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Title says it all. Saved you a click. Personalities and skills impact a given team's success. Pretty sure this was already obvious. What is not addressed in th

by qwrusz 10y ago

Title says it all. Saved you a click. Personalities and skills impact a given team's success. Pretty sure this was already obvious. What is not addressed in this article is the implications of this. It might not be very PC to research or discuss how personality matters. But if skills alone are not enough when hiring, then one implication is team's can't really hire blind - they will have to get into personality as part of the interview. I have seen people push for more blind hiring practices, that is to focus on grades, experience and skills and downplay personality or other character traits - but this doesn't appear to be a competitive solution. That also means all the workplace studies that don't include personality when comparing success in the workplace will not be telling the full story. Sorry I have no solutions, but I do see hiring based on personality or "fit" remaining a target even when it makes sense and is done appropriately and the right intentions.

mattcoles 10y ago
I'm not sure, I often find that it's the 'anti-PC' crowd is keen on making writing software all about programming skill and a pure meritocracy regardless of people's actual interactions with each other.
- madgar 10y ago
  In the office I see a pretty big overlap with the group expounding/demanding absolute meritocracy and the group of people without any personality (or with explicitly anti-social personalities). They're toxic IMO and the best strategy seems to be making sure they're not on your critical path. Tech companies are often allergic to admitting that personality can be disqualifying on its own, so actually laying these toxic folks off can be borderline impossible before their behavior explicitly endangers a co-worker physically (e.g. Doxxing on 4chan). Yes, these folks get outreach from sympathetic peers constantly, but it never seems to take.
  - arethuza 10y ago
    I'm not disagreeing with you, but what do you mean by "without any personality" - surely everyone has a personality of some kind? While I wouldn't want to work with people with toxic personalities (and they do exist and can be hugely destructive) but I wouldn't want to equate someone being a bit shy and not in your face with their "personality" with being "toxic".
- lhnz 10y ago
  Everybody wants a pure meritocracy. The social justice crowd believes it doesn't and can't exist, while the anti-PC crowd believes it does exist and in fact they and their friends are members of it. I'm happier in teams where people try to promote people and work due to some shared understanding of merit, but realise that a lot of success in a group is due to its member's preferences and behaviours, and not to any objective measure of value. People should be able to concentrate on doing what they consider to be quality work, without getting depressed over not being seen as 'objectively good'.
  - dleslie 10y ago
    > Everybody wants a pure meritocracy. !? > The social justice crowd believes it doesn't and can't exist, > while the anti-PC crowd believes it does exist and in fact they and their friends are members of it. ...
  - dasil003 10y ago
    Does everyone really want a pure meritocracy? The original intent of the word was not positive, Michael Young coined the term as a pejorative description of a new kind of discrimination. Silicon Valley then seems to have embraced the concept without the slightest hint of irony. But that semantic issue aside, I agree with your point but would take it a step further. I chafe a bit even at the idea of "shared understanding of merit". Not that there aren't objective differences in performance, but that they vary across roles, and even within a specific type of job, different employees may have wildly different yet equally successful approaches. I've come to believe the concept of A, B, and C players to be fundamentally flawed. The truth is that people perform differently in different situations. If you are hiring for a major brand-name corporation you obviously need some aggressive filtering to get through all the applicants, so I don't really fault the Googles and Facebooks of the world for their hiring approach. But I have always had success by shaping roles around the employee's strengths in practice, not based on some abstract ideal I'm searching for. Many of my best hires have come from unfamiliar backgrounds which I could not evaluate objectively, but whose diverse experience ended up paying huge dividends to the entire team.
- ar15saveslives 10y ago
  But ability to communicate, share knowledge, take responsibilities, etc are merits too. They may be less critical to dev team than skills and background, but still.
jusq2 10y ago
They are making a case against Google's narrative about teams. Which makes sense. Most orgs don't resemble Google at all.
- qznc 10y ago
  I think they build a strawman instead of really making a case against the Google theory "great teams require psychological safety" [0]. The first example of the article is "no one played the relationship-building role", which might also be the main problem within Google. This article can be considered a generalization which applies to more environments. [0] http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/team_building.html http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/team_building.html
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
"Fit" is more or less a pantload. Now, if you are, say, a C shop you probably don't want some Smalltalk guy moaning 7 hours a day about how crude the environment is, but that's not what's meant here, is it? If the narcissism of small differences wasn't a thing, I might agree.
tetrep 10y ago
> ...but I do see hiring based on personality or "fit" remaining a target even when it makes sense and is done appropriately and the right intentions. I think "fit" is a cop-out when left unspecified. It's a reasonable way to reject someone when you can clarify why someone is unfit. I think rejecting a hire because you don't like them isn't okay unless you understand why you don't like them. Understanding that someone would be bad because they're overly argumentative, can't take criticism in a calm or level-headed manner, or because they're prone to interpersonal conflict is a legitimate way to reach the conclusion that they would be a bad fit. But if you get the cabal together and accept a simple "I don't like them" without requiring details, it becomes ripe for abuse; if only by your own subconscious judgements.
- bpyne 10y ago
  Each member of your team has a set of strengths and weaknesses in subject area, technical ability, learning ability, and too many other soft factors to enumerate. When hiring a new person, you're trying to find a fit for the existing strengths and weaknesses. For example, a team with generally good technical skills and learning ability that has gotten a little complacent about trying new technologies may benefit from a person with a lot of passion for new technology (and an ability to "sell" the technology to other team members). Basically, as a leader you're looking for a "spark" for that team. If you're interviewing a candidate who is great in every way, but has more of a "go with the flow" personality, the person isn't a good "fit". I used a simple hypothetical example around one desired trait, but I hope you understand how hopeless it is to have an objective standard for "fit/unfit" when it changes according to the dynamics of the team. A boss of mine many years ago gave me the advice, "To be successful as a leader, you have to remember that your primary task is managing personalities."
  - jacobush 10y ago
    ... your own."
- Nomentatus 10y ago
  I suspect you're right, tetrep, in thinking that most companies will fall back into their own subconscious preferences. But ideally this article would lead companies to track their hires and force themselves to hire touchy, argumentative innovators if it was clear that their last several hires were low on innovation. Because now "best fit for the company" would mean "different than most people already in the company" as opposed to "someone who would fit right in 'cause their personality-skills are entirely redundant." Generally managers chose whatever course of action makes their own lives easier; and will then convince themselves that that's also in the interest of the company. The research the article cites should make it harder for HR managers to do that in the future; but we'll see. If nothing else, this research gives you a way to evaluate your HR people. If they aren't hiring a variety of personalities, or are predominantly hiring people with personality scores very similar to their own; toss them immediately.
rebootthesystem 10y ago
There is on crucially important thing that is often ignored in these conversations and articles: What are the goals for this new hire? Why is someone being hired? Scenario: A team isn't performing optimally. They are making bad or non-optimal decisions. Work isn't being done well or on time. Do you hire someone that will "fit" so everyone can continue to drink the Kool-Aid and nothing changes? Or do you hire someone with less "fit", with the aim being to shake things up and correct the path forward? In this case either you fire people from the team and, Grizzwald style, proclaim "We are going to do a good job dammit!" or introduce an agent of change in the form of someone with a different (or greater) experience base that will, with your input and support, help correct the situation. This "fit" thing can very easily turn into an echo chamber. And that is rarely, if ever, good in any way. Every good team I've ever been a part of (or hired, once running my own business) has had various degrees of conflict or "un-fit" individuals. I find this works well.

