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My brother interviews for McKinsey and he says the number one thing they look for in new hires is a sense of understanding of someone else's mental state. He ha
by asdfman123 7y ago
My brother interviews for McKinsey and he says the number one thing they look for in new hires is a sense of understanding of someone else's mental state. He had a good technical term for it, but I forget what he called it.
It's basically though the ability to not think, "this person is a jerk who is wrong," but "this person has his reasons for reaching his conclusions and although I am angry with him after our disagreement, I see the personal factors that must have gone into it."
It's very useful to work in teams of people who have that sort of basic emotional intelligence. How do you work with someone that just gets angry and projects everything onto you? I think the model of the "pissed off code badass" is thankfully going away, because programming is becoming more collaborative and more professional.
Yeah, it's extremely important to have strong technical competence on your team, but it's more important to be able to work with others and integrate everyone's perspective. Because no matter how technically smart you may be, you have your blind spots. It's important to listen to the junior who is worried that the implementation strategy might lead to X, Y, Z, that only she sees because she is seeing it with fresh eyes.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago> My brother interviews for McKinsey and he says the number one thing