[HN Gopher] People prefer friendliness, trustworthiness in teamm...
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People prefer friendliness, trustworthiness in teammates over skill
competency
Author : rustoo
Score : 379 points
Date : 2021-11-02 14:47 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.binghamton.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.binghamton.edu)
| clint wrote:
| I will hire a kind person who needs to learn a few things any day
| of the week over a puzzlemaster trivialord who pisses everyone
| off
| [deleted]
| mberning wrote:
| I have worked with many fine people that I liked quite a bit on a
| personal level, but were not very good technically. It is a very
| dangerous situation to allow yourself and your employer to go
| along with. Over time you will have a team full of very nice
| people with a middling skillset. You aren't doing the company,
| the team, the product, or yourself any favors doing this. If a
| role is not a good fit for somebody's skillset they either need
| some coaching or a different role where they can flourish.
| analog31 wrote:
| In a way, competence is for me, and friendliness is for others.
| Here's what I mean:
|
| I need competence to get through the day without getting killed,
| and doing my work to my own satisfaction, even in the absence of
| anybody else watching. I have hobbies where lack of competence
| would be instantly obvious, such as being a jazz musician and
| manufacturing a humble but useful product.
|
| Naturally I also need friendliness to get through the day in any
| social setting, and to do my work to the satisfaction of others.
| Since I'm moderately extraverted, this is valuable to me. My job
| is in an area where neither my boss nor my colleagues understand
| what I do. So, I need to be trusted.
|
| But I can't imagine doing a job for very long, where friendliness
| can make up for lack of competence.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Since most of the jobs out there can be trained on site from
| ground zero, I'm not surprised. Have been working on my soft
| skills recently and will start attending company parties given
| the chance.
| endisneigh wrote:
| If you wonder the three criteria with three discrete levels you
| get a cube that's something like: Very
| unfriendly, somewhat friendly, very friendly. Very
| untrustworthy, somewhat trustworthy, very trustworthy.
| Incompetent, average, very competent.
|
| Now if you take these and model the interactions between people
| who exhibit a three-pair (e.g. (somewhat friendly, somewhat
| trustworthy and average) against (v. unfriendly, s. trustworthy,
| v. competent)) I would imagine the "world" would eventually
| remove all friendly people (depending on the assumptions).
|
| If you imagine friendliness and competence is correlated I would
| also imagine you'd get rid of a lot of the competent people as
| well.
|
| Unfortunately more research would be needed to assert or refute
| this hypothesis. Anecdotally I'd say friendliness and competence
| are positively correlated, but not very strongly.
|
| ---
|
| To put it another way, if you have a team of people. Will you
| team as a whole receive more benefit from someone very competent
| but ultimately toxic and ruins the culture or somewhat
| incompetent but very friendly?
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| This is a given. It's human nature.
|
| Unfortunately, in the context of business, where it goes wrong is
| too often the less competent are able to undermine the more
| competent in terms of career, influence" etc.
|
| Business doesn't mitigate jealousy, "hating", etc. Sadly, too
| many managers and leaders are oblivious.
| itoocode wrote:
| Yes totally agree, being liked by teammates helps you climb the
| ladder.I would say it is a bitter truth .
| penjelly wrote:
| in my experience 8 years professionally as a dev fullstack with
| front end focus. the highly competent often lose their eagerness
| to contribute over time anyways OR they go elsewhere and work in
| a new area where they dont have competency from the get go. so
| instead of being an asshole "with talent" eventually they end up
| just being an asshole whos very slightly better then the next
| guy. Either that or, more likely they learn that collaboration is
| more then just producing code they want and they become not an
| asshole.
| papito wrote:
| I like a little bit of both. They better be downright brilliant
| if I am going to put up with their ego. I worked with a guy like
| that once. Yeah, he worked at Google, and "that's not how they
| did things over there". He was very sure of himself, but being
| smart is NOT the same as being intelligent. He never missed a
| chance to throw jabs at our lame, working codebase.
|
| Then he checked in AWS secrets in our main repo and made it
| public.
| DarkWiiPlayer wrote:
| Ah yes, it's a massive red flag when people bring up where they
| used to work to make themselves look good.
|
| The "we did things differently at X" is also a huge red flag.
| Competent people will figure out the different needs of
| different workplaces instead of just assuming that the biggest
| name had the best approach. If you think something is good
| because google does it, you probably don't understand _why_
| google did it nor _why_ it worked for google (and whether or
| not it would work at a different company).
| ellyagg wrote:
| People's personal goals and preferences aren't exactly aligned
| with company success. It's nice when they match up, but...
|
| For example, I prefer not working to working. I think most people
| are like me. And, yet, work needs to be done.
|
| This isn't an idle thought. People find other people friendly
| when they don't make them work very hard and don't hold them
| accountable to objective goals.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| My take is that as long as your workers are above a certain
| threshold (as far as technical competency goes), a team with
| healthy culture will on average outperform a team with toxic
| culture - even though the latter may have members that are more
| technically proficient, than in the former team.
|
| By toxic culture, I mean:
|
| - Poor communication
|
| - Abrasive or toxic personalities
|
| - Bullying and harassment
|
| etc.
|
| I think that in most normal people, stressors like those can
| affect their performance. And I don't mean full-blown hazing
| rituals - even more subtle actions (poor communication, for
| example) can lower morale. More so if you feel that said poor
| communication is deliberate.
| calyth2018 wrote:
| I've seen that so many times in my current office, it's not
| even funny at this point.
|
| And I couldn't agree with you more. As long as a set level of
| competency is there, I'd rather work with friendly people than
| a bunch of know-it-mosts that don't know tact.
| MudAndGears wrote:
| Absolutely. I worked on a team where the lead engineer would be
| out of the office for weeks at at time, and then when he'd
| return he'd skim in-progress code and request radical
| revisions, only to criticize those decisions the next time he
| was in the office.
|
| I was actively looking for a new job when he quit, and it was
| such a relief. My productivity (and happiness) went through the
| roof, and a couple months into the year my manager told me that
| I'd already accomplished everything he hoped I'd accomplish
| _for the year_.
|
| By exchanging a some technical skill for a better work
| environment our whole team benefitted.
| trinovantes wrote:
| The most interesting (and cynical) interview advice I've heard
| was that the outcome of interviews is often decided in the first
| 5 minutes. Barring some extreme competency issues, if the
| interviewer likes you then they'll help you succeed and sometimes
| overlook your flaws. I guess this is Pygmalion effect in action?
| webinvest wrote:
| I've always said that a coworker has to be either friendly,
| competent, or both. Ideally both but some are neither.
| bee_rider wrote:
| There are lots of reasons to prefer friendly teams.
|
| * Just, generally more enjoyable and productive experience. Most
| things are really not that important, particularly in school
| (which is where this experiment was run). And anyway, the purpose
| is often not to be optimally productive, but to learn something.
| If you are in a class where you are just clinging to some
| rockstar and getting A's that way, you don't have to learn
| anything.
|
| * Lots of technical decisions are really not very important. Your
| first solution will probably not be great anyway. It is
| preferable to get the group to agree on something and move
| forward. This can be done by having some very competent, less
| nice person ram their solution through, but a nice, semi-
| competent group with a good dynamic can also agree on a bad
| solution, mess it up, and iterate until it works.
|
| * Most people are really not that competent as far as I can tell.
| I mean, I've met people who can carry a team individually, but
| they are very rare, not common enough to plan on. People with
| more ego than talent are more common I think, and they have a net
| negative value in many cases. A friendly, incompetent person is
| at worst a minor distraction.
| serverholic wrote:
| It's nice at first if someone is friendly but eventually it wears
| off if they aren't competent.
|
| For that reason I suspect that this is one of those idealistic
| things that works out differently in practice.
| thrower123 wrote:
| Lets see it replicate on something other than a small group of
| MBA students before we lend it too much credence.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean, I feel like this is missing the point. In a job where
| you're working with other people, being an arsehole or being
| untrustworthy _is_ a competency issue, and a fairly deal-breaking
| one.
| throwaway20371 wrote:
| In construction, if the foreman / lead whoever is always angry,
| people get fearful of speaking up about something, and then more
| mistakes get made because nobody wanted to point out the glaring
| flaw.
|
| Soldiers also prefer trustworthiness over skill competency. Of
| course you want your brother-in-arms to do their job well, but
| it's more important that you can trust them with your life.
|
| Technical skills are needed to work with a machine. People skills
| are needed to work with people.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Depends on what your incentives are. If you own the business, I
| bet the factors you care about look a lot different.
|
| If you're just working the 9-5, and aren't in the blast radius of
| your coworker, of course you'll care a lot more about sociable
| traits than quality of work.
|
| As a manager, it's a lot easier and more enjoyable to work with
| higher competency people, that's for sure. Though I will say,
| that I'd trade a certain level of competency for general
| attitude/friendliness. Some people are quite good but difficult
| to manage.
|
| Don't think these results should be surprising.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > As a manager, it's a lot easier and more enjoyable to work
| with higher competency people, that's for sure. Though I will
| say, that I'd trade a certain level of competency for general
| attitude/friendliness. Some people are quite good but difficult
| to manage.
|
| Why's that?
|
| Here on HN there are Ask HN threads every few months about one
| cofounder trying to get rid of another competent, but toxic
| cofounder.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Specifically in regards to cofounders, the math is different.
| The founders will drive the direction of the culture of the
| business going forward, so a bad attitude will likely yield
| poor results in the long run RE: retention etc.
|
| I'm speaking moreso from the perspective of a manager in a
| larger org. It depends on the context of course, but working
| with junior or less capable people can turn into a
| micromanaging by necessity kind of situation.
|
| e.g. need to be very specific about design/implementation
| details when providing direction. Versus somebody who is
| highly competent, you can generally just give a high level
| direction and leave it to them to fill in the blanks.
|
| The goal is never to micromanage, obviously, but if you have
| a lots of design decisions to make, it can be necessary to
| have tight control over those decisions to maintain quality.
| This situation can become draining to manage.
|
| This is where formal processes and agile etc become
| important. But if you have a team of all highly capable and
| motivated people, you can have much looser processes and
| yield better results. Don't need to specify every detail of
| every task up front.
|
| I'm approaching this as a manager who is more heavily
| involved in the technical side... but in other situations, it
| might be the tech lead doing these things.
|
| But I'd for sure take somebody who's friendly and nice to
| work with over a highly competent but abrasive person.
| There's a middle ground there...
| uudecoded wrote:
| Incentives - exactly.
|
| "People managers" prioritize interpersonal manageability while
| owners / "sufficiently incentivized" / technical managers have
| more weighting towards competency and execution performance.
|
| At either end of the "sociable vs competent" spectrum (a
| reduction for sure), an underperforming or rude colleague will
| invariably decrease output from ordinary team members. The
| impact variable must be closely monitored and responded to.
