> Personally, I've long idolized Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. But most of our heroes got to where they are by being unlikeable, not likable.
I fundamentally disagree with that view of being an asshole as an important part of success, but I also feel it has been rehashed an incredible amount of times already.
A slightly different take on this is the "don't rock the boat" mentality. This is usually a counter productive advice for anyone in a creative field, and pushing against settled ideas, trying things that people are not comfortable exploring is a valuable trait.
It can mean confrontation, refutal from a majority of people, and pushing these ideas requires a strong character. But I think there is a fine line between being firm and strong on ones opinion and being a jerk.
My biggest problem with Musk is him being an asshole in areas that have absolutely nothing to do with his businesses. Like the Thai cave pedophile thing. Just cut that shit out. We can debate the value of being a jerk in business, but there's no reason to subject members of the public to it on a large scale.
Jobs was known for being an asshole outside of work too, but it was either on a small scale (driving without licence plates, or parking in handicap stalls), or within his family (relationship with his daughter).
> our heroes got to where they are by being unlikeable, not likable.
They really didn't though. At the most, their likability is insignificant. I'm reading the Walter Isaacson biography on Steve Jobs and I can tell you: Yes, he was annoying as fuck, but that's not the reason he was successful. If anything, it hindered him repeatedly. He got to where he is because he recognized the genius of Wozniak and knew to push in a way that Wozniak never would have (and not because he didn't possess the talent, but because Wozniak chose not to take leadership roles; it's something his father taught him and something he decided for himself).
Every co-working venue seems to have at least one idiot wandering around in a black turtleneck being deliberately selfish and rude to everyone.
Never seen one of them actually be successful at anything except annoying people.
So far my personal "black turtleneck success ratio" is about 100:1 failure/success, and I never met the single success. I include Elizabeth Holmes, who I haven't met either, on the failure side.
They just get the order wrong. It's more like, being very successful means you can get away with being an a-hole a bit more. Steve Jobs really put himself in danger doing elevator interviews. That isn't someone I would mimic the behavior of.
Yeah, but if you ever see someone paying attention to them you know they are talking about something great. If you see people talking to nice people you have to listen and evaluate the ideas yourself.
I think a big part of it is being stubborn about rejecting things that aren't good enough. Steve Jobs and Elon Musk both also have a reputation of perfectionism, and lots of stories of telling their employees to start over because they didn't hit the minimum requirements (or in Musk's case, just firing people outright over seemingly small things).
Especially when one of your employees is pushing you hard for a feature they want or something they spent a lot of time working on, it can be difficult to reject their proposals over and over but by experience I've seen that this can lead to a lot of technical debt or significant compromises on the product.
Over time I'm becoming increasingly in favor of being really stubborn about certain technical choices and product choices, even where it can hurt employee morale.
Is Musk really an asshole? The stories I've heard about Jobs show that he was abusive and manipulative. Maybe I'm out of the loop but I haven't heard such stories about Musk. He's said some dumb things that seemed uncalled for on Twitter, but everyone makes mistakes, and if he really believed them when he said them then that doesn't make him an asshole. And firing someone over something seemingly small is not asshole behavior, that's just taking charge, who knows what lays behind a decision like that.
Are there any examples of Musk doing something mean for selfish reasons?
A lot of people are just cold, unsociable, not charismatic, don't buy into the latest social trend - and are therefore 'unlikable' to many.
It's possible to be 'perfectly good' and yet perceive as 'unlikable'.
Personally, I like those people, but the mob turns on them quickly.
Being needlessly callous, or mean, lording over people, excess egoism i.e. 'asshole' - this is unnecessary.
Being 'demanding' is not being an 'asshole'.
Firing people on the spot for missing this or that, is 'asshole'.
Emotionally, a lot of it can feel like the same thing, so it's confusing. And often people are a mix of both things, and are otherwise professionals, but let slip some emotional stuff now and again. The more demanding or terse a person is, the easier it is to cross the line into just being a jerk.
And it's not even necessary to be 'unlikable' either, but for 1/2 the population who tend to be 'people pleasers' maybe they need to learn that it's not just a popularity game, and the system would benefit from honest input.
My instinct says that Jobs and Musk are 10% nice, 80% terse, and 10% asshole.
