Nice guys finish first. Eventually.

<i>"Despite the early appeal of the jerks, however, in the end the girls realised that they were better off marrying the nice guys.</i>"<p>There is a meme within the 'manosphere' that women spend their best years (youth) enjoying themselves with alpha males, and then settle with a beta provider when they realize that alpha males won't commit to them, while their looks are fading and their biological clocks are ticking.<p>If given the opportunity, they will cheat on their beta husbands with an alpha lover. So yes, the nice guys end up with the girls, but only because the girls settle.<p>With regards to leadership - Leadership will at times require tough decisions. People may have to be fired / laid off for example. Some people are not cut out for that - their delicate sensibilities couldn't bear the thought of firing someone. An 'asshole' would find it easier to make the <i>necessary</i> decision.<p><i>"Nice guys don't finish last. It just takes a while for the true value of positive, collaborative leadership to shine through."</i><p>It has become politically correct to emphasize collaboration and teamwork above individualism. I'm not arguing for either. I think that among us techies, who perhaps tend to be more intelligent and self-directed / motivated than average, 'strong' leadership may not be as necessary as among, for example, soldiers. War can't wait while every private gives their opinion to the Lieutenant.

It's a shame that people still think it's impossible to be aggressive without being a jerk, both in business and social life. Sure, a lot of jerks are aggressive, but that's only a correlation, not a causation.<p>"Nice" is not a positive thing. If someone calls you "nice" it's a sign you should change your personality. "Nice" is what you say about people you have nothing to say about: <a href="http://www.joelrunyon.com/two3/nice-people-dont-change-the-world" rel="nofollow">http://www.joelrunyon.com/two3/nice-people-dont-change-the-w...</a><p>To truly succeed you have to be aggressive. You must know what you truly want and have the courage to go get it. You must be confident in your vision and abilities. You can't worry what everyone thinks of you. You can't seek the approval of others. You must be able to express your thoughts and feelings without fearing to offend someone. If someone you hire sucks, you must be willing to fire them.<p>Kindness is a real, positive, desirable trait. Niceness is just the ability to be inoffensive and anonymous.<p>It's perfectly possible to be kind and aggressive at the same time. That's the perfect combination, the one you'll see in most successful entrepreneurs. Just look at PG for example.

<i>Despite the early appeal of the jerks, however, in the end the girls realised that they were better off marrying the nice guys.</i><p>I really hate this analogy: <i>Once the girls have had their fun, and are old, they settle with those who can provide for them</i> And, although it has no direct relation, it always reminds me of Buffet and "saving sex for old age"[1].<p>But even then, it's not even always true. I'd wager the majority of these women end up in a cycle of jerks. You just selectively hear about the ones who give up, and settle. This isn't a matter of fate - it's a matter of perception.<p>[1]<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/3073746/Buffett-on-Goldman-the-bailout-and-saving-sex-for-your-old-age.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/3073746/Buffett-on-Goldma...</a>

Without having any sort of scientific measuring stick, it seems that when taking averages 'nice guys' (and gals) finish overwhelmingly ahead. I'm not sure what is a good way to measure this race and I find the concept of finishing ahead somewhat silly in the first place but here is my example anyways...<p>If you've ever been to a high school reunion, you'll typically be somewhat shocked at what happened to the jocks/jerks/(insert high school term here) that were seemingly head of the pack back then.<p>I find this phenomenon to also be true in the other phases of life as well. For example, Ive had to re-evaluate my career path after getting to know some executives that would surely satisfy the bad guy checkbox. Many of them have had qualities that may have been useful in getting them to where they are but in terms of general 'lifestyle' management I do not envy them one bit (family problems, addictions, etc etc.) As a note I am not saying all executives have huge problems - but the ones who were, for lack of a more friendly term, assholes have not had enviable lives when looked at from a holistic perspective in my experience.<p>I dabble from time to time into listening to Buddhist instructors and a message Ive been able to take away from those is that cruelty to others is also directing cruelty toward yourself. I wish I had a great logical analysis to prove this but I do find it to be true through my experiences.