|
| Quarterly eNPS-type feedback helps keep these cycles tight.
|
| edit: quotes
| DarkWiiPlayer wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but this article doesn't really seem to
| be talking about _actual_ competence, but only projections of
| competence in social interactions.
|
| There's a big difference here: You can act like you know
| everything and still have lots of bullshit ideas. Anybody with
| enough experience in a field will quickly figure these people out
| and put them in the "ignore" box.
| munchbunny wrote:
| Trustworthiness, more specifically having a clean record of
| integrity as opposed to just projecting a feeling of "you can
| trust me", is non-negotiable for me. If I don't think you're
| trustworthy, you're a risk to be managed and I can only really
| fit you into a Machiavellian mental model of "I can trust you
| only as much as our incentives align". I've had to work with
| people like that simply because it was out of my control, and
| it's tiring.
|
| There are well-meaning jerks who are just rough around the edges
| but care a lot about doing the right thing. I might not like them
| very much, but I'll take a competent jerk over someone whose
| integrity I don't trust no matter how competent or polite they
| are.
| mym1990 wrote:
| So basically you don't trust anyone based on intuition or
| impressions unless they give you a physical 'record of
| integrity'?
| munchbunny wrote:
| "Clean record" doesn't mean long track record, it means "no
| issues that I know of."
|
| People get the benefit of the doubt until they lose it.
| silisili wrote:
| I will say this, which seems related -
|
| I got much better performance reviews and much better promotions
| when I spent nearly all my time watching and responding to
| emails, compared to when I kept my head down and got things done.
|
| People really, really like people who reply right away to emails.
| austincheney wrote:
| I am not sure what this actually proves.
|
| In any system without definitions or constraints the natural
| preferential default is a least common denominator. In contrast
| in systems with an inherently high risk or danger a minimum
| acceptable competence is readily defined and a minimally
| preferred competence becomes preferential.
|
| A more important question is what does this actually matter? Most
| people also tend to overwhelmingly prefer agreement and cultural
| fit in contrast towards diversity and most employers actively
| work to challenge such.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I'd prefer a collegue who says "I can do A and B, but I don't
| know how to do C", and I can be sure, that (s)he'll actually do A
| and B, while trying to solve C, than have someone who's capable
| of A, B and C, promises (s)he'll do it, but then doesn't.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| This is why I can't have nice things.
| dyeje wrote:
| I am curious if this holds true at organizations that have high
| performance cultures (e.g. Netflix).
| wycy wrote:
| Can confirm. I'm only medium skilled at my job, but I'm very
| friendly, and people seem to be quite fond of me.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| as an engineer I want both in my fellow engineers and bosses.
| lower skilled coworkers are fine if theyre fundamentally
| intelligent and curious and willing to learn more. core
| intelligence of your coworkers will prob not change, however,
| over the course of your fellow employment. and a raging jerk or
| narcissist will never get better, as a general rule.
| [deleted]
| gjulianm wrote:
| Not many surprises. I'd place trustworthiness higher than
| friendliness, but both of those qualities are the things that
| matter in terms of making your job easier. A reliable mediocre
| programmer is better than an unreliable good one: you can plan
| around the first one, you can't around the second one. And
| friendliness just makes all interactions easier. The skill of
| your teammates is not as important as being able to know what to
| expect from them and communicate properly.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| Low trust, low performance. Nobody wants you, go away.
|
| High performance, high trust is too costly. They aren't applying
| for the job, they are getting hired without the annoying hiring
| process.
|
| High performance, low trust is the asshole of the group. If
| you're on a team and you're the one doing all the work. You're
| going to be resentful and become an asshole.
|
| Low performance, high trust are the dead weight of the group.
| They make more problems than they solve.
|
| The more dead weight you get, the more you require the assholes.
| Worse yet, the assholes become powerful because what happens when
| they quit or get fired? You are left with a team of low
| performance. You don't want to be in that situation. So the
| assholes end up getting promoted, bonuses, raises. All the
| metrics will be designed to benefit the assholes.
|
| Lots of people think you can hire low performance people and
| train them to be higher. It rarely works in IT. Things move too
| quickly, by the time they are good at anything, that thing is
| obsolete. Hence you need 5 years experience for the entry level
| job.
|
| The middle path is the way!
| [deleted]
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Because skills can typically be taught. Much harder to teach
| someone not to be an asshole.
| tomp wrote:
| People also prefer taking (communism) over earning
| (capitalism)... the problem is, communism is unsustainable. So is
| lack of competency at work (except in government jobs).
| arcanon wrote:
| I've also seen being tall and/or having a confusingly deep voice
| work well too...
|
| Bs aside, its best to have ppl publicly demo what they've built
| regularly. Quickly incentivizes the dialogue to not be about
| political favors and instead to be about whats gotten done.
| timbaboon wrote:
| Nope. Having someone friendly that can't do they job, who you
| then have to cover for? That breeds resentment... well for me
| anyway
| tinyhouse wrote:
| Well, it's useful to have great people you can learn from, but
| eventually what matters in life is the relationships you make.
| The two don't compete though. Plenty of competent people who are
| also nice and trustworthy.
| bserge wrote:
| Basically, fit in, don't stand out.
|
| So if you're not a lemming and want to succeed, _pretend_ to fit
| in. Fake it till you make it.
|
| The chances of getting ahead without challenging anyone/anything
| are extremely low.
|
| The most cliche shit possible, but yeah, it holds up.
| GoToRO wrote:
| The level of conformism in typical corporation is really hard
| to digest. It reminds me of communism (the implementation not
| the design). There was conformism there too but not at the
| level you see now. It seems that people that live on credit
| their whole lives while beeing 2 weeks from termination at any
| given time really brings out the worst in them.
| gjulianm wrote:
| You can challenge people and things while being trustworthy and
| friendly. I've found it's the best way to do it, actually.
| caymanjim wrote:
| You can't fake being a nice person and getting along. It's
| obvious to everyone, and people dislike you even more. They
| might fake being nice in return, but they'll avoid interacting
| with you and won't go to bat for you when it matters.
| bserge wrote:
| Oh you definitely can.
|
| And long time friends will throw you under the bus if they
| get something good out of it, so that means fuckall.
|
| I mean, seriously, look at how the masses elect the same type
| of politicians over and over again. Just pretend you're on
| their side, promise what they want, say what they want, and
| you're in power. Easy peasy.
| striking wrote:
| I don't think that's what the article says:
|
| > The researchers found that people who exhibited _both
| competence_ , through the use of challenging voice, _and
| trustworthiness_ , through the use of supportive voice, were
| the most in-demand people when it came to assembling teams.
| [emphasis mine]
|
| and later,
|
| > "Our findings suggest that when people feel like they can
| trust you, even if you're not necessarily the best worker,
| they're going to be more likely to want to work with you,"
| Maupin said. "They know that there are likely to be fewer
| interpersonal issues in that case."
|
| So the article is not saying "be a lemming because no one cares
| how good you are," it's saying being supportive of others has a
| greater positive impact on how others see you than your
| willingness to challenge others' ideas and signal your
| competency.
| cletus wrote:
| Roger Sterling of Mad Men said it best [1]:
|
| > I don't know if anyone's ever told you that half the time this
| business comes down to 'I don't like that guy.'
|
| In all my years of working, this is probably the most important
| thing you can learn. Except for marginal cases, it's not about
| how good you are at your job. You just have to be liked while
| being sufficiently good.
|
| It's also why the perennial "hiring is broken" posts and threads
| miss the point completely: really they're just trying to find
| someone they like. It's what "culture fit" really means. And
| people like people like themselves. This is part of what can lead
| to unlawful discrimination.
|
| Trustworthiness is an interesting one as it seems to be hard to
| define but some people just have it and some don't. This has been
| studied and can have a profound effect on, say, criminal
| sentencing [2].
|
| [1]:
| https://twitter.com/madmenqts/status/783648743690231808?lang...
|
| [2]: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
| shots/2015/07/17/4236009...
| nbzso wrote:
| >It's also why the perennial "hiring is broken" posts and
| threads miss the point completely: really they're just trying
| to find someone they like. It's what "culture fit" really
| means. And people like people like themselves. This is part of
| what can lead to unlawful discrimination.
|
| I don't care about this, and never will care.
|
| How startups expect to make progress or deliver a
| groundbreaking products following this inverted psychology is
| beyond me.
|
| In simple words possible: I have hired people who I don't like
| naturally only on professional expertise and the value that
| they delivered to my company was immense.
|
| You cannot learn to be likeable.
|
| You don't need this nonsense. You, as a professional, must
| learn to communicate and respect people for their skills and
| accomplishments, not for similarities in music taste, consumer
| purchases or favorite movies.
|
| All of this crap is produced by companies who want to exploit
| overtime by creating emotional bonding and subjective
| preferences. The added "benefit" is that this artificial divide
| leads to generational hostility and mistrust (which is handy
| when someone old with experience will try to share useful
| information to someone young and full with illusions).
|
| I have managed teams of people who didn't like each other at
| all, and this was not a problem because of clear communication,
| procedure and company mission.
|
| It's about time, this "cultural fit" nonsense to die. Companies
| who are operating with this mentality will never produce long-
| term value. Period.
|
| It's about time, we as a community, to grow up and stop
| pretending that we are not having a role in growing ageism and
| tribalism in our industry.
|
| Can you imagine if engineers of the Apollo Program were
| selected by friendliness?
| imbnwa wrote:
| > really they're just trying to find someone they like. It's
| what "culture fit" really means. And people like people like
| themselves. This is part of what can lead to unlawful
| discrimination.
|
| This can't be stated enough
| Tarucho wrote:
| >> people like people like themselves
|
| And it happens both on the positive and the negative. Nasty
| people tends to bring more nasty people on board.
|
| "Skin in the game" being the game changer.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| >It's also why the perennial "hiring is broken" posts and
| threads miss the point completely
|
| I don't think they miss the point completely when many hiring
| processes don't test for team cohesion at all beyond a manager
| pointing a finger in the air and guessing what the fit will be
| based on a 15 minute talk. Given these people would in the same
| breath claim diversity in personalities is great and covering
| each other's weaknesses is essential. That's exactly how we end
| up with teams where not a single person has the spine to go up
| against clearly ridiculous requirements (that is assuming any
| perspective, not just technical), while claiming critical
| thinking is great.
| sbacic wrote:
| > Except for marginal cases, it's not about how good you are at
| your job. You just have to be liked while being sufficiently
| good.
|
| I think this is dangerous ground to thread. I don't like to
| work with assholes any more than the next guy and I'd certainly
| prefer working with people I personally like but that kind of
| thinking opens doors to all kinds of abuse; from favoritism (I
| like him, therefore he gets a pass when somebody else might
| not), through promotions (what does giving a promotion to
| somebody likeable over somebody more competent do to morale?)