Most of their actions seem to be on point, the kind of 'hard truth' actions that some people seem to admire in business types, but they can also be needless dks.
Some people are just plain callous jerks and actually have no business ability at all, and yet millions of people seem to believe their acting! Trying to think of an example ...
From the people I know who worked with Jobs, he was more than 10% asshole.
Being unwaveringly decisive (eschewing discussion) is often considered antisocial (although it's admired by some). Brutal honesty is considered "unnecessary" in the corporate environment. I believe this culture contributes to bureaucracy far and above the risk it mitigates.
For example, nobody wants to look at evidence that an long-established process is an unnecessary cost-sink. It's safer to leave it alone. Participants (and their allies) will perform all kinds of political and process acrobatics to defend their known knowns.
If you are jumping from company to company (which you should every few years outside your stock options), you can see how established companies have internal structures that prevent innovation and shoot themselves in the foot until whole departments are dismantled. At that point, most of the participants look at each other like "what happened?" or "this asshole came in and tore the dept apart".
It's a pain point of mine. The more money you make, the more you see this stuff and I'm usually the asshole brought in to break up the status quo (without much political support). I've been successful as often as I have failed. Jobs had much better positioning and was better at identifying the people and tools necessary to inspire change.
My 2c - I think being contrarian, over long periods of time, turns you into a jerk, because you have faced all kinds of opposition and subconsciously you've realized that the most effective way to get people to stop arguing with you is to be a jerk.
> I fundamentally disagree with that view of being an asshole as an important part of success
It can be correlation without being causation. The things that make such people successful—corporate authority, self-confidence, intellect, high standards, low tolerance for bullshit—may well expose or amplify the asshole tendencies lurking in all of us.
Yup, the other popular one is being contrarian. Its a dned epidemic at the moment, I find people arguing things for no other reason than to sound smart bt challenging, usually on a technicality, a really obvious assumption any normal person would take at face value.
A contrarian rejects popular opinion, not to be antagonizing, but in an effort to show that group think may be off slightly. It is more an argument about what may be right (or what is dogmatic), than just being difficult to be difficult.
People who are difficult to be difficult are just assholes. Contrarians frequently get put in that bucket, but have different motives. Keep in mind the term is used a lot in investment.
For example, stating children should go back to school this fall works within "popular" demand or belief that masks are a solution to spread. A contrarian would indicate an abundance of caution about what is yet to be known about how this is spread, and that perhaps masks don't exactly work the way we think they do.
Holding a contrary view that masks don't work doesn't make someone an asshole, but it could be viewed that way if the ones who disagree are unable to come to a conclusion contrary to that view based on empirical evidence, and not overwhelming abundance of popular opinion based on irrational understanding.
Depending on the age of the persons involved, this could actually be healthy. When I first learned about logical fallacies I could not keep my mouth shut. Everyone was a moron and dag nabit I knew exactly why. After a few months of pissing everyone off, I settled down in to a "You can be wrong if you want," kind of mentality.
I wish some of this energy could be channeled into creating forum software that explicitly recognized and accounted for logical fallacies.
It would help clean up a lot of shit (same as comment voting). It's not a panacea (just as voting isn't) but it would help to be able to flag/confirm/reject logical fallacies in textual online arguments.
Seems like that would require an understanding of language that far exceeds the current state of the art. And much of the time logic doesn't even apply because the text is incoherent.
The crucial part of this is that they are only able to be arseholes because they are successful.
Musk can be a prick because he's sitting on billions. Bezos can exist perfectly well after having his empathy surgically removed, because he has wealth to feed all starving people in the world and still be have 100 billion change.
Nobody does a favour to someone who is a dick, unless they have to.
I was/am a sysadmin. I am successful precisely because I'm not a dick to people. I am helpful which means I got promoted, and a reputation for being useful. When people moved to better companies, they would recommend me.
This not because I was a better engineer, its because I was useful.
They succeed in spite of being jerks, not because they are.
Musk hit big with paypal, then attempted the "impossible" with tenacity. He surrounded himself with the right people and provided a concise, clear vision for his teams to strive towards:
Build sports car
Use that money to build an affordable car
Use that money to build an even more affordable car
While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options
I think there's a difference between being a jerk for no reason, and just being disagreeable in situations where you genuinely disagree. Steve Jobs had genuine disagreements between his vision and the people around him, some of his disagreements were productive, and some of them were surely pointless, but some of those productive and difficult disagreements were doubtless a component of his success.
