3 ms·

I never said you mentioned anything along the lines of "humans as resources" - I meant that the A Player mentality lends to this. Apologies if it came across an

I never said you mentioned anything along the lines of "humans as resources" - I meant that the A Player mentality lends to this. Apologies if it came across any different. My issue is that A/B/C boxing is almost binary view. You're either good or you're not. Life isn't that simple. I've worked with fantastic developers who are a pain to communicate and participate on a team with. I've worked with average developers who can anticipate customer needs from a spec better than most and are energising for a team. I've never worked with someone who is excellent at all facets of their job. I have worked with some people who seemed hopeless at all facets (though it always struck me that they're in the wrong sector rather than just being completely useless individuals). The largest team I've led has been 5 people whom I had much experience with and so knew various strengths and weaknesses. And I'm rambling here but that loops back to my first point: people have strengths and weaknesses and boxing them into lettered teams just ignores this.

shostack 11y ago
Totally agree that life is not that simple, and that people have various strengths and weaknesses. The boxing is simply a way of summarizing those in a simplified (perhaps overly-simplified) manner. If a developer is great at coding but a paint to communicate with and has participation issues, that honestly strikes me as a "B player" if communication and participation are key parts of their job. If not, then those factors aren't as important in terms of weighing overall performance, and that could make the same person an "A player" in a role with differing responsibilities. I also have never worked with someone who is excellent at all facets of their job. The question is, are they excellent enough at the core aspects of the job where their weaknesses are sufficiently offset. And this is where you can compare team members. It all comes down to their responsibilities, the needs of the team/business, and how they are tracking against those. So to summarize--everyone is indeed unique in terms of strengths and weaknesses. But at some point the weighting of those strengths and weaknesses tends to crystallize into something more easily categorized as a higher-level bucket of "exceptional", "meets expectations" (and that's not a bad thing), or "needs improvement." A/B/C is just a shorthand convention for that.

shostack 11y ago

Totally agree that life is not that simple, and that people have various strengths and weaknesses. The boxing is simply a way of summarizing those in a simplified (perhaps overly-simplified) manner. If a developer is great at coding but a paint to communicate with and has participation issues, that honestly strikes me as a "B player" if communication and participation are key parts of their job. If not, then those factors aren't as important in terms of weighing overall performance, and that could make the same person an "A player" in a role with differing responsibilities. I also have never worked with someone who is excellent at all facets of their job. The question is, are they excellent enough at the core aspects of the job where their weaknesses are sufficiently offset. And this is where you can compare team members. It all comes down to their responsibilities, the needs of the team/business, and how they are tracking against those. So to summarize--everyone is indeed unique in terms of strengths and weaknesses. But at some point the weighting of those strengths and weaknesses tends to crystallize into something more easily categorized as a higher-level bucket of "exceptional", "meets expectations" (and that's not a bad thing), or "needs improvement." A/B/C is just a shorthand convention for that.