| to plain fuckarounditis (playing career games rather than
| what's good for the business, wasting company resources on
| petty political games).
|
| I mean, I get it - it's human nature. But something feels off
| when we're justifying our simian prejudices in an environment
| where we're supposed to prioritize somebody else's satisfaction
| (whoever is paying us) but instead we do what we feel is best
| for us personally, using a fairly emotional and error prone
| system of judgment (I don't care if this guy sucks, I like him
| because he's my friend).
| sokoloff wrote:
| I have a good friend who is extremely like-able. He's also
| smart and generally capable, but his likability is a
| _significant driver_ of his success.
|
| IMO, that's as it should be, because he's gravitated/been
| pushed toward roles where likability matters and contributes
| to effectiveness.
| codyb wrote:
| It's important to balance an individual's individual
| competence vs their effects on others.
|
| If working with a competent person means the rest of the team
| constantly feels stressed, bullied, aggrandized, looked down
| on, or whatever else then those people are less likely to
| perform to expectations which may have more of an impact than
| the competence gain.
| sumnole wrote:
| As long as that person is being tactful, there's no reason
| the rest of the team should feel stressed. Work should be
| an environment where people can learn from each other, a
| meritocracy where people get rewarded for results and being
| the best they can be.
|
| But this is sadly not the case for most workplaces, so why
| bother working hard? Just do the bare minimum and play
| politics.
| splistud wrote:
| Agree. And frankly, anyone that meets half those negative
| standards is nowhere near competent.
| folkhack wrote:
| Coming from the Midwest I was brought up in a weirdly
| religious meritocracy where it was all about worship of "hard
| work". Unfortunately over time I'm realizing that others
| perceptions of me are more important to career advancement
| over any of the actual work. So much more important.
|
| > But something feels off when we're justifying our simian
| prejudices
|
| It does, but in so many ways I feel like I'm trying to swim
| against the current if I continue down the "kick ass and take
| names" route vs. the "tread carefully and make sure everyone
| likes you" one. Even if you're successful at solving "Very
| Big Problem(tm)" people tend to hate the wrecking ball who
| doesn't participate in 2:00pm office beers - even if they are
| getting shit done.
|
| Sorry to interject my own strong feelings here but work isn't
| about work as much as we like to think... It is my experience
| at every place that I've worked that SWEs that make the most
| friends, participate socially, and prioritize their own brand
| internally are the ones that move up. Practical example:
| instead of being the person who busts ass to optimize the
| core Postgres DB (by meticulously sussing out slow queries
| etc), be the person who starts the Friday book club. Although
| the former is of way more value to the tangible product, the
| latter is way more valuable to you socially.
|
| Your outward social narrative is more important than anything
| these days - this is just work culture anymore.
| scott_w wrote:
| Just a small thing here: you wrapped up two things in one
| sentence.
|
| > people tend to hate the wrecking ball who doesn't
| participate in 2:00pm office beers
|
| The former (wrecking ball), people will tend to hate. The
| latter (beers), people should be fine with. I speak from
| experience on this.
|
| Find out why people perceive you as a wrecking ball and
| change your behaviour to not actively antagonise your
| colleagues.
|
| If you do this and it's not drinking beer in the office
| that's holding you back, I'd seriously look for alternative
| employment. The good news is you'll be infinitely more
| employable as a result.
| folkhack wrote:
| So the wrecking ball thing is just a turn-of-phrase that
| means "someone who knocks it down" - ie: the person
| getting it done. It's not necessarily meant as a negative
| nor derogatory term, it's the person who shows up on-time
| to work and is nose-down and very effective. Or at least
| culturally, that's how I meant it and what it meant
| growing up.
|
| To scratch at it, yeah I'm painting myself here a bit
| because I'm very annoyed at having to socialize in an
| office vs. just being able to show up and work. 100% I
| would rather work through my afternoons than go do team
| building activities - those things have been more about
| weird in-group "culture fit" crap vs. growing closer to
| my coworkers. Going from being a professional in Iowa
| where this didn't happen as much to California where
| "tech-bro" is a thing... well let's just say way more
| weird socializing happens out here.
|
| > If you do this and it's not drinking beer in the office
| that's holding you back, I'd seriously look for
| alternative employment. The good news is you'll be
| infinitely more employable as a result.
|
| Exactly - and that's exactly what I did in the anecdotal
| situation I outlined above. I promise you though, many
| places are like this and you will ostracize yourself if
| you make the same mistakes I did. Keeping your nose down
| while everyone else is making their buddies is a very bad
| idea. Apparently, I'm paid to drink, go play minigolf,
| and race gokarts - sure this sounds like it's awesome to
| a lot of folks but for this middle aged engineer I just
| want to finish the work and go home. I have a damn
| family.
| michaelt wrote:
| I've got to say, I've never heard "wrecking ball" used as
| a positive description before.
| irrational wrote:
| I read wrecking ball as just being the person who didn't
| want to participate in drinking and so was perceived as a
| party pooper. Not as someone actively destroying things.
| folkhack wrote:
| Yep - just someone keeping their nose down actively
| working their butt off to chip away at their workload.
| throwaway211102 wrote:
| folkhack and other people who share this view, I would be
| happy to introduce ourselves and perhaps work with each
| other in the future
|
| My email is in my profile.
|
| I'm using a throwaway to not associate my email to my usual
| username.
| vianneychevalie wrote:
| Is the former of way more value to the tangible product,
| though? Where I work, the limiting factor in delivery is
| how good we are at retaining talent. Seniority is scarce,
| industry experience is valuable, and when we launch a book
| club... We keep people.
| gglitch wrote:
| This is my experience as well. Prioritizing narrow
| contributions based on expertise over broad contributions
| based on a congenial and welcoming working environment is
| an expense that compounds over time.
| folkhack wrote:
| In my experience both are valuable, especially when the
| work you're cranking through is your _assigned work_.
|
| I 100% agree with you but I would say that many places
| will turn the lack of participation in Friday beers, book
| club, and gokarting back at you as not being a good
| culture fit.
|
| I'm from Iowa where the work culture is much different -
| even for SWEs. I prefer it to this weird "culture fit"
| environment out here on the coast because I am paid to
| work, I am paid to be a software professional. I am most
| happy when I am working, and I am most happy when I am
| effectively making software that solves people's
| problems. If I want to stick around and focus on my
| _assigned work_ I feel that should _never_ turn around
| and bite me in the ass... It does consistently.
|
| I've made a huge shift in my career where I realize that
| I have to go against my own wishes and participate in the
| gokarting, beers, game nights, etc. You have to go -
| every time. You have to make as many friends there -
| every time. My career has gotten much easier the more
| social I've become. I just resent it because I want to do
| good work, and go home. I have a family god dammit.
| gglitch wrote:
| I can identify; but the farther I go in my career, the
| more I see socializing as part of the actual work--i.e.,
| not peripheral or ancillary to it, but as an important
| part of the success of the company. My mentor says that
| what used to be called knowledge work should more
| properly be called relationship work, and I see it more
| with every year. We used to be Taylorist cogs in a
| machine, but that's not what work is anymore. At least
| not anywhere where groups of people have to solve hard
| problems and make difficult decisions up and down the
| ladder of abstraction.
| drewcoo wrote:
| I grew up in the midwest and have also worked software on
| both coasts. They are all different cultures, work and
| otherwise.
|
| I expect the emergence of remote, distributed work to
| change that in the same way that mass media affected
| regional dialects.
| Blackstone4 wrote:
| Yes because some people believe that kicking ass and taking
| names means that one can afford to be rude or antisocial
| because the mission takes priority. Utimately these very
| same people sometimes do not take the time to listen to
| other around and spend time working on the wrong issues or
| going down rabbit holes because their vision is superior to
| those around them...with a group it is often more important
| for everyone to be rowing in roughly the same
| direction...even if its off, its better than people rowing
| in different directions.
| folkhack wrote:
| People keep conflating my example with non-assigned work,
| ie: "spend time working on the wrong issues or going down
| rabbit holes because their vision is superior to those
| around them"
|
| Clearly this would be a problem, and I understand why
| people are conflating it with what I am describing
| because it is both related and relatable.
|
| But, I'm talking about doing your _assigned work_ - maybe
| calling out the specific Postgres example is why everyone
| assumes it 's just some jackass running off on their
| own... in the hypothetical I posited I did not mean this.
| I also did not mean to paint the hypothetical worker
| staying back at the office as rude/a jackass...
|
| Truly - there are many people who are only interested in
| keeping their nose down 100% focused on what work is
| assigned to them vs. the amorphous "culture fit"
| socializing. Hell - lots of them for fully rational
| reasons like social anxiety.
|
| Many people want to come to work to work, and then go
| home.
| Blackstone4 wrote:
| I dont really understand how your comments refute what I
| wrote...I am saying that the ability to communicate and
| get on with others (if you want to call it emotional
| intelligence) is important in helping people work
| together. Therefore being more effective as a team.
| asdff wrote:
| There's a pragmatic reason too for that. You work more
| efficiently when you work with your friends imo vs rigid or
| unagreeable personalities. You show up excited to work and
| contribute and share ideas vs wanting to get out of there and
| watching the clock tick slowly all day. I'd say the friend
| effect is able to elevate people who have 'mediocre' skills
| on paper to be efficient enough and start learning at a rate
| that sees them performing well above their qualifications.
| There is definitely a performance advantage towards feeling
| engaged and focused.
| mindless_solips wrote:
| "I'd say the friend effect is able to elevate people who
| have 'mediocre' skills on paper to be efficient enough and
| start learning at a rate that sees them performing well
| above their qualifications."
|
| Any sources for this? Should we assume the '96 Bulls were
| "best buddies"? Are Amazon and Apple the "most tightly knit
| companies on Earth", thus reaching $1T valuation? This
| sounds like an "I assume this to be true by' common sense',
| therefore it's persuasive" type of claim.
|
| The problem is, competence is important. Nice people who
| design airplanes that are "mostly right, but fall out of
| the sky slightly more than average" have real costs versus
| a team that's "a little cold to each other, but meshes well
| to create a high quality product."
|
| Which matters more probably ultimately depends on the
| "mission criticality" / ramifications of failure of the
| product. But assuming that two Advanced Beginners will
| elevate each other to competence also ignores that they can
| create a "blind leading the blind" style of effect.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| My instinct is that 90+ percent of all work is not
| mission-critical airplane design but is mostly shuffling
| things around between team members. So the 'good enough'
| metric is sufficient, where the extremely efficient but
| extremely unpleasant coworkers generally don't stick
| around unless they can be walled off.
| chefkoch wrote:
| I would think "good enough" in case of airplanes mean
| they don't fall out of the sky.