Steve was also a bit of a dirtbag though, if what I've heard about his relationship with his daughter is correct; though probably there's also more to that than we are meant to know.
I think the real common trait of successful people is a willingness to hold unpopular/anti-orthodox views, even in the face of scrutiny and criticism. Being a sociopath like Jobs probably makes it easier to do this, but is not necessary - you can be highly successful and avoid the traps of common wisdom while being kind and even pleasant.
I don't think the current social climate is conducive to this advice anymore. It was probably helpful in around 2008 to 2015.
It's hard to think of a situation where being unlikable is an advantage, today. Even in situations pg likes to point out – for example, if you think for yourself, you often upset others – you can do that privately rather than publicly, and still get the same advantage.
EDIT: there is one situation where you must be “unlikable” in a certain sense: if you think a company should do x, and someone else with equal authority thinks it should do y, and the decision is important. But even then, it’s probably easier to convince them with social aikido (or to let yourself be convinced), not assert dominance.
" easier to convince them with social aikido (or to let yourself be convinced), not assert dominance."
There is a much easier 3rd way, and that is for people to act like adults, realise they are not always going to get their way, in which case someone may have somewhat more legit authority and to let that decision happen without making it about ego.
If someone needs to have emotional aikido applied to them, they're not a professional.
If someone is constantly having to 'assert dominance' they're probably not a professional either.
Find a way to roughly agree and move on ... without any lingering karma.
I think the article's title is click bait. It goes on to essentially say that not conforming to others' ideas isn't necessarily a bad thing, and often contributes to success. Seems pretty obvious to me.
The author misconstrues (maybe only in order to twist the message to fit the title) being a jerk with being independent and taking risks.
Were some change-makers also jerks? Yeah, but it's not a rule, it's just more visible when that's the case.
>I don't think the current social climate is conducive to this advice anymore.
The advice is at it's most meaningful in uptight times like these.
>it’s probably easier to convince them with social aikido [] not assert dominance.
What about just regular assertiveness? It's neither domineering nor artful to be grouped with something like "aikido."
Sometimes it's just not possible to both get your way when you're right and remain a people pleaser. Which makes me think by "aikido" you're just referring to the kind of passive aggressive or manipulative people that fucked us into the social climate we find ourselves in today.
For those who can't read the article (site is crushed under the load): The article is about resisting pressure to cave to the status quo. It's not about being a jerk for the sake of being a jerk.
I agree with the general message (don't unquestioningly accept the status quo just because you want to be liked). I disagree with the idea that being a pioneer in your field will necessarily make you disliked. If anything, the society of 2020 reveres people who go against the status quo in a push to innovate, even if they fail.
The trap is when people confuse being a jerk with being successful. Or when they assume that being creative or successful is a license to be a jerk. Neither are true. People like Steve Jobs are the exception, not the rule. If you want to accomplish anything in a modern organization, you need to make an effort to be at least somewhat friendly. This doesn't mean you should become a pushover, a yes-person, or otherwise flatter people around it. It does mean that you need to listen, demonstrate mutual respect for others, and behave in a professional manner.
This article is gross, and by this point, the advice is trite and uninteresting. There have been hundreds of books and articles about the benefits of being an asshole, but the author wants to be on hacker news (pursuit of the approval of other users?), so here we are. Maybe that impression means the author is winning.
The central point: "praise by the masses won't make you successful" and within the same breath, "Movie stars, professional athletes, and a business visionaries–we all want to be them." Perhaps they're more likeable than you think? I promise you you're not alone among the legion of boys who idolize Elon Musk.
Conflating being likeable, popular, and conformist, is reductive and wrong -- but maybe it's accurate through the narrow lens of how Silicon Valley defines "success" and "progress."
It is an ideology of individualism and cancerous growth, and it is a culture that hates difference, community, and visible flaws (from the article: "Change comes from differences", "Society can't exist without collectively agreed upon rules," "Be likable and hide your 'flaws'"). Of course you'd associate the rejection of those traits with success if you've only measured your self worth in units of Elon Musks.
You can be likeable, even with flaws and differences. You don't have to be an asshole about it. Be better.