The linked study is a lot more interesting than this article:<p><a href="http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/halevy_nice_2011.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/halevy_nice_2011.h...</a><p>Some choice excerpts:<p>"Our findings show that people want respectable and admired group members to lead them at times of peace, but when 'the going gets tough' they want a dominant, power-seeking individual to lead the group,"<p>"...sharing one's resources with both in-group members and outsiders had the most dire net outcomes on a person's status. The researchers discovered that universal generosity decreased perceptions of both prestige and dominance compared with those who shared resources only with members of their group."

So I'd like to agree with this, and it might even be true, but it's not a very convincing counterargument. Am I missing something, or is its counterargument to the study basically, "I disagree, because team-building and collaboration is important"?

I encourage everyone to actually read the paper. The conclusion is that people want leaders and group members who put the interests of the group first (not a shocking conclusion):<p><a href="https://student-3k.tepper.cmu.edu/gsiadoc/WP/2011-E34.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://student-3k.tepper.cmu.edu/gsiadoc/WP/2011-E34.pdf</a><p>It was pretty badly misinterpreted by the "nice guys finish first" post, and we're heaping more layers of misinterpretation on top of that.<p>For example, the study found that people who contributed to the group at the expense of outsiders (perceived as medium-dominance) fared better in leader elections than the more "dominant" individuals who kept all resources for themselves.<p>The group-minded individuals also were less likely to be voted out of the group than the "pure-dominant" individuals.

I like the sentiment.<p>A tangent thought: I think the nice/jerk dichotomy/model is somewhat misleading. It's really compressing two separate axis into one. I think a better way to think about it is this: you have a kind-unkind axis and a dominant-weak axis; and "nice" tends to be in the kind/weak sector while "jerk" tends to be dominant/unkind sector. You still have two other sectors though, and I think that's really where you're going to find your heroes/villains.

Many people think that they're the proverbial nice guy. In many cases, they're wrong. You're not a nice guy because you don't kill people or verbally abuse old people on the bus. You're not a nice guy because you managed to avoid being abusive on most occasions.<p>Don't let them get away with not defining their terms because we all have a fuzzy feeling of who the nice guy is (me, not him).

I think this is what David Hornik wants to be true. The article in no way states that it is.

I would like to add a twist to this. Bad guys do hog the limelight, in exceptional cases (Steve Jobs is an example). However, being a bad-ass doesn't guarantee success and you may not be able to look yourself in the eye. On the other hand, being nice doesn't guarantee success too. However, you can still walk around keeping your conscience high. It's not what works, it's what you want to be.

Even if nice guys do "win-out" eventually, how exactly would this happen in a start-up? If a Jerk-Aggressive-Dominant team builds a great product and becomes the top of the pyramid by acting like assholes, when is it that they get replaced by nice guys?<p>I just don't think business works like that.

I was hoping this was some kind of study with data and stuff, or at least multiple concrete examples.

Two things, one anecdotal, one scientific:<p>(1)<p>When I was in 6th grade, they had some "kid executives" thing where we got to spend a day shadowing a local "businessperson." I got to follow around a senior VP of Bank of America. Not exactly the bank with the best reputation. But while I was there, when I was away from the SVP, a junior level guy walk talking with me, and I must have asked something about needing to be a jerk to succeed in business, because he told me something I never forgot: "you know everyone says you need to be a jerk to succeed, but this guy is the clearest example that that's not true." Anecdotal, yeah, but it stuck with me even as I grew up (read: became slightly more cynical). I've since met far wealthier, or far more recognized individuals. Maybe hearing that once when I was young enough to embrace it encouraged me not to write off all powerful people because of the actions of a notorious few.<p>(2)<p>I think the study has some flaws. When I was an undergraduate, I worked in a psychology lab that did studies like this. They don't bring in a bunch of "powerful people" or anything like that. They have a bunch of other undergraduates play the Prisoner's Dilemma with 5 bucks. Here's the methods for one of the experiments[1]:<p><i>Participants and Procedure. Sixty-six Stanford University students (62.9% female; age: M = 21.2, SD = 3.1) were recruited from a large subject-pool. They arrived at the laboratory in groups of 8-12 participants and were each seated in a private cubicle. Participants read the instructions, made their decisions and responded to the post-decision questionnaire using the computer. The Intergroup Prisoner’s Dilemma (IPD) game. Participants learned that they had been randomly assigned to a four-person group, and that their group was randomly yoked to another four-person group. They did not know who was in their group or in the other group and could not communicate with any of the other participants in their session. Each participant was endowed with 10 game chips and had to decide how to allocate them. Each chip that was kept paid $2 to the individual; each chip that was contributed to the group pool added $1 to each in- group member including the contributor; in addition, it subtracted $1 from each out-group member. Thus, the same action simultaneously benefitted in-group members and harmed out- group members.</i>[sic]<p>My problem with studies like this, while commendable for trying to experimentally control possible factors, is that the context is super important. An analogy might be measuring the speed of light in the same gas several times to control for external effects, but not realizing that the speed of light through a gas changes based on the gas. One such context, as the David Hornik pointed out, is a temporal one: people who screw everyone over once might seem aggressive and powerful, and are signalling that they're independent, whatever. People who screw everyone over for years might get left behind or ousted.<p>To be fair, the authors of the study acknowledge (but do not address) the temporal issue in their conclusion. And model systems like the Prisoner's Dilemma are important in any field. But twitchy when lab results like this are applied willy nilly into complex social interactions. Nice guys, bad guys, both evolved under intense evolutionary pressure for a reason.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/halevy_nice_2011.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/halevy_nice_2011.h...</a> (link to study on right)

