Interest in others, especially customers and clients, is extremely valuable.
#semi-off-topic rant:
Why are we still taking advice from Dale Carnegie in 2012?
Our salesman culture is at its end. Value cannot be created by convincing others of its existence.
True hackers cringe at any Carnegie quote, IMHO.
This reminds me of a question someone once asked Miss Manners:
Dear Miss Manners:
Don't you think that nowadays, in modern life,
the old-fashioned custom of the condolence call
is out of date?
Gentle Reader:
Why is that? Is it because people don't die
anymore, or is it because the bereaved no longer
need the comfort of their friends? Miss Manners
is always interested in hearing about how life has
been improved by modern thinking or technology.
Technology changes when and where and how we interact, but it doesn't fundamentally change why we interact and what the interactions mean.
Why are we still taking advice from Dale Carnegie in 2012?
because the way people work hasn't changed much since he wrote the book in 1936, and it's points still stand. I believe "how to win friends and influence people" is actually one of the books that Ycombinator recommends to it's companies.
Paul Graham recommends it on Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas[1]"
If you want to learn what people want, read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. [1] When a friend recommended this book, I couldn't believe he was serious. But he insisted it was good, so I read it, and he was right. It deals with the most difficult problem in human experience: how to see things from other people's point of view, instead of thinking only of yourself.
I was put off by title for a long time, before I was finally convinced that it was worth reading. How to win friends & influence people is one of the most influential books I've ever read. I try and go back and re-read it about once a year. It's just a good handbook on how to improve the quality of life for yourself and people around you.
If you're thinking of it as a way to sell people things, you're missing the good parts. Sure, I recognize that a generation or three of salesmen have misapplied random bits of the book, but that doesn't mean that the advice in it is worthless.
I agree but I myself cringed at the "true hacker" bit - it's not just "true hackers" (w/e that means) who cringe at Carnegie quotes so much as mature human beings in general.
Carnegie thought he was talking about sales, but he was really talking about tools for social engineering, which is a skill that hackers have been interested in for decades.
#semi-off-topic rant:
Why are we still taking advice from Dale Carnegie in 2012? Our salesman culture is at its end. Value cannot be created by convincing others of its existence. True hackers cringe at any Carnegie quote, IMHO.