It's 404ing for now, so maybe the contents actually defy the title when I finally will get to RTFA. I have to say, I'm amused by a lot of the contrarian articles showing up on HN recently. There seems to be a growing tendency to shed a lot of the saccharine optimism of the last decade.
"Work on unimportant problems"
"Be more unlikeable"
"How to cope with <insert worksplace horror>"
"Why you should kill your parents"
I wonder if these are portent to the developing zeitgeist.
I managed to get the article to load - it is content-free. It's just the headline, with a very weak argument attached (the old "difficult people make stuff happen").
You and I must've hung out in completely different circles, including online :D
But yeah the media is like this because once some "trend" gets oversaturated, someone starts another one (or more likely, revives an old one) and soon everyone jumps on that ship. Actually, it applies to most things. Personally I can't wait for flat design to die out.
Probably so! Just HN/Youtube as far as my media consumption goes for the last while. HN has tended very much towards the optimistic entrepreneurial advice end of the spectrum for a decade, for understandable reasons. My youtube channels are nearly devoid of the shrill screech of contemporary political discourse. It leaks in occasionally, like witnessing an occluded star by gravitational lensing. I don't know how people stand the unoccluded version.
I've been doing my part to help kill flat design by pitching depth and shadows every chance I get.
In terms of the content, I was hoping for more concrete data rather than speculation. I myself come from a worldview where this is somewhat alien, in that, in my understanding of Christianity I am not trying to be this big achiever that the article wants to be. Likeability however is not directly a virtue in itself for us, and indeed our other virtues like being present in the moment and authentic with others sometimes require unlikeable conversation, for example “hey, I noticed that you have been on your phone composing this post to tell someone on the internet that they are wrong for about an hour, and I don't think you are getting as much out of that as maybe you seem to think... maybe let it go and let them be wrong and have the last word and trust that onlookers will judge properly without trying to sway their judgment?” rarely goes over well until sometime gets some more distance from the addiction.
So, like, I would have been really interested in the precise deployment of unlikability to further wisdom, but this article is about the shotgun deployment of unlikability to further personal achievement.
CEO of a company that I used to work at is one of the most likeable people I've ever met. He spoke softly and gently with sage wisdom, kindness, and careful consideration. And when he wanted something done it got done, and when he suggested an idea, people listened.
Like others who have posted here, I don't think you have to choose to be unlikable to be successful. And I don't think being unlikable is the key to be successful.
The advice to be more unlikable is akin to the Galileo defense. "Galileo was persecuted for his correct beliefs. I'm being persecuted for my beliefs, therefore they must be correct." They believe that something is related when it is not. Because as Sagan later said, "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
I think the key to being successful is to be ok with not being liked.
The big difference with people like Galileo is that he was right. Jobs may have been an asshole, but he was right more often than wrong. Gates was an asshole, but he was often right as well. They were not concerned with being liked, they were concerned with being right. And not "being right" as in "winning the argument", but "being right" as in "coming to the correct conclusion".
You don't have to be a contrarian to be successful, but you can't be afraid to be either.
I think skillful communicators are brave enough to express their opinions and endure critique of those opinions. And I certainly think those people are willing to engage in meaningful conflict to find better solutions. With that, I also believe that a person can be compassionate and cordial while engaging in conflict (and I think the people who are tend to be conductive to better solutions). It's quite a slippery slope to conclude that unlike-ability is the secret sauce here.
It's astonishing to me that people believe that Steve Jobs was unlikeable or that Elon Musk is unlikeable.
These are people who have consistently been able to recruit, hire, and retain a lot of very high-performing people... the kind of people who can choose where to work. And as leaders, they have been liked and admired by the vast majority of their staff, and millions of customers and fans.
Furthermore these are people for whom being popular is incredibly important, and they have spent a tremendous amount of energy on it. Steve Jobs was famous for how much personal time he put into marketing, press relations, and his own personal brand. Same with Elon Musk, which is why he is so active on Twitter, for example.
Were they nice to every single person they ever met? No, and sure, that's good advice: don't feel like you need to suck up to everyone. But IMO that's very different from the idea that one should strive to be unlikeable.
PLENTY of people are unlikeable already, with not much to show for it. What made Steve Jobs and Elon Musk remarkable was that they were right so often, about complicated and important things. So: maybe we should instead strive to be more right about things that matter.
