I think she is completely right at the importance of culture and the value of "soft" skills on building a company. But I don't know about how judgemental they are about character. All sounds very much like a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" from a roman emperor. It is binary:you are a good person or you are a bad person. All this based on the myth fully internalized by both Paul Graham and Jessica herself that she can just judge character. They don't even care to try to understand it, they just assume she has this superpower and we all shall trust it.
My point is not being a good person doesn't matter on building companies. I too firmly believe it does. A "fraternity of good people" can be very powerful. I try to keep close to myself only good people, including doing business. I also mentally veto bad people that could possibly give me good business. But I don't judge them on character so quickly and so often.
A recurrent topic here in HN is how language limit and direct thought. In english the verb "to be" is used in two situations that are very different, and you can realize that if you speak a latin language. Myself, I speak portuguese, and we use to different verbs to translate "to be". We use "ser" and "estar". "Ser" is for something more permanent. "Estar" is for something more transitory.
So when in english you say "Your friend is ugly", you can tell is you judge the people as ugly for life, I mean, he just isn't handsome, he is ugly, he must accept it. Or if you are actually meaning that he is ugly right now. He chose the wrong outfit, the wrong haircut for him or that simply he isn't as astonishing as he use to be. To mean that you must add a time stamp, like "Your friend is ugly today". So this phrasing and using of the verb "to be" in english nudge you to a very binary way of thinking. And people's character are not binary. Jessica might vet a very good person as being bad, just because in the day of the interview they were pissed that they found out that an ex has cheated all relationship and they were feeling more beligerant and raging than usual. And that was judged by Jessica's superpowers as "being bad people".
All great arguments for culture and atmosphere were lost to me because of this judgemental stand.
My point is not being a good person doesn't matter on building companies. I too firmly believe it does. A "fraternity of good people" can be very powerful. I try to keep close to myself only good people, including doing business. I also mentally veto bad people that could possibly give me good business. But I don't judge them on character so quickly and so often.
A recurrent topic here in HN is how language limit and direct thought. In english the verb "to be" is used in two situations that are very different, and you can realize that if you speak a latin language. Myself, I speak portuguese, and we use to different verbs to translate "to be". We use "ser" and "estar". "Ser" is for something more permanent. "Estar" is for something more transitory.
So when in english you say "Your friend is ugly", you can tell is you judge the people as ugly for life, I mean, he just isn't handsome, he is ugly, he must accept it. Or if you are actually meaning that he is ugly right now. He chose the wrong outfit, the wrong haircut for him or that simply he isn't as astonishing as he use to be. To mean that you must add a time stamp, like "Your friend is ugly today". So this phrasing and using of the verb "to be" in english nudge you to a very binary way of thinking. And people's character are not binary. Jessica might vet a very good person as being bad, just because in the day of the interview they were pissed that they found out that an ex has cheated all relationship and they were feeling more beligerant and raging than usual. And that was judged by Jessica's superpowers as "being bad people".
All great arguments for culture and atmosphere were lost to me because of this judgemental stand.