"the strongest leaders were best characterised by dominance"<p>I think this too can be viewed as the strongest leaders are best characterized by being able to maintain control / manage a situation toward a required direction; It's of course easier to do this if you want to be domineering, so that would create a statistic that shows more 'strongest leaders' as those who are domineering, merely because it's the easier way to do something - but takes much less and skill and nuanced behaviour and understanding.

I never understood how bad boys/aggressive business people succeed. I always go out of my way to help people that are genuinely nice and caring, and not so much for the jerks.

It is easier to be perceived as nice if you are not in a position of power. When you are in a position of power where you have to make hard decision which have negative effects for somebody, some <i>will</i> think you're a bastard. For this reason powerful and successful people will be perceived as generally less nice.

To my mind Warren Buffett is the classic case of good-guy-finishing-first. Think of all the 'alpha' males in finance; investment bankers, traders, hedge fund managers and private equity partners. He's beaten them all, simply by doing what he loves and being a nice guy.<p>For example, from Buffett's 1985 letter to shareholders [1]: "I won’t close down businesses of sub-normal profitability merely to add a fraction of a point to our corporate rate of return."<p>I recommend reading the complete section in that letter headed 'Shutdown of Textile Business' - it shows just how painful it was for him to liquidate that business.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1985.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1985.html</a>

Great discussion.<p>For those of you objecting to the lack of cited evidence for my point of view, please keep in mind that this was a short magazine piece, not a long form blog post. My point of view is certainly aspirational. But it also reflects my experience in the venture capital industry over the last decade.

You can be nice and tough at the same time. In fact your niceness counts for little if you cannot also be tough when life demands it. As for women: I don't want someone who is easily impressed by what I am not, nor someone who cannot judge me. That's why I am happily in love.

Really? He is saying that Venture Capitalism will eventually reward the nice guys becuase of a somewhat similar analogy in school (the dating analogy)? He should have started the article with "I hope.." or "I <i>feel</i>".

Maybe it's just me, but the title made me think that the linked article is about sex. (I'm not a native English speaker though.)

if you are aggressive type of person your goals are probably more... aggressive. nice guys tend to be more satisfied with what they achieved already. compare jobs - wozniak duo.<p>(generalizing like that is not the best way of thinking about people - people are more complex that "nice/bad" dichotomy)

False dichotomy, much?

&#62; <i>I'm convinced the professors have come to the wrong conclusion.</i><p>That's usually the part where you begin citing evidence that has convinced you. Unfortunately, it's where this article ends. <i>I'm convinced this article is wrong.</i><p>See how that works? If you don't put any effort into backing up your statements, they can just as easily be rejected.

This isn't about being 'selfish' or 'nice'. This is a question of thinking about the long term versus the short term.<p>Everybody wants to 'finish first' - that is to act selfishly, and it's not a bad thing. It's just a matter of where you place the finish line.