by qwrusz 10y ago

mattcoles 10y ago

I'm not sure, I often find that it's the 'anti-PC' crowd is keen on making writing software all about programming skill and a pure meritocracy regardless of people's actual interactions with each other.

madgar 10y ago
In the office I see a pretty big overlap with the group expounding/demanding absolute meritocracy and the group of people without any personality (or with explicitly anti-social personalities). They're toxic IMO and the best strategy seems to be making sure they're not on your critical path. Tech companies are often allergic to admitting that personality can be disqualifying on its own, so actually laying these toxic folks off can be borderline impossible before their behavior explicitly endangers a co-worker physically (e.g. Doxxing on 4chan). Yes, these folks get outreach from sympathetic peers constantly, but it never seems to take.
- arethuza 10y ago
  I'm not disagreeing with you, but what do you mean by "without any personality" - surely everyone has a personality of some kind? While I wouldn't want to work with people with toxic personalities (and they do exist and can be hugely destructive) but I wouldn't want to equate someone being a bit shy and not in your face with their "personality" with being "toxic".
lhnz 10y ago
Everybody wants a pure meritocracy. The social justice crowd believes it doesn't and can't exist, while the anti-PC crowd believes it does exist and in fact they and their friends are members of it. I'm happier in teams where people try to promote people and work due to some shared understanding of merit, but realise that a lot of success in a group is due to its member's preferences and behaviours, and not to any objective measure of value. People should be able to concentrate on doing what they consider to be quality work, without getting depressed over not being seen as 'objectively good'.
- dleslie 10y ago
  > Everybody wants a pure meritocracy. !? > The social justice crowd believes it doesn't and can't exist, > while the anti-PC crowd believes it does exist and in fact they and their friends are members of it. ...
- dasil003 10y ago
  Does everyone really want a pure meritocracy? The original intent of the word was not positive, Michael Young coined the term as a pejorative description of a new kind of discrimination. Silicon Valley then seems to have embraced the concept without the slightest hint of irony. But that semantic issue aside, I agree with your point but would take it a step further. I chafe a bit even at the idea of "shared understanding of merit". Not that there aren't objective differences in performance, but that they vary across roles, and even within a specific type of job, different employees may have wildly different yet equally successful approaches. I've come to believe the concept of A, B, and C players to be fundamentally flawed. The truth is that people perform differently in different situations. If you are hiring for a major brand-name corporation you obviously need some aggressive filtering to get through all the applicants, so I don't really fault the Googles and Facebooks of the world for their hiring approach. But I have always had success by shaping roles around the employee's strengths in practice, not based on some abstract ideal I'm searching for. Many of my best hires have come from unfamiliar backgrounds which I could not evaluate objectively, but whose diverse experience ended up paying huge dividends to the entire team.
ar15saveslives 10y ago
But ability to communicate, share knowledge, take responsibilities, etc are merits too. They may be less critical to dev team than skills and background, but still.

