3 ms·
Personally, I prefer working with less competent pleasant people than more competent unpleasant people. You can find useful stuff to give less competent people
by sanderjd 8y ago
Personally, I prefer working with less competent pleasant people than more competent unpleasant people. You can find useful stuff to give less competent people (and help them become more competent over time), but it's hard to avoid unpleasant people affecting the morale of a whole team.
- barrkel 8y agoYou can rely on competent people, you can give them a task and forget about it. That forgives a hell of a lot of abrasiveness. I 100% prefer being able to rely on someone rather than have to handhold or redo their work myself.
- sanderjd 8y ago100% agree to strongly disagree :)
- eropple 8y agoUntil in their efforts to be competent, they be unpleasant to the wrong person--and now you have a new and different and harder problem.
- icebraining 8y agoArguably, that's being incompetent. If their task involves a social interaction, then to be competent at it they must know how to successfully manage that too, even if they are generally unpleasant.
- zmmmmm 8y agoPeople aren't really binary like that ... "competent" or "not competent". It's all mushy and complicated. Some of the most competent people I manage at some kinds of tasks are basically a net loss at other tasks. The pleasant ones are lot easier to work into diverse tasks and get a "competent result" even if it is more messy than just tossing them a task an forgetting about it.
- barrkel 8y agoI think that's orthogonal to pleasantness. The tasks I have in mind revolve around coding, since that's my job. If the job extends beyond coding, to gathering requirements or coordinating a team, I'd be more inclined to agree. But they don't, for what I'm thinking about.
- abacadaba 8y agoWell to keep it positive, I'll just say that I find working with competent people to be quite pleasant.
- austincheney 8y agoThat comes down to whether you are primarily looking for harmony or success.
- rootusrootus 8y agoI'd say it comes down to whether you have a team of one or not. If you have someone competent but unpleasant and you can isolate them to get useful work done, then it could be successful. But if they have to be on a team, and they're toxic, then no amount of competence is going to balance out the damage, and you will fail.
- potta_coffee 8y agoLack of competency has a much greater effect on my morale than lack of pleasantness. We're all different I guess.
- MRD85 8y agoIIRC there was a study posted to Hackernews about a week ago that showed that humans really prefer competent coworkers over nice ones.
- sanderjd 8y agoCitation welcome! Otherwise I'll continue doubting this based on my experience.