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Making a throwaway to share my anecdote. What I find interesting is that if you point all of this out to HR/management, sometimes they don't believe you! I ju

Making a throwaway to share my anecdote. What I find interesting is that if you point all of this out to HR/management, sometimes they don't believe you! I just left a company for which I was the random unicorn (perfect intersection of 3 different skillsets and relevant past experience) after one year. I was referred because someone at the company knew I had the exact skillset they needed, and ended up joining right as they were planning to expand to several other states. Two months in, I brought up the rarity of finding someone with such an intersection of skills. Looking for an exact match would not be realistic. Especially when trying to expand to states with a much more competitive job market that requires a higher salary than what they offered me. Of course, my concerns were shot down with such confidence that I thought, "maybe they already have the perfect set of candidates lined up." One year later, expansion plans have completely 180ed because they simply cannot find the personnel that they need. They cannot even entice those who are capable of learning and performing in the role because they aren't willing to pay market rates. And now I left because they weren't willing to give me a reasonable raise or additional benefits like more equity. This experience has made me wonder if cognitive dissonance plays a larger role in blinding HR/companies.

ianai 7y ago
Can you expand on how cognitive dissonance would play a role here?
- throwaway25475 7y ago
  The role it plays is in how people may respond to evidence that runs counter to their perception of reality. The blinding happens when HR/management decides that rejecting feedback and evidence is the best route to resolving the contradiction of reality vs belief. If they ignore it, then no such conflict exists. Obviously this isn't the ideal way to handle cognitive dissonance. However, it is a way of handling and one that you often see. Another bad way of handling it is when you see people "explaining things away" without ever really addressing anything of substance. In my case, I saw it manifest in the sheer confidence they displayed all year despite our rollout plans failing. It did not matter how many market signals they received either. There was always another excuse as to why things will eventually go smoothly.
JanisL 7y ago
Earlier in my career I saw exactly this situation come up with a manager of mine, had the perfect overlap of a few skills that don't frequently come up together but this was completely taken for granted. As a result there was an amazingly bad plan for expansion/handover/etc as it was taken for granted that it would be easy to hire a replacement. > This experience has made me wonder if cognitive dissonance plays a larger role in blinding HR/companies. I think cognitive dissonance was also at play in the case I'm referring to. There's probably a lot of biases at play when people are trying to estimate what skills someone has. Also its easier to delude yourself into thinking the Bayesian priors are different when you have someone who has the rare combination of skills on staff, I remember hearing a few versions of: "how rare could it be when we already have this manager on staff?".

ianai 7y ago

Can you expand on how cognitive dissonance would play a role here?

throwaway25475 7y ago
The role it plays is in how people may respond to evidence that runs counter to their perception of reality. The blinding happens when HR/management decides that rejecting feedback and evidence is the best route to resolving the contradiction of reality vs belief. If they ignore it, then no such conflict exists. Obviously this isn't the ideal way to handle cognitive dissonance. However, it is a way of handling and one that you often see. Another bad way of handling it is when you see people "explaining things away" without ever really addressing anything of substance. In my case, I saw it manifest in the sheer confidence they displayed all year despite our rollout plans failing. It did not matter how many market signals they received either. There was always another excuse as to why things will eventually go smoothly.

JanisL 7y ago

Earlier in my career I saw exactly this situation come up with a manager of mine, had the perfect overlap of a few skills that don't frequently come up together but this was completely taken for granted. As a result there was an amazingly bad plan for expansion/handover/etc as it was taken for granted that it would be easy to hire a replacement. > This experience has made me wonder if cognitive dissonance plays a larger role in blinding HR/companies. I think cognitive dissonance was also at play in the case I'm referring to. There's probably a lot of biases at play when people are trying to estimate what skills someone has. Also its easier to delude yourself into thinking the Bayesian priors are different when you have someone who has the rare combination of skills on staff, I remember hearing a few versions of: "how rare could it be when we already have this manager on staff?".