute 
  certainty about what you are saying. If you can stand a barrage of questions, 
  then you have picked the right metric. But you had better have your stuff 
  together. The best number wins.”
https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzV...

  In some sense you wouldn’t even be human anymore. People like Jeff are better 
  regarded as hyper-intelligent aliens with a tangential interest in human affairs.
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Re:It's More Important to Be Kind Than Clever by sliverstorm on Friday August 31, 2012 @02:05PM (#4460891)
It's a mistake more importantly because from a quick skim of his lecture transcription, it doesn't seem to say much about "kind over clever". Why, the quote from his grandfather doesn't even say that. It says, it is harder to be kind than clever.
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Re:It's More Important to Be Kind Than Clever by tomas on Friday August 31, 2012 @02:06PM (#4460894)
Well, to be fair, the article only says that Bezos received that as advice (after acting contrary to it), and doesn't say anything about if he ever followed it or not..
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