jusq2 10y ago

They are making a case against Google's narrative about teams. Which makes sense. Most orgs don't resemble Google at all.

qznc 10y ago
I think they build a strawman instead of really making a case against the Google theory "great teams require psychological safety" [0]. The first example of the article is "no one played the relationship-building role", which might also be the main problem within Google. This article can be considered a generalization which applies to more environments. [0] http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/team_building.html http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/team_building.html

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

"Fit" is more or less a pantload. Now, if you are, say, a C shop you probably don't want some Smalltalk guy moaning 7 hours a day about how crude the environment is, but that's not what's meant here, is it? If the narcissism of small differences wasn't a thing, I might agree.

tetrep 10y ago

> ...but I do see hiring based on personality or "fit" remaining a target even when it makes sense and is done appropriately and the right intentions. I think "fit" is a cop-out when left unspecified. It's a reasonable way to reject someone when you can clarify why someone is unfit. I think rejecting a hire because you don't like them isn't okay unless you understand why you don't like them. Understanding that someone would be bad because they're overly argumentative, can't take criticism in a calm or level-headed manner, or because they're prone to interpersonal conflict is a legitimate way to reach the conclusion that they would be a bad fit. But if you get the cabal together and accept a simple "I don't like them" without requiring details, it becomes ripe for abuse; if only by your own subconscious judgements.

bpyne 10y ago
Each member of your team has a set of strengths and weaknesses in subject area, technical ability, learning ability, and too many other soft factors to enumerate. When hiring a new person, you're trying to find a fit for the existing strengths and weaknesses. For example, a team with generally good technical skills and learning ability that has gotten a little complacent about trying new technologies may benefit from a person with a lot of passion for new technology (and an ability to "sell" the technology to other team members). Basically, as a leader you're looking for a "spark" for that team. If you're interviewing a candidate who is great in every way, but has more of a "go with the flow" personality, the person isn't a good "fit". I used a simple hypothetical example around one desired trait, but I hope you understand how hopeless it is to have an objective standard for "fit/unfit" when it changes according to the dynamics of the team. A boss of mine many years ago gave me the advice, "To be successful as a leader, you have to remember that your primary task is managing personalities."
- jacobush 10y ago
  ... your own."
Nomentatus 10y ago
I suspect you're right, tetrep, in thinking that most companies will fall back into their own subconscious preferences. But ideally this article would lead companies to track their hires and force themselves to hire touchy, argumentative innovators if it was clear that their last several hires were low on innovation. Because now "best fit for the company" would mean "different than most people already in the company" as opposed to "someone who would fit right in 'cause their personality-skills are entirely redundant." Generally managers chose whatever course of action makes their own lives easier; and will then convince themselves that that's also in the interest of the company. The research the article cites should make it harder for HR managers to do that in the future; but we'll see. If nothing else, this research gives you a way to evaluate your HR people. If they aren't hiring a variety of personalities, or are predominantly hiring people with personality scores very similar to their own; toss them immediately.

rebootthesystem 10y ago

There is on crucially important thing that is often ignored in these conversations and articles: What are the goals for this new hire? Why is someone being hired? Scenario: A team isn't performing optimally. They are making bad or non-optimal decisions. Work isn't being done well or on time. Do you hire someone that will "fit" so everyone can continue to drink the Kool-Aid and nothing changes? Or do you hire someone with less "fit", with the aim being to shake things up and correct the path forward? In this case either you fire people from the team and, Grizzwald style, proclaim "We are going to do a good job dammit!" or introduce an agent of change in the form of someone with a different (or greater) experience base that will, with your input and support, help correct the situation. This "fit" thing can very easily turn into an echo chamber. And that is rarely, if ever, good in any way. Every good team I've ever been a part of (or hired, once running my own business) has had various degrees of conflict or "un-fit" individuals. I find this works well.