Were you raised to have a pathologically strong need to be liked? Find it prevents you from speaking up when something needs to be said? Does your need to be liked control you?
Then you should probably fix that.
But not by going to the other extreme. The criterion for success shouldn't be whether you are ruffling feathers often enough. It should be whether, when you need to, you are willing and able to do it.
Everybody loves simplicity and certainty, but with social interaction you need to navigate complicated situations and make a lot of judgment calls. If a source of info (whether people respond positively) is weighted too heavily and your response is to completely remove it from the equation, then you've thrown out a simplistic rule that you were taught and replaced it with a simplistic rule that you invented.
Also, whether you are liked is a very self-focused way of evaluating others' reactions. Sometimes being positive/nice/friendly/whatever is about building rapport, encouraging cooperation, etc., not about how it affects your feelings.
It's a bit imprecisely worded, but the message isn't very controversial I would say.
To get things done you can't be afraid of disagreeing with people. You can be a jerk about it or not. If you're a jerk you likely free up resources for getting things done since you're not spending energy being sensitive to other people's feelings. On the other hand, if you're a jerk, people might work against you just because they don't like you. Also, it's easier to effectively lead if you're not a jerk, which is more effective than working on your own.
Most people can be adults about it, disagreeing civilly, and laughing about it afterwards. But the people who change the world are the ones who care enough to risk becoming jerks over the things they care about.
The only grime I have to pick with this article is it's applicability to all groups. The ability to behave as a jerk or be unlikeable without experiencing retaliation (not simply push back) is a privilege that a lot of underrepresented minorities don't have
To paraphrase Brene Brown, any conversation on privilege that excludes class is bullshit. The ability to be unlikable without it ruining your life (never mind using it to your advantage) is largely a privilege of class. No one in 2020 is immune to being "cancelled". But if you have money, it won't ruin your life.
The list of "non-cognitive" soft skills in one of yesterday's posts contains a substantial number that could be described as "being likeable", and I supposed that made them parochially targeted at children who will need to have a middle-class job:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23809211
As far as cancellation being a 2020 thing, Orwell observed in 1948 that:
"As a rule, luckily, there is more than one group, but also at any given moment there is a dominant orthodoxy, to offend against which needs a thick skin and sometimes means cutting one's income in half for years on end."
Ehhh, it's specifically the case that the fall from middle-class to poor is steeper for Black folk for what should be obvious reasons. Most of our middle class comes from our working class rather than inheriting the position [0]
Fair enough. I was thinking on it from a work perspective and did make an incorrect assumption that the vast majority of people in the meeting rooms were in similar classes
(IMHO) White men get away with being authoritarian jerks in much larger numbers than other categories.
This is not to say that all white men are jerks or that some who are are not also called out as such. Nor is this a suggestion that being an authoritarian jerk and being respected for it or getting away with it or given a pass for it is exclusive to white men.
I can accept that. I edited my post to indicate that it is my opinion.
That said, I think (again my opinion) that there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the behaviors that are deemed to be bold, authoritative, disruptive and direct even bordering on hostile when displayed by men in the workplace are tolerated or even rewarded while such behavior displayed by women are not.
"He" will be the tolerated jerk, the lone wolf who plays be his own rules and get things done. "She" will be the office bitch who no one wants to work with. Again my opinion based on experience working with fortune 100 companies, public and private universities, and at a half-dozen startups.
Edited to Add:
I did a quick search and found this:
"Untangling the relationship between gender and leadership"
> deemed to be bold, authoritative, disruptive and direct even bordering on hostile
Im not sure where any of that results in you being a jerk.
In your own words, its also just your perspective or "deemed" by you.
You know the lone wolf is just a moniker for office expeletive who no one wants to work with right?
Whether that behaviour is tolerated and condoned seems to have little to do with gender and more to do with your perception and yoyr employers willingness to keep either of these people around
I'd want them both to walk.
Im all for introverts working in silos with infrequent checkins if thats how they perform but I have zero tolerance for people who lack basic empathy for others.
But thats a but off topic.
My point is those thigs dont make one a jerk. Abrasive maybe, but I wouldnt call it a "problem". Maybe something they can work on personally? But not something that deserves retaliation thats for sure.
I chose the terms specifically because those terms are most often used to shield and apologize for the office jerk.