| sumnole wrote:
| You're assuming the 'unagreeable' personalities aren't hard
| workers and the people in favor are. There's no guarantee
| those 'inside the group' are elevating each other either.
|
| I'd rather work with competent strangers who are
| sufficiently polite than get dragged down by friends who
| can't carry their weight. No need to mix personal life with
| work life.
| asdff wrote:
| I'm not saying they are not hard workers. For some jobs
| its also important to be collaborative with a team as
| well as a hard worker, to make sure you are working hard
| on the thing you should be working on and not wasting
| effort working on the wrong problem due to poor
| communication.
| sbacic wrote:
| Yes, but as I said, that's a slippery slope to walk on -
| you're not there to make friends or have fun - you're there
| to do work. The whole point of that arrangement is that you
| do something that something else values enough to pay money
| for, perhaps something that you don't particularly want to
| do or something that bores you.
|
| If you start adjusting the workplace to fit the needs of
| the employee (gosh, how wrong that sentence sounds!) you
| end up in situations where it's suddenly justifiable to let
| developers use technologies unsuited for the situation
| because they're "fun" and "interesting" to use and keeping
| them happy means they're more "productive". Or letting
| middle management play politics because it keeps _them_
| happy and more productive. Or forcing people into open
| offices because some boss likes the feeling of lording over
| his subordinates and that makes him happy and productive.
|
| I guess what I'm trying to say is - some basic levels of
| courtesy and human empathy are needed for any group
| endeavor to work but beyond that, decisions should be made
| in the interest of the business rather than what makes
| individuals happy.
| dvdkon wrote:
| Do you really think workplace norms should never adjust
| for their employees? I think a balance between doing the
| bare minimum to avoid bankruptcy and squeezing employees
| for every last drop of productivity is needed and I don't
| see how listening to employee demands is somehow wrong in
| that context.
| alboy wrote:
| >you end up in situations where it's suddenly justifiable
| to let developers use technologies unsuited for the
| situation because they're "fun" and "interesting" to use
| and keeping them happy means they're more "productive"
|
| Well, companies already do that and justify the practice
| as something that selects for more passionate developers
| and makes job postings seem more attractive. Exhibit A:
| YC's very own Paul Graham wrote "The Python Paradox" [1]
| back in 2004.
|
| [1] http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| "Should". But how do you actually move towards doing
| that? I've never worked anywhere that was the case. It
| might be that there is no way to make that happen if it
| goes against human nature.
| sbacic wrote:
| If I could answer that question, I'd be doing management
| consulting, not software development.
|
| But I think a good first step is to just be aware of it.
| Many people don't even notice these subtle biases. Once
| you're aware of them, it's a matter of training yourself
| to ask the question: is this good for me, or good for the
| business? Am I doing this because it's good for me, or
| good for the business?
| lovich wrote:
| Not all of my compensation is in cash. Giving me time to
| experiment, learn, or god forbid enjoy myself is part of
| the cost for employers of software developers.
|
| You obviously can not want that as an employer but you're
| either gonna have empty roles for a long time or pay out
| the ass for the lack of fringe benefits
| Loughla wrote:
| I agree with you, 100%. 'Culture fit', in my experience,
| leads to discrimination and in- and out-group thinking.
|
| That being said; a challenge to your statements:
|
| >[. . .] instead we do what we feel is best for us
| personally, using a fairly emotional and error prone system
| of judgment [. . .].
|
| My experience has shown that a very cohesive team who like
| and appreciate each other, but is made of middle-ability
| individuals is much, much more productive to my measure as
| the boss than a team comprised of high-ability, but un-
| cohesive (non-cohesive?) individuals.
|
| Soft skills and the ability to work well together without
| judgment are both wildly important. In a team of antagonists,
| it is difficult, if not impossible, to feel comfortable
| enough to take chances.
|
| Not sure what the challenge is in that statement, but it's in
| there somewhere.
| kube-system wrote:
| "Culture fit" is predicated on the type of culture an
| organization has. I've worked with some groups that
| genuinely respected and valued diversity of both identity
| and opinion.
|
| In my experience it gets harder to do this as organizations
| grow and become less focused in their hiring strategy.
|
| It really requires a high bar for every single hire.
| There's a couple things I try to determine in every
| interview process:
|
| * is this person comfortable in giving themselves an honest
| criticism of their own work? If they can't comfortably find
| their own faults, they're not likely to respect when others
| do it.
|
| * can the person logically entertain an idea without
| emotionally committing to it? And if they have a bias, do
| they recognize it? Just with simple stuff: "I'm partial to
| [insert technology] because I have experience with it" is a
| great answer, and "[x technology] is what you need to do
| this" is a red flag.
| mrhyyyyde wrote:
| "My experience has shown that a very cohesive team who like
| and appreciate each other, but is made of middle-ability
| individuals is much, much more productive to my measure as
| the boss than a team comprised of high-ability, but un-
| cohesive (non-cohesive?) individuals."
|
| Very much this - to an extent, you need some deep-divers in
| places but the non-cohesive teams, I find, end up with a
| similar performance but lower levels of employee
| satisfaction.
|
| Having worked in a variety of settings and witnessing
| varying levels of team performance within those, this is
| what I, personally, have come to believe is true.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I feel that I should point out that there are deep-divers
| who are nice to people. I've worked with them.
|
| Technical ability and people skills are largely
| orthogonal. We are just more willing to tolerate poor
| people skills to get technical ability.
| brabel wrote:
| It's weird to me that people in this thread seem to
| divide people in two categories: those who are "nice" VS
| those who are highly skilled but dickheads.
|
| WTF? That's not how it works. The most highly skilled
| person in the world can also be the nicest person... or a
| dickhead, just like the nicest person in the world could
| also have really great skills, or not... there's no
| necessary relation between the two things.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| An unusually competent individual in a mediocre group
| will find it hard be a good fit no matter how nice they
| are.
|
| The opposite is also true for similar reasons - a
| mediocre individual will be a bad fit in an unusually
| competent group.
|
| This is almost the definition of cultural fit: people
| with complementary skills who are all working at more or
| less the same level.
|
| No one likes outliers because they _just don 't fit._
| This has nothing to do with whether or not they're
| friendly or likeable people.
|
| Not being social is orthogonal to that, and a different
| problem.
|
| It has everything to do with perceived hierarchy and the
| level of power and influence they have. They're tolerable
| as leaders if they have some ability in that direction.
| But they're intolerable as equals - unless perhaps they
| can be sidelined into a niche where they won't bother
| everyone else.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| > An unusually competent individual in a mediocre group
| will find it hard be a good fit no matter how nice they
| are.
|
| As the unusually competent individual who rarely "fits
| in", this hasn't been my experience. Mutual respect and
| some humility can bridge any experience gap I've
| encountered. I'm always happy to teach. If someone
| doesn't know something, it's an exciting opportunity to
| learn.
|
| If someone just doesn't have the ability, I'll be gently
| honest with them and work to find their strengths. Not
| everyone is cut out for deep work, but everyone has
| things they are good at.
|
| To do this effectively, I carefully guard my time. I
| block out at least two 4-hour blocks during the week for
| my own responsibilities. Usually Tuesday and Thursday at
| the same time every day.
|
| I manage this with a disability that limits me to 40
| hours or less each week. I never overcommit and set
| expectations early and often. I've never been more
| productive in my career, even before my disability.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I'll take competent or amazing with some annoying personality
| quirks over incompetent and highly likeable any day of the
| week.
|
| The latter might be fun for chatting during a coffee break,
| but they consume resources while providing little of value
| which ultimately means more work for you.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| No one was promoting this strawman though; it was likeable
| and good enough, not incompetent.
|
| Also there's a huge difference between "annoying
| personality quirks" and the toxic a-holes who are the usual
| manifestation.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| This is the 100x Dev myth, and straw man that devs are
| either 100x or -100x.
|
| As it turns out most devs are somewhere between 0.8x-1.2x.
| With a few 2x and 0x outliers. In many roles a 0.8x who
| plays well with others is vastly preferable to a 1.2x who
| cannot work as part of a team.
|
| Unless you are at the most prestigious, high paying,
| selective firm.. then maybe you have possibly higher
| performing people, but by your selection process they will
| also be clustered themselves.. just on a different range of
| the band.
| cobbzilla wrote:
| Pedantic note: there also exist developers with a
| negative multiplier.
| notTheAuth wrote:
| This is where open source can shine. Contributors must
| maintain standards but can work anywhere.
|
| From a logistics and utilitarian human need standpoint we
| don't all need to go down to the market square and debate
| over commodities now. Office life whether it's university or
| Google seems to want to replicate that obligation.
|
| In the US everyone is theoretically given the same privilege
| under the law. Why is there a clearly manipulated free
| market?
|
| We're not to the point where the machines work without the
| people. That we have to accept a few billionaires views on
| how the world must be organized is as ephemeral an obligation
| as following the churches take on the Bible.
|
| Let's do for people what they're doing to the monetary
| system; they use math to carve up a fiat supply, an
| infinitely big little number in a database at this point...
| let's use each persons atomic being as our value store. Let's
| use math to carve up the finite one reality in a more
| responsible way to that value store.
|
| Instead of Paul Grahams meager four quadrants of conformity,
| why not 300 million+ unique political agents afforded equal
| conditions under the law? Why does he stop at 4? I don't have
| to accept that math as meaningful.
|
| Inflating their worth is effectively government sanctioned
| quota on the masses through deflated buying power.
|
| Oops, we're all mathy now.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| >> Except for marginal cases, it's not about how good you are
| at your job. You just have to be liked while being
| sufficiently good.
|
| > I think this is dangerous ground to thread.
|
| He is not speaking to those choosing who to hire, he is
| speaking to those being interviewed. He's not saying to hire
| those you like, he is saying you will only be hired if you
| are liked.
|
| It does suck, but it's been true for me. Making the
| interviewers like me is at least as important as convincing
| them of my skills.
| [deleted]
| tomc1985 wrote:
| This sort of crap is why I left software. Niceness over
| competence.
|
| I didn't enter this (at the time) largely solitary profession
| to have all the best, juiciest parts of the job get taken over
| by these people-oriented idiots.
|
| There needs to be a revolution that returns programming back
| into the hands of solitary nerds working on sheer competence.
| More people need to care about the quality of the final output
| than whether or not the guy who wrote it is "a nice fellow".
|
| I feel like this is 'participation trophy' culture coming back
| to haunt us. Stop being so afraid of getting yelled at, anger
| is a part of life!
| antonzabirko wrote:
| Great perspective except anger doesn't need to be a part of
| life.
| jvvw wrote:
| I think anger is a natural part of life sometimes - but we
| have some control of how we react to anger. I certainly
| would quit a job if one of my co-workers was allowed to
| shout at me!
