zlacker

>>moored+(OP)
> There's an ongoing debate over whether or not people skills are undervalued, and perhaps for many people they are, but it's hard to deny that there are many, many more ways for someone who doesn't like social interaction much to get rich. If ads and sales are on the same continuum, then the world's best salespeople are engineers, data scientists, and product managers.

This seems completely wrong to me. If you look at who is the top 0.1% it's either inherited wealth, a few professionals (lawyers, certain medical specialties, etc.) who own their own practices, or people who've managed large groups of people (i.e. business executives). The third group is overwhelmingly full of people with good social skills, and skilled professionals are almost always personable too.

>>jeffre+km
I wouldn't go as far as to say business executives have good social skills. They are often ruthless, cunning, and deceiving, which makes them successful. If by good social skills you mean the ability to convince (read deceive) a lot of people, then sure they have good social skills. But who wants to have a beer with their CEO, VP of Sales, or other top exec? They are often depicted as wolves or sharks for a reason. It is true that they are good at networking with other people like them, but not really good at empathizing, helping, or caring for others.

>>neutra+Sq
Is there some research that would suggest % of ruthless, cunning, and deceiving people among execs is statistically different from any other professions?

>>smuggl+sr
Yes, there is some research suggesting that CEOs exhibit "dark triad" traits more then the general population.

>>diggin+hs
"Ruthless, cunning, deceiving" are very different from "machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy" of the dark triad. And are we saying that definitive driver of execs success is due to having all these traits?

I am not trying to nitpick, and this is totally offtopic from the rest of the thread, but suggesting that huge group of people is more "successful" due to being evil, narcissistic, deceiving, [insert any other trait] seems to be a major bias in itself. Especially if the root cause is having strong emotions due to that group's role in modern society.

OP even jumps from averages and statistics down to making personalised conclusions ("who wants to have a beer with their CEO?"), which is textbook confirmation bias[0].

Unfortunately, I see this kind of argument often here on hacker news.

0 - https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/confirmation-bias

>>smuggl+iM
> "Ruthless, cunning, deceiving" are very different from "machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy"

That doesn't sound true to me at all, though. How are you defining these terms that there's no overlap between the first set and the second?

> And are we saying that definitive driver of execs success is due to having all these traits?

Mmm no, that's not what I'm asserting. I can't speak for the other poster.