[kevingadd]

I don't know why skepticism and realism are viewed as "easy" when both are skills that require practice and education to apply accurately and consistency. What is so much harder about being "visionary" if all that means is coming up with ideas? Obviously what's valuable is coming up with ideas that can be executed on safely and easily, and Zoom completely shit the bed on safety here.

A team full of visionaries will never get anything shipped at release quality. I've worked with plenty of them. You don't need to hire a bunch of depressing pessimists but if you don't have skeptics and realists to keep your team's velocity under control you're never going to hit quality targets.

Imagine there being multiple valuable skills in an industry, like critique, commentary, planning, debugging, testing, engineering, design, and ideation!

[clairity]

yep, @bartread was railing against a constructed dichotomy (realist vs idealist) as if it represented the entirety of possibilities, forgetting that those idealized poles are fractions of every person's existence, not identities that confine each of us into one camp or the other.

the best visionaries (musk, bezos; not zuckerberg, thiel) combine idealism (hey, look at what could be!) with skepticism (hmm, why wouldn't that work?) to push the boundaries of invention.