|
| Often when we feel anger, there is something that needs to
| be expressed, but the art is in choosing the right moment
| and expressing it in the right way (which I add is
| certainly not an art I have perfected!).
| antonzabirko wrote:
| Agree
| tomc1985 wrote:
| It is though, and it will confront you when you least
| expect it. It should be seen as a wake-up call, not
| something to be afraid of.
| antonzabirko wrote:
| Life is what you make of it not what it makes of you. If
| you don't want anger it doesn't need to be there.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| But it isn't. Circumstance molds you. The Great
| Depression did untold psychological damage to entire
| generations. I don't think they could just will the anger
| and resentment and destitution away
| antonzabirko wrote:
| Circumstance is what you allow it to be. Short of being
| put in a Chinese concentration camp ala Uighurs, you
| generally have the last say in circumstance to experience
| anger.
| mym1990 wrote:
| While anger is a part of the human emotion spectrum, I
| doubt it should be the thing driving conversations at
| work. It sounds like you identified what you don't like
| and you found a place where you can thrive, and that is
| something many people won't do, so kudos to that.
| pc86 wrote:
| I'm not sure what "'participation trophy' culture" has to do
| with not being an asshole.
|
| Being unable to express your opinions without anger or
| yelling isn't a sign of competence, it's a sign of a mental
| imbalance.
| _game_of_life wrote:
| Working in the trades the guys that yelled and blew their
| fuses constantly were always clearly in over their heads
| and were failing to cope with the stress. I'm fond of the
| term "Mantrum" to describe the behavior.
|
| Children scream and throw tantrums. Adults channel those
| emotions into productive means or recreational outlets.
| Adults understand that their colleagues also experience the
| same frustrations and emotions, and it's unfair to be a
| messy bitch and pollute the work environment with that
| garbage.
|
| I really can't imagine thinking someone losing their cool
| and composure at their job is a sign of competency, of all
| things...
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I have fond memories of working in an environment where
| we sometimes resolved differences with heated arguments.
|
| Ultimately either the better idea or cooler heads
| prevail, some people are just stubborn and take some
| coaxing.
| doubled112 wrote:
| In general I have far preferred the coworkers who have
| had an honest heated reaction instead of the ones who
| play passive/aggressive mind games to try and get their
| way.
|
| It can be whatever angry word you want to call it, but
| not directed at you, and that's just fine with me.
|
| A cool and collected discussion is preferred, of course.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| When I was managing people, I understood that everyone
| might be a messy bitch once in awhile. I'm not privy to
| their personal issues and wanted to give them some
| flexibility. But if was repeated behavior, we would have
| to have a discussion.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I can't tell if this post is sarcastic or not, haha.
|
| What are you doing now?
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Not sarcastic.
|
| I am now software-adjacent, working solo. Got sick of the
| people aspect and the fact that my employer takes 99% of
| the value I create and then forces me to practically beg
| for a 5% raise each year
|
| Fuck that industry. I became a programmer because I love
| computers, not people
| endisneigh wrote:
| > then forces me to practically beg for a 5% raise each
| year
|
| I hear you.
|
| thanks for the reply
| vlunkr wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this will hold true in my field where
| teamwork is required. If you're not nice, people won't want
| to talk to you, if you're not part of the communication
| chain, your value as a team member drops. No part of this has
| anything to do with software.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| The thing is software doesn't have to be a team activity.
| It goes against the current grain where everyone seems to
| want to build large teams of sort-of-competent nice guys,
| but you _can_ have one or two really smart guys, and pay
| /treat them super well, and you can get an entire product
| out of them
| romanhn wrote:
| As an introvert who had to push himself to become one of
| those "people-oriented idiots", the reality you have to
| recognize is that software is ultimately about people. It is
| not written in a vacuum to make computers happy, there's
| generally a human (or a bunch of them) at the other end who
| will be deriving value from it. Working competently to solve
| the wrong problem is not how successful software is written.
| And the chances of solving the right problem without talking
| to people are, frankly, slim.
|
| There will not be a revolution that eschews the people
| aspects, the industry has evolved (yes, the opposite of
| devolved) beyond that. Walking around calling people idiots
| and being generally angry is not going to win you any
| trophies either.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Externally, with customers, sure. I agree that we are
| ultimately doing this for people.
|
| But internally, I do not think that having requirements
| filter through ever-growing and increasingly specialized
| teams is a net positive. Early in my career I worked
| directly with stakeholders and shareholders, and I was
| empowered to build and deploy things that solved their
| issues, often from scratch. And I did exactly that, and it
| felt great!
|
| When I quit, I worked mainly with my product manager, who
| in turn interfaced with god knows how many people, and only
| receive tasks after they were parceled out and dispatched
| to me via JIRA, where I could only see a small part of the
| picture and I was held to arbitrary metrics on performance.
|
| Things were much better when we programmers were a weird
| and mysterious rainmakers that the higher-ups didn't
| understand. This newer, more gentrified profession is ... a
| lot less enjoyable to work in.
| danans wrote:
| Your idea for improving the field:
|
| > There needs to be a revolution that returns programming
| back into the hands of solitary nerds working on sheer
| competence.
|
| sounds and awful lot like the problematic example you
| described:
|
| > and only receive tasks after they were parceled out and
| dispatched to me via JIRA, where I could only see a small
| part of the picture and I was held to arbitrary metrics
| on performance.
|
| IME, only the simplest technical projects, with
| completely pre-defined inputs and outputs can be
| successfully executed by "solitary nerds working on sheer
| competence", and that's because all the messy work of
| defining the requirements and managing the uncertainty
| has been done by someone else.
|
| For even moderately complex projects, you need to work
| with a team, and being "nice" - which just means not
| being a jerk - is pretty essential for working even with
| an all technical team.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| The Pirate Bay under Peter Sunde's management comes to
| mind as an example of a small team working mostly
| autonomously to create a large project. Though I think
| they worked as such to minimize exposure to legal
| liability and to keep their legal opponents guessing and
| fumbling about as they tried their case in court. But
| they (and a lot of other underground sites) are exemplars
| in 'solitary nerds working on sheer competence'
| romanhn wrote:
| It sounds like you're burnt out on bad company/team
| culture then? I can assure you that there are still
| plenty of teams that operate similar to your early career
| experience. These tend to be in smaller companies. But
| even larger ones exist that offer team autonomy,
| participation in customer discovery, and sane management
| practices. You just have to be very careful about sussing
| out this info during the interview process.
|
| I guess what I'm getting at is while there are plenty of
| shitty teams, I wouldn't say it's an indictment on the
| industry as a whole. After 20-ish years in it, I'm
| actually optimistic that things are improving as new
| companies shed more of the traditional command-and-
| control techniques.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Yes part of it is difference in organization side. And if
| I have to go back into the industry I am definitely
| seeking out a smaller org, as I have learned that larger
| companies aren't for me.
|
| And to their credit, my last team was actually very good.
| Nice people, all very smart programmers. But the product
| was still a mess, and corporate's gotta corporate.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| You're arguing against a strawman. This
|
| >software is ultimately about people.
|
| does not contradict this
|
| >more people need to care about the quality of the final
| output than whether or not the guy who wrote it is "a nice
| fellow".
|
| GP is very clearly saying that software has to be written
| to satisfy customers. It is the process and the quality of
| outcome they have a problem with, not the focus.
| romanhn wrote:
| The word solitary was used more than once, so I don't
| think it's a strawman. My point is the quality of the
| final output is going to be suspect if you take the
| "leave me alone and let me code" approach.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| From the original comment alone one can't deduce it was
| about _zero_ communication without some serious
| assumptions. Only a difference in communication
| structure.
|
| That this invokes the kneejerk response of "well you need
| to communicate to make products" is arguably a bigger
| testament of what is wrong with tech. Including the
| incessant need to label everything with only the smallest
| details.
| [deleted]
| supernova87a wrote:
| I am confused why people are so outraged at the idea that some
| part of selecting people to work with may be based on whether
| you get along with them.
|
| People are social beings. Part of working together comes from
| feeling like you want to cooperate. You could have someone who
| is incredibly smart and clever as your business partner, but
| will you really feel like you want to go the extra mile for
| him/her? Do you have to watch your back constantly? Do you have
| the same goals in life? Does every interaction drain energy
| from you?
|
| We come from families, social structures. We have people in our
| families who are incompetent but we love them. It's not
| unreasonable to think that some of this behavior would continue
| in our work worlds.
|
| "Diversity" in the trendy usage today, for most people still
| doesn't trump whether you want to work with someone, and that
| hopefully doesn't have much to do with
| race/background/gender/etc. I say hopefully of course, and
| helping people overcome or not be prejudiced that some
| characteristic correlates with ability/desire to work with
| them, is an important thing to do.
|
| But forcing people to believe that someone's <x> characteristic
| is more important than whether you want to work with them is a
| recipe for dissatisfaction and backlash against people who
| insist that it should be so.
| codyb wrote:
| The one unfortunate side effect is that sometimes what seems
| totally innocuous to one person (interjecting, a crass joke,
| swearing, not talking enough, using the language differently,
| tough accents) may be interpreted as less desirable to work
| with even though it's often just a cultural thing.
|
| There are studies which show diverse teams are stronger
| because they bring in differing view points but I also think
| that they may end up self selecting for those that are
| empathetic enough to look through others eyes maybe.
| bennysomething wrote:
| Yeah I got kick back on HN for expressing this opinion.
| There's a lot of unexplained reasons why people like each
| other, dating sites haven't cracked this either. But anything
| unexplained in this realm now seems to immediately explained
| with "unconscious bias". I can't explain why I like certain
| people but can't stand others.
| twoheadedboy wrote:
| Because you're on a site where a significant portion of the
| population probably have poor social skills / are unlikable
| but have high degrees of technical skill.
|
| If you had this conversation in the real world instead of the
| internet, everyone would just say "yeah, duh".
| _fat_santa wrote:
| > I am confused why people are so outraged at the idea that
| some part of selecting people to work with may be based on
| whether you get along with them.
|
| It's rather simple. If you apply for a job and get hired
| because they like you, then the system is good. But if you
| apply to that job and don't get it, it turns into "fuck this
| old boys club". The outrage isn't logical, it's almost purely
| emotional.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| That is in turn just a rationalization of a social system
| you think will be beneficial. It makes no more sense than a
| literal caste system or astronomy as a basis for selection
| of competence.
|
| I shouldn't have to say this but actual competence matters
| - without it at best you get stunted potential and
| mediocrity. At worst the whole thing falls apart like the
| cliqueish house of cards it is.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > I am confused why people are so outraged at the idea that
| some part of selecting people to work with may be based on
| whether you get along with them.
|
| Because in large companies you will not work with the people
| that hired you.