I'm well aware that the lone wolf moniker is romanticized and applied to to such a person (if he is a man). As I said, there is a different dog based and clearly negative moniker that is applied to the exact same person should they be a woman.
I want to be clear this has NOTHING to do with introverts. I'm not sure where I gave you that impression but if I did I apologize.
This is an area where the concepts of 'proof' and 'truth' don't really apply since any two people observe fundamentally different realities. It's not about bashing each other over the head until one of us agrees the other was correct about the One True Reality all along, but about sharing our observed worlds with each other so we can build societal systems that serve everyone.
Power differential is everything. Jobs and Musk founded companies. They were always the boss. The boss can afford to be belligerent. Can employees afford that?
Here's my question: Did Jobs and Musk allow their employees to berate them as much as they berated their employees? If so, then good for them! But I suspect not, in which case, they're just hypocrites and bullies. If some belligerence is required for success, who gets to succeed? Only the boss?
> Humans evolved as social creatures and we crave attention from each other
this is not entirely true. Humans evolved to crave attention from their tribe or extended family. Since we don't have tribes anymore we try to please random people who do not care about us. The instinct to be likeable is a correct behavior from evolution point of view, but is bad in a modern society.
> Actually it's more likely that popularity will prevent you from being successful.
What a load of BS. Maybe in some specific cases. But in almost all of corporate culture and politics, success is mostly a popularity contest. The more popular you are, the more likely you'll have people not p*g over your success.
I _think_ that being unlikeable is a side effect of having a strong opinion that many people do not agree with. Simply being an asshole won't help. But if you have a goal, if you strongly believe in that goal despite everyone else telling you to stop, then yes, be an asshole and tell them all to f*ck off.
Another one of these articles. There is unfortunately not much real content here. The advice to be your own person just like Elon Must or Steve Jobs is oxymoronic on its face. And certainly the advice to be less likable without a concrete reasony why is unhelpful.
Here's my take:
If you place a premium on pleasing everyone around you all the time, you have effectively taken away your own agency and given to them. You are under the control of everyone else's emotional reactions. That's not mentally healthy for you, nor is it good for achieving your own goals. It also makes you a giant target for the kind of emotional vampires who prey on people like this.
At the same time, if you simply disregard the consequences that your actions have on the emotional states of the people around you, you become a selfish sociopath. Remember, for every Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, there are a million petty assholes who make the world worse every time they open their mouths. If you are unlikeable, the odds are very much not in favor of you being a visionary genius. You're probably just that jerk that no one wants on their team.
If you are choosing to be unlikeable because you think it improves the chances of you being great, I think that is a sign that you are less likely to be that. Real visionaries don't decide to be unlikeable. They are unable to be likeable because they are so consumed by their passion. Opting to be a jerk is not going to magically create space in your life for brilliance. If the brilliance is there, it will have already driven out the compulsion to be a constant people pleaser.
The advice I would give is this:
1. Surround yourself with a small group of trusted friends and family whose regard deeply matters to you. These people exist to help maintain your moral compass. If you do something they don't like, you really did fuck up and you want them to hold you accountable.
2. Try to be a good person who improves the lives of all people you encounter. Default to likeable.
3. Sometimes you will have to make choices that harm some people. Pay full attention to the cost to those people and make sure the benefits to the world and not just yourself clearly outweigh it.
4. Accept that some people simply won't like you through no fault of your own. These people are relatively rare. If you find yourself frequently placing people into this category, reflect that it may be you who is the asshole.
tldr; You don't have to be a dick, but being a strong and passionate leader will result in making tough choices that will inevitably not make everyone happy.
tldr 2; People don't want a boss who is a friend, they want a leader with a vision.
> Personally, I've long idolized Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. But most of our heroes got to where they are by being unlikeable, not likable.
I fundamentally disagree with that view of being an asshole as an important part of success, but I also feel it has been rehashed an incredible amount of times already.
A slightly different take on this is the "don't rock the boat" mentality. This is usually a counter productive advice for anyone in a creative field, and pushing against settled ideas, trying things that people are not comfortable exploring is a valuable trait.
It can mean confrontation, refutal from a majority of people, and pushing these ideas requires a strong character. But I think there is a fine line between being firm and strong on ones opinion and being a jerk.