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I only skimmed the article, but whenever I read such material I feel these techniques are suited for jobs banking on charisma instead of knowledge and skill bas
by vinayms 8y ago
I only skimmed the article, but whenever I read such material I feel these techniques are suited for jobs banking on charisma instead of knowledge and skill based ones.
I am a software engineer. I haven't held too many jobs, and have attended very few interviews. As an interviewee, I always gauged the enthusiasm of the interviewer before 'unleashing my talent'. I have had my share of insipid interviews where the focus was on API specifics instead of ideas and larger pictures. I politely excused myself out of the building mid interview when I realized they needed just a code monkey, albeit with experience. Seizing control would have been a total waste.
I have also conducted my share of interviews. The biggest turn off for me is when candidates try too hard to impress, either by listing out insignificant contributions to FOSS they have made, especially when not asked, or wearing their supposed geekiness on their sleeves. The worst are the self declared nerds and geeks, who speak, look and act in a way that covers all the stereotypes floating on the web. Its worse when, out of turn, they bring up a cool thing they 'hacked'.
Generally, going beyond job interviews, I think the need for being alpha is ridiculously amusing. I am no psychologist, but it smacks of overcompensation and utter lack of self confidence. I avoid such people in life.
- lainga 8y agoH[acker] and non-H are the U and non-U of the 21st century! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English
- zerowellies 8y agoIs charisma not valuable in all jobs?
- stronglikedan 8y agoI don't think so. If it's not customer facing and not team focused (e.g, a data entry clerk), then I don't think it would affect ones performance, and thus, not be "valuable" to the job.
- noobhacker 8y agoI think if you give the article a second chance, you'll see that it does not advocate for the self-promotional behavior you dislike. The article doesn't tell us to "listing out insignificant contributions to FOSS they have made, especially when not asked." Rather the article tells us to research about how we can add value to our prospective employers beforehand. Stated in that way, the article's message is quite "boring", but also true.
- virgilp 8y agoThe challenge here is that it's incredibly hard to know how to add value, from the outside. Especially for not-very-senior positions, adopting this tactic can backfire big time. I interviewed a guy who attempted to tell us how he'd design our systems, and only showed a severe lack of understanding of the domain () (which is really not surprising, it takes most people at least a few months to start to grasp it). () It also smacked of arrogance - it's as if he thought he knew better than people working on it "how it should really be done".