|
| Many successful sport teams were composed by people who
| openly disliked each other, there's no reason to be likeable
| if you are not being paid to be liked by others, but there
| are many reasons to cooperate to the end goal if the team
| members' salaries depend on it.
|
| For many people being likable in the way it is represented in
| the article it's more stressful and energy draining than the
| job itself.
|
| I would go as far as to say that people that can't go through
| first impressions and work together with someone they don't
| particularly like (except of course if it's for good reasons)
| aren't good team members.
|
| But they tend to select each other to not feel alone in being
| bad team members.
| captainredbeard wrote:
| > it's not about how good you are at your job. You just have to
| be liked
|
| The sad part is that many of us struggle with social
| interactions and end up being unliked despite our best efforts.
| No one cares about what you achieve, unless it's useful for
| them, or if they just like you because you "have it".
| gameswithgo wrote:
| There are those of us out there, teams and companies, who
| notice yall, don't give up hope! Especially in software/tech
| you can find places where people understand.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| It's more how to put up with liars, bullshitters, scam
| artists, fraud people, sexual harassers, but hey, they are
| the nicest bunch of folks, if you raise your voice, you
| aren't a team player or not in the cultural fit.
| darthvoldemort wrote:
| You don't have to be a social butterfly to be liked. You just
| mainly shouldn't be an asshole.
|
| And the key is to consistently not be an asshole, otherwise
| those things will accumulate and you will eventually get
| rejected. (I'm not accusing you of being an asshole.) If
| you're nice 90% of the time, but lash out or say shitty
| things 10% of the time, that's more than enough to get
| eventually rejected.
|
| My son, unfortunately, is like this. 95% a sweet kid but 5%
| really, really shitty and saying mean things. We are working
| on it. He started out immensely popular but over the course
| of this school year, his classmates look at him lukewarm now,
| instead of being his close friends, and it's entirely his
| issue.
| ttfkam wrote:
| In personal interactions, be on average at least 20%
| kinder/more considerate than you think is necessary to
| account for subjective bias.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| >You just mainly shouldn't be an asshole.
|
| This sounds so obvious on paper, but in my own experience,
| things have definitely shifted to include more traits and
| lower intensity of those traits as "asshole traits". I have
| no doubt many critical people who do not sugarcoat things
| and do not spend time trying to curry favor, despite
| staying stoic and civil, are often seen as negative and
| told to "be more outgoing / positive / extroverted / etc."
| Not only does that go against just not going out of one's
| way to upset people, it also shows the boundaries of what
| is / isn't an "asshole" can change over time.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| I have been told multiple times by HR, that people have
| become upset at communications with me. However, no one
| has ever informed me of what exactly I said was wrong, or
| what do I need to fix, its been infuriating since I have
| no idea what I'm supposed to do. Even when I ask what
| they want me to do, there is no real feedback.
|
| I try very hard to remove all emotion and personal
| judgement with my interactions and treat everyone exactly
| the same. What is wrong with that.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| > I try very hard to remove all emotion and personal
| judgement with my interactions and treat everyone exactly
| the same. What is wrong with that.
|
| This is perhaps not the best way for a lot of scenarios.
| Read a book like How to Win Friends and Influence People.
| Take every person you work with and list out their best
| qualities, list out what excites them (work wise and
| personally as far as you know). Keep these at the
| forefront of your mind when you talk to them. Have
| interactions with them within this context.
|
| People like being appreciated, like knowing that others
| recognize their good qualities. Do it.
| darthvoldemort wrote:
| Have you asked your coworkers for advice?
|
| One thing you have to accept is that there is a problem
| with the way you communicate. People would not be going
| to HR if you were as unemotional as you think. So seek
| out advice and honest feedback from your friends, your
| coworkers and your family. Maybe you can find an expert
| in communications that can point out what the flaws are
| and how to correct them.
|
| But DO NOT sweep this under the rug. There is a problem
| here, and it sounds like no one wants to help you fix it.
| That's probably another indication that there's a pretty
| bad problem.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| To be frank HR people are certifiably insane - they think
| people who show they can deceive them in body languahe
| better are more trustworthy. There is no sugarcoating
| just how utterly batshit that notion is - even before
| pointing out that is literally how sociopaths operate!
| wutbrodo wrote:
| This can change dramatically based on the environment
| too. I have trouble with being dishonest, and prefer a
| straightforward style when giving and receiving both
| praise and critical feedback. I started my career at
| Google, where this worked fine. But when I worked at a
| startup full of people insecure about their ability to be
| an engineer, it was a terrible culture fit and I had to
| adapt heavily (at the cost of productivity: it took me
| five whole minutes of conversation once to figure out
| that the guy I was talking to wasn't failing to
| understand the problem with his code, he just disliked
| the fact that I referred to it as a bug)
|
| I went back to working at a company full of in-demand
| folks who were secure in their ability, and my style
| immediately works smoothly again.
| didibus wrote:
| At the point where you are sufficiently good at the core
| skills, I would argue it matters more that you are also
| pleasant, fun and trustworthy.
|
| The truth is, most jobs don't need the best of the best,
| problems are not always needing a breakthrough, often it's
| business as usual, so sufficiently good is good enough, and
| then you need to be able to collaborate effectively. That
| latter quality is as important to business success as the
| former.
| cletus wrote:
| To clarify, "sufficiently good" doesn't imply "good" or even
| "competent".
|
| In a toxic work environment "sufficiently good" may still be
| "incompetent".
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Being nice does not - or at least should not - make up for
| being incompetent.
|
| True story: I once worked for place that at one point hired
| a front-end engineer who didn't know JavaScript. Nice guy,
| generally. But from my POV had listening skills that led to
| friction (and crap output for clients).
|
| I was never able to wrap my head around the fact that
| within out team was a front end _engineer_ who had no
| experience with JS. I don 't want to work with a-holes but
| my job / career shouldn't be tied to someone who can't
| swim.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| Maybe they did lots of front-end jobs outside the web
| stack?
|
| God knows OpenGL ain't no joke.
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| They sell b.s. on Mad Men, so that's not exactly reflective of
| the broader economy. People like to sell soft skills in web
| forums where humanities majors exchange ideas, without thinking
| about all the hard tech decisions that went into building those
| forums. We're exchanging text via bits sent across wires
| installed in the ground and across the public rights of way,
| all brought about by the military industrial complex. This
| online post is brought to you by tons of unliked guys
| Clubber wrote:
| >It's also why the perennial "hiring is broken" posts and
| threads miss the point completely
|
| If people are trying to find someone they like, the current
| common tech interview process certainly isn't the way to do it.
| Back when I started, interviewers would ask open ended
| questions about prior projects that were worked on; explain
| some mistakes; explain some benefits and made the judgement
| based on that. That seems like a much better way to find a
| culture fit as opposed to obscure tech gotcha questions.
| gopalv wrote:
| > You just have to be liked while being sufficiently good.
|
| One of my friends has a joke series of posts titled the "32x
| engineer"[1], one of which is about niceness.
|
| People who aren't nice get routed around when crisis situations
| happen as adding them to the mix is not pleasant - this is
| probably different from the extrovert-friendly connotations
| people pick up in interviews, but a more clear "is this person
| going to yell at me or help me (first)".
|
| This lesson is probably doubled up in personal life as people
| have kids and try to get their tweenagers to communicate with
| them - the "you did WHAT?" reaction is basically equivalent
| with the not-nice people who are competent, but tired of
| cleaning up the mess of over years (not realizing their
| reaction has a long-term impact on what kids think adults do).
|
| The role growth part is also relevant, as people with context
| don't want to come to you unless they have to, you slowly lose
| context on what's going on until you are in a basement with a
| stapler.
|
| [1] - https://twitter.com/tdinkar/status/1149554345077137410
| hinkley wrote:
| I'd like to refine the sentiment a little bit. In technical
| circles, trustworthiness is sufficient to get you some
| traction, but you'll have a glass ceiling unless the bosses
| like you. If you don't plan to climb very high in the org,
| this might seem like a reasonable deal to you, but remember
| that there are other times besides getting promoted when you
| need to spend social capital with the management team.
|
| > The role growth part is also relevant, as people with
| context don't want to come to you unless they have to, you
| slowly lose context on what's going on until you are in a
| basement with a stapler.
|
| This is my first to promotions to lead in a nutshell.
|
| People who had been there longer lost context because I
| categorize some/many fuck-ups as reasonable, and I was good
| at bailing people out if my advice was wrong. If you broke
| something, or just thought something was broken (ie, QA) I
| was least likely to bite your head off. If something I asked
| you to do exploded, I'd help you fix it.
|
| Technically and emotionally trustworthy people hear about
| more 'dirt', and many serious architectural problems are
| hidden in that dirt. If you are technical you can parlay that
| information into bug fixes (including production outages) and
| technical initiatives. If you're getting stuff done and
| people generally seem to trust you (even if they don't like
| you), then that means they listen when you talk. Your boss
| would be stupid not to promote you.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Trustworthiness is not hard to define at all. When a coworker
| tells you they will do something, do they do it? When you tell
| them something in confidence, do they keep it to themselves?
| When there's a problem, even when its their fault, do they
| address it honestly and factually? When I write this out, it
| starts to sound like trust is a lot like professionalism and I
| think that's it. I trust someone who acts professionally, and I
| don't trust someone who doesn't.
| hinkley wrote:
| We discount the value of psychological safety too. Nobody
| wants to look stupid, especially in front of others, and if
| you punish people for mistakes then they either stop
| interacting with you or all of your interactions are
| engineered to avoid those situations. At this point candor
| has gone out the window, and your impression of what's really
| going on becomes progressively more inaccurate.
|
| I have a couple coworkers who say, "I haven't heard of any of
| this," as if it's a statement that a problem doesn't exist,
| instead of a realization that they're in the dark on
| something important. It's because one feeds you optimism, and
| the other is grouchy and writes exhaustingly byzantine code
| and then doesn't understand why people don't think he's
| brilliant (I think this is the root of most of the
| grouchiness).
| antonzabirko wrote:
| He's talking about the perception of trust, like in an
| interview. They won't have a history with you to see how
| trustworthy you are at that point.
| civilized wrote:
| > Trustworthiness is not hard to define at all. When a
| coworker tells you they will do something, do they do it?
|
| And the devil is in the details:
|
| - Will ALL of the request be addressed, or will some parts be
| omitted without the omissions being surfaced explicitly?
|
| - Will this person ask questions and/or look carefully at
| context to resolve any ambiguities in the ask? Or will they
| just kind of assume what you mean, ignoring any ambiguity or
| context that conflicts with their assumption, and not
| communicate any of the assumptions they made or thought
| process behind those?
|
| - Will they be thoughtful about unintended consequences of
| the ask and surface those, or just do literally what was
| requested, let the shit hit the fan, and blame you if
| anything goes wrong?
