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> If it's not the job of management and leadership to train, manage out or fire misfits within the organization, what exactly is their job? I personally agree

> If it's not the job of management and leadership to train, manage out or fire misfits within the organization, what exactly is their job? I personally agree with this. But, there's this other school of thought out there (which I'm tired of, frankly) that seems to believe management is supposed to "hire the best", pay them well and stay the hell out of their way. The reasoning is that "all these geniuses we've hired" will create a vast new pool of profitability through unfettered innovation, deep insight, and wild creativity. Or something. I believe that Google and Facebook think they are doing this with their hiring practices.

yowlingcat 8y ago
I sympathize with your disdain. I prefer to reject this school of thought directly when I can, because it is a cultural abetting of incompetence. A company that practices this will atrophy and lose to a competitor which doesn't, even if that takes a while. Hiring the best requires hiring teams, not individuals. A group of star ICs that don't mesh well together could form a mediocre team, and a group of otherwise unremarkable (being a bit hyperbolic for the sake of discussion here) ICs who work well together could mesh together to form an all-star team. Of course, I'm being hyperbolic when I say that because I think that part of what makes a star IC is someone who's good at assisting the team -- that's part of what makes great teams so devastatingly effective. That's part of what makes me very skeptical of that school of thought -- if you're really naive to believe that great teams come when you group a bunch of star ICs together (hint: it doesn't), how would you even know if you ended up screwing it up and it came out dysfunctional? You wouldn't, because you're not incentivized to. Your job as a manager and leader ended when you hired them. I find this kind of laughable, honestly.

yowlingcat 8y ago

I sympathize with your disdain. I prefer to reject this school of thought directly when I can, because it is a cultural abetting of incompetence. A company that practices this will atrophy and lose to a competitor which doesn't, even if that takes a while. Hiring the best requires hiring teams, not individuals. A group of star ICs that don't mesh well together could form a mediocre team, and a group of otherwise unremarkable (being a bit hyperbolic for the sake of discussion here) ICs who work well together could mesh together to form an all-star team. Of course, I'm being hyperbolic when I say that because I think that part of what makes a star IC is someone who's good at assisting the team -- that's part of what makes great teams so devastatingly effective. That's part of what makes me very skeptical of that school of thought -- if you're really naive to believe that great teams come when you group a bunch of star ICs together (hint: it doesn't), how would you even know if you ended up screwing it up and it came out dysfunctional? You wouldn't, because you're not incentivized to. Your job as a manager and leader ended when you hired them. I find this kind of laughable, honestly.