| heurisko wrote:
| I think trustworthiness can also apply to the code itself.
|
| There are so many times where I have thought, "I better add
| this test here, even though I know I will probably only be
| the person who knows there needs to be a test here."
|
| And I add the test, as I like to think I can be trusted to do
| the right thing, even though nobody will in all likelihood
| see it.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| It's weird that Devs find this so surprising, other than that
| we are mostly a bunch of introverted misanthropes.
|
| I mean - you spend more time with your teammates than you do
| with your spouse, it's not hard to understand why friendliness
| is ranked as high importance.
|
| If you've ever REALLY worked with a team full of assholes,
| you'd get it too. If not, maybe you were one of the assholes.
|
| That said, this isn't a question of whats best for the firm,
| it's what people prefer in their work environment. Goes along
| with higher pay, less hours, better benefits.
| nimbius wrote:
| trust is easy to define. Trust = Character * Competence.
|
| zero competence will still result in a low level of trust. I
| think what the article is saying is that its easy to
| overwhelmingly improve your character at a job you may only
| have marginal competence at. This boosts your Trust, and in
| doing so makes you palatable to all but the hard-working tech
| people with low character and high competence, who view you as
| a grinning moron they occasionally have to stop to support.
| bennysomething wrote:
| But how do you define character?
| [deleted]
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| Mad Men is a story about people working for a company that is
| exclusively focused of human emotions (and manipulating them).
| I don't think any "lessons" it may teach about workplace
| politics are any more generalizable than any other single
| industry.
| pcmoney wrote:
| Sure, but I feel the quote still stands. The hard reality is
| high school is more representative of life than we would like
| to believe. If everyone likes you, you probably don't get
| laid off or fired, can still happen though (the other half of
| the business)
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Isn't that a complete tautology? If most people spent their
| youths chained up in a cold basement we would see it
| reflected in life.
| bobthechef wrote:
| > You just have to be liked while being sufficiently good.
|
| I would caution that this not become an invitation to become a
| Willy Loman. Dead fish float downstream. Wanting to be liked is
| a recipe for obsequiousness, cowardice, and mediocrity of
| character. The doormats of the world are people who need to be
| liked. It is the ethos of the undignified, the dishonest, and
| the resentful.
|
| We should not care if we are liked. We should care about doing
| what we ought. One _ought not_ be an asshole, not because you
| won 't be liked (and there is bound to be someone that will
| like the asshole, btw), but because being an asshole is a
| defect of character which you should recognize and repair
| instead.
|
| Of course, the side effect of doing what we ought is the
| respect of good people, but that is incidental.
| [deleted]
| CountDrewku wrote:
| I like people that are competent. If you're incompetent but
| friendly then I'll probably find you unlikable. I don't think
| I'm alone in this either.
| gordaco wrote:
| Not that these two things are opposed to each other, you know. We
| should try to achieve both, at least to a reasonable level. At
| the very least, it's much better to have both qualities in a
| reasonable amount than to be excellent in one and completely lack
| the other.
|
| I've found that there is a sweet spot in the middle of both
| competencies, where you can teach the least experienced members
| of the team and people appreciate you for that. It's something
| that must not be overdone, but there are plenty of opportunities
| (like, say, during code reviews), and in my experience most
| people appreciate it as long as the explanations are brief and
| clear. Think something like "doing things this way can be
| problematic, because of X and Y. I recommend using this alternate
| structure, which doesn't have these problems, although it still
| has the minor inconvenience of Z".
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I don't trust someone I work with until they've proven to me that
| they are competent.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This is a survey of MBA students over the course of less than six
| months. The definitions are a bit vague, how does one distinguish
| 'trustworthiness' from 'friendliness'? What is meant by
| 'technical competence'?
|
| For example, in retail sales, the ability to project
| 'friendliness' is very helpful in client relations, hence in
| sales margins. This doesn't translate into 'trustworthiness',
| i.e. not selling your company's IP t o the competition, etc.
| However, part of the definition of a 'competent salesperson' is
| the ability to project friendliness regardless of one's actual
| opinion of the client.
|
| So, part of the general definition of 'competence' in technical
| jobs should be the ability to keep interactions professional
| regardless of circumstances (while not tolerating actually
| abusive behavior).
| tarkin2 wrote:
| You're not making anything alone. You do it in a team. And the
| team needs to work together well to perform the task. The skills
| to "work together well" are friendliness and trustworthiness.
|
| The equivalent is having excellent hardware components, but the
| program that coordinates them all is really poor.
| InternetPerson wrote:
| Let's say that I get paid basically the same whether my team
| performs adequately or whether it really excels.
|
| In this case, why wouldn't I prefer friendly teammates? As long
| as we perform adequately, we're gonna get paid the same. Let the
| superstar assholes work on someone else's team!
| notjustanymike wrote:
| The implication here is friendly but incompetent trumps competent
| but unfriendly.
|
| This isn't a surprise. A team is stronger than an individual, and
| competence has a productivity ceiling where you have to start
| playing well with others.
| [deleted]
| chernevik wrote:
| "Maupin and her colleagues focused on a cohort of MBA students to
| conduct their study."
|
| I don't know how much this group tells us.
|
| When I was in business school most of the group projects were
| things I could do on my own if I had to. So compatibility was an
| absolute gating requirement, you didn't want anybody who could
| screw up the whole thing. And business school competence was
| mostly a matter of applying yourself, it wasn't as if there were
| wide differences in basic ability.
|
| I would probably weight compatibility differently if I was truly
| dependent on their input, and if that input varied a lot among
| possible members.
| Atlantium wrote:
| Thankfully the population size is large enough that those of us
| who prefer competency over "personality" can form teams of our
| own.
| erichocean wrote:
| Yet another WEIRD [0] study of dubious value. Doing it on "study
| group partners" is particularly <chef's kiss>.
|
| [0] Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic
| jacknews wrote:
| No doubt these are the traits that people seek in fellow 'study
| group' members.
|
| Does anyone remember the way football teams used to be assembled
| in school? Two team captains would each take turns to pick
| teammates from the rest of the students. I don't recall
| 'friendliness and trustworthiness' being necessarily the top
| qualifiers.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| The stakes of those pickup football games were pretty low (for
| most people).
| jacknews wrote:
| I think that sums up the other replies that say 'friends
| first, etc', and is in fact my point.
|
| In my experience there was some prestige in winning, and
| particularly in picking a winning team, and that would feed
| into who was picked for the school team.
|
| When the stakes are low, you can can choose to be among
| friends. When the stakes are higher, you need to work,
| perhaps less comfortably, with greater talent.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| Interesting, I had kind of the opposite takeaway. You can
| afford to pick friends followed by the best for pickup
| teams, where winning doesn't matter too much. But when the
| stakes are high you need to be pick folks you can work with
| for months or years, even if it means their tech skills
| aren't as solid as a candidate that is otherwise unfriendly
| or untrustworthy.
| kevinh wrote:
| In my experience, friends were often the first ones picked to
| be on a team. And if a person was known for leaving midgame,
| they'd be one of the last ones picked.
| jacknews wrote:
| My experience is that the team captains were usually the most
| experienced players, and were often friends with the best of
| the rest.
|
| But everyone knew who was good, and they were picked first
| regardless of actual friendships, since games would feed into
| decisions about who made the school team, particularly
| captain.
| dokem wrote:
| It went friends, big or athletic, well liked, then disliked or
| incompetent / bad attitude.
| watwut wrote:
| The best friend gets picked first. Exceptionally athletic kid
| follow. From the rest, popular kids go first regardless of
| ability. Outsiders and loners go last.
| flerchin wrote:
| If you lack friendliness, trustworthiness, or competency; I'd
| prefer you work at a competitor's. All three are deal-breakers on
| my team.
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| If somebody isn't trustworthy, that means they can't be trusted.
| Who would want to work with and rely on somebody they thought of
| like that?
| llimos wrote:
| Part of it is probably that the managers doing the hiring don't
| actually care all that much about the company they work for, and
| would prefer to just have a pleasant experience.
|
| I wonder how the results would vary for a mid-level manager in
| $BIGCORP vs. a founder hiring for the company he spent his life
| building.
| jt2190 wrote:
| If you're interested in this topic area, check out the podcast
| Work/Life with Adam Grant [1]. The episode "The office without
| a*-holes" (season 2, episode 5) is a good place to start.
|
| [1] https://www.adamgrant.net/podcast/
| WalterBright wrote:
| I suppose I'm an outlier. I prefer to work with people more
| competent than I am, even if they are jerks. People better than I
| am raises my competence.
|
| People I can't trust - that's a hard "no".
| magneticnorth wrote:
| "Maupin and her colleagues focused on a cohort of MBA students to
| conduct their study. Students were randomly assigned to teams at
| the beginning of the semester to work on class projects and
| assignments."
|
| So this is about what people prefer in their MBA program study
| group. While I do, personally, think that kindness is super
| important in work colleagues as well, this study doesn't
| particularly address that.
| havkd wrote:
| Just by reading the title I thought "this smells of women".
| Thanks for confirming :P
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Welcome to the selection bias that exists in the majority of
| social science research.
| csee wrote:
| Trustworthiness, sure. But not friendliness (unless it's asshole-
| level unfriendliness) over competence. There's little worse than
| a friendly but incompetent teammate, who will often get too many
| passes and second chances (because they're well liked) before
| being terminated.
|
| I'll take neutral friendliness, or even slightly unfriendly, +
| extreme competence, any day.
| almeria wrote:
| _There 's little worse than a friendly but incompetent
| teammate, who will often get too many passes and second chances
| (because they're well liked) before being terminated._
|
| Except of course for the perfectly (if narrowly) competent but
| decidedly jerkface and/or outright asshole teammate. Who is
| even more likely to get a pass for being such a "rainmaker". Or
| because "it's crunchtime and we need all the firepower we can
| get our hands on".
|
| Which was basically the article's point.
| gorbachev wrote:
| > There's little worse than a friendly but incompetent teammate
|
| Except that you can teach them things.
|
| It's hard to teach an unfriendly person anything, and it's
| impossible to teach an arrogant asshole anything at all,
| because they think they're better than anyone else.
| bagacrap wrote:
| I don't know about;"teaching", but I think people can change
| their nature and it's life experience that causes this to
| happen. It would be pretty surprising to me if someone acted
| the same way at 23 and 32. Arrogance in particular is
| something that often ebbs with age.
|
| OTOH, for software, the most important skill is
| resourcefulness, and that seems like more of an intrinsic
| property of someone's personality.
| gorbachev wrote:
| True, however, arrogant assholes remain arrogant assholes,
| in general, much longer than friendly incompetent people
| remain incompetent.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > Arrogance in particular is something that often ebbs with
| age.
|
| I would argue that arrogance ebbs with experiencing or
| observing failure just enough times.
|
| Failures and their lessons usually correlate with age.
| However, it is not unusual to find people with enough age
| and nous yet lacking the graciousness you expect from
| experts/mentors.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Second this. It is weird that parent went from incompetence
| directly to being terminated. Competence is built over long
| periods of time, and if you're lucky you can positively
| influence an "incompetent" person rather than putting them
| back into the water.
| Jensson wrote:
| The best predictor of teachability is how much they learned
| in the past. If a person is incompetent today then most
| likely they will be hard to teach, and if a person is
| competent today they will soak up most things you say.
|
| There are exceptions of course, but friendly and unteachable
| and unfriendly but very teachable are both very common
| scenarios. Teaching the unfriendly person might not be fun
| but it still works.
| Aunche wrote:
| I mean you aren't really contradicting anything. Friendly
| people get too many passes and second chances because people
| like them.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Anecdotal evidence doesn't trump actual research...
| tssva wrote:
| According to the article the actual research showed that
| people preferred trustworthy and competent over trustworthy
| and friendly. They preferred trustworthy and friendly over
| just competent.
| mortehu wrote:
| Keep in mind this is just a survey of students in class
| projects.
| deepstack wrote:
| Really depending on the people. Sometime I prefer prefer
| friendliness over competence. However if the competency
| involves me doing work to cover for the other colleague, then
| I take unfriendliness and competent anytime.
| serverholic wrote:
| Be careful of extrapolating this too far.
| moepstar wrote:
| Depends i guess - if you've got a teammate that is plainly
| and repeatedly careless/incompetent in his doing you're not
| exactly going to throw your hands up and think "This is fine,
| the research says it is", right?
|
| Anecdata: colleague of mine at least twice a week reboots
| production servers during the day, sometimes by themselves,
| sometimes along with their ESX-hosts...
|
| His response? "Oops."
|
| Does he ever learn from it? Doesn't look like it...
|
| I mean, i'm not exactly working at a hospital or something -
| i.e. no peoples lives on the line, but try to explain for the
| n-th time to someone whose last hours work was lost because
| someone couldn't be bothered to check if he can reboot that
| server now or not?
| boredumb wrote:
| The actual research is a collection of anecdotes from
| students doing class projects.
| bjourne wrote:
| But that actually makes the result even more significant.
| Class projects are heavily dependent on every student in
| the group pulling their part. Someone who is nice but
| incompetent may cost a student several grade levels, while
| a competent asshole may allow for them to coast along and
| still receive a top grade.
| Jensson wrote:
| This is a study of MBA students. I'm pretty sure you'd
| get very different results if you asked CS students,
| there I think people would take the unfriendly genius who
| guarantees them an A+ on the assignment over the friendly
| guy who doesn't contribute anything.
| [deleted]
| xxs wrote:
| The people in the research are students and we know nothing
| about their experience in any real work environment, or if
| they have been in a position where the progress on their
| tasks/teams depends on the competence level of their co-
| workers.
| papito wrote:
| I understand that HN leans toward research as the final word
| on everything, but sometimes anecdotal evidence is pretty
| accurate. It's like saying "but the poll researches are
| saying candidate X is going to win". Then a seasoned advisor
| actually lands on the ground and counts the yard signs and
| talks to people, and the picture becomes much less clear.
|
| Not to mention that the "research paper" industry is often
| very manipulated, inaccurate, and sometimes downright
| fraudulent. Ironically, also discussed on HN once a blue
| moon.
|
| What I am saying is, do site the "research papers", but don't
| use that to shut down an argument. It's a clue, not a fact.
| csee wrote:
| I was sharing my subjective preference and the reasons for my
| preference. The research is surveying other people's
| subjective preferences. There is no conflict here.
| crate_barre wrote:
| I'll take anyone that doesn't create extra work for me, you can
| be an asshole no problem.
|
| The easier you make doing my job (eg, I can get my work done
| without you adding bullshit code that I need to make my way
| around), the more I'm willing to forgive almost anything.
|
| Just be invisible to my work plans for the day, and we're all
| good.
| jayd16 wrote:
| I get what you're saying but if they're reliable its different.
|
| If they ask for help and won't just go missing for a week or
| something like that, then its not a big deal if they need some
| hand holding on a more complex task. Reliably mediocre is
| better than unreliable, any day.
| [deleted]
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > There's little worse than a friendly but incompetent
| teammate, who will often get too many passes and second chances
| (because they're well liked) before being terminated.
|
| This reminds of people who try to defend someone accused of
| incompetence: "but s/he's so nice!"
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Most teams don't have a pressing need for competence. As long
| as they tread water, they're fine. If they outperform, there
| is no meaningful reward. In those environments, friendliness
| trumps competence.
| gfodor wrote:
| Not to mention because you often genuinely like them, it is
| harder to give them negative feedback in many ways, which is a
| bad feedback loop.
| glipglop4lyfe wrote:
| > There's little worse than a friendly but incompetent teammate
|
| What about a very competent but toxic personality who ends up
| preventing contributions from other team members, because when
| they contribute they get belittled or bullied?
| gherkinnn wrote:
| I'd take a nice incompetent over a highly capable arsehole
| any day.
|
| At worst, the former is a neutral in his overall
| contributions, whereas the latter will be a net negative.
| Jensson wrote:
| > At worst, the former is a neutral in his overall
| contributions
|
| No, with an extra teammate the expectations on your team
| increases, so you have to work hard enough to pay for that
| guys salary as well.
|
| Lets extend this a bit, would you prefer to work in a team
| with 5 incompetent but nice persons who don't contribute
| anything, so your work has to be enough to pay all their
| salaries, or would you want to work with 5 assholes who
| work hard enough that you can slack all day because they
| pick it up? I'm sure a majority would prefer the second
| scenario, the first scenario would lead to burnout really
| quickly and soon they will call you the toxic asshole
| genius.
| t-3 wrote:
| Someone who prevents work from being completed is not
| competent. The one-dimensional view of competence as being
| purely technical knowledge is not useful for measuring
| ability to complete projects and advance the goals of the
| business.
| doteka wrote:
| I don't think that's an opinion held by someone who actually
| worked with/had to manage the combination of "slightly
| unfriendly + extreme confidence" before. That is how you get
| Prima Donnas, temper tantrums during technical discussions and
| other fun stuff.
| pydry wrote:
| I've yet to work for somebody exhibiting extreme confidence
| in a work situation who wasnt covering for something -
| usually a lack of competence.
|
| I've heard stories of "brilliant assholes" but once I've
| peeled back the layers of these stories I always develop a
| strong impression that the brilliance is a facade.
| watwut wrote:
| My experience with brilliant assholes is that it is
| combination of self sufficient prophecy and bullying
| effects. Some people think that being asshole is component
| of being brilliant and thus they assume you to be brilliant
| if you act like ass.
|
| And the other component is that assholes often times end up
| dominating rooms and looking brilliant, because they
| effectively bully others into being silent. For most
| people, being silent is better then risking the asshole
| will target you.
| mypastself wrote:
| Extreme competence, not confidence.
| delecti wrote:
| Someone extremely confident and prone to tantrums is not
| friendly.
|
| Competence is not necessarily linked with a lack of humility.
| dgb23 wrote:
| I personally have no problem with "hard-shell" type of people
| who are maybe _rough_ and direct, but have emotional depth and
| are ultimately self-reflective. They can come off as assholes
| to some people, but most of the time (not always...) they are
| just uncomfortable, which can have very positive effects as
| well.
|
| So I'm personally not like that though in most situations. I
| think it's counterproductive with most people and often rude. I
| think the above is a bad strategy in more than 60% of cases
| (scientific number; totally not pulling that out of my ass),
| because most people take direct criticism personally or become
| defensive.
|
| However in my closer professional circle I very often prefer
| uncomfortable no-bullshit type of style. It's simply more
| _effective_ and clear.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > But not friendliness (unless it's asshole-level
| unfriendliness) over competence.
|
| If you could translate "friendliness" and "competence" into
| equivalent units, I think competence would be devalued compared
| to friendliness, at least once you get into negative values
| (e.g. for every extra point of unfriendliness, you need 5-10
| competence points to make up for it).
| BeetleB wrote:
| > There's little worse than a friendly but incompetent
| teammate, who will often get too many passes and second chances
| (because they're well liked) before being terminated.
|
| In my experience, a brilliant asshole is worse. He's less
| likely to be terminated, and causes problems for everyone.
| Incompetent people are self aware of their incompetence.
| Brilliant assholes rarely acknowledge their problem.
|
| The one time I dealt with a brilliant asshole - oh wow. He
| would be right 90% of the time, but for the remaining 10% there
| would be no way on Earth you could convince him he was wrong.
| You could bring evidence, mathematical proof, anything: He just
| wouldn't listen. It got to me being very careful that he not be
| around when I'd ask for help - because he often misunderstood
| my problem and would then insist I implement his solution, and
| there was no way I could convince him that he misunderstood the
| problem statement. If I ignored him and implemented a different
| solution, he would throw a loud tantrum. And he had no stake in
| my work - we were working on different projects.
|
| I spent two years in that team and every time he acted up I
| started documenting it.
|
| I never complained (it was clear the manager didn't want to
| deal with people problems), and on the outside I didn't let my
| frustration show. I now hear that another member of that team
| is really complaining to the manager about him. I reached out
| to him and let him know that if he wants to escalate with HR, I
| have plenty of material to provide.
|
| The one nice thing with incompetent people is you at least look
| better when it comes to reviews. I know in one job I had I
| ended up slacking quite a bit, but I knew it wouldn't hurt me
| because they had quite a few people at my grade level who were
| just plain incompetent. Management isn't going to give the
| whole team a poor review.
| gregkerzhner wrote:
| Someone who is friendly but incompetent is fun to shoot the
| shit with, but they will also make a commit that breaks prod
| and duck out for the weekend leaving you to fix the mess. Less
| competence ultimately means more burden and headache for those
| that are more competent, and at the end of the day, I value
| having coworkers who I can rely on more than having coworkers
| who are easy to talk to.
| pydry wrote:
| IME many less competent folks tend to avoid doing the work
| that puts everybody else in this position and will pick up
| donkey work instead.
| watwut wrote:
| This is more related to risk taking.
| csee wrote:
| For me, they're not even fun to shoot the shit with. There's
| nothing like 1 year of built-up resentment at having to pick
| up their slack again and again only to be paid roughly the
| same and sharing half the credit with them.
| watwut wrote:
| > There's little worse than a friendly but incompetent teammate
|
| Did you met unfriendly and incompetent? Cause those really sux.
|
| The worst is "jerk, average competent, but people who don't
| work directly with him assume he is genius because he is jerk".
| [deleted]
| makz wrote:
| I see many people here are seeing this as black and white. It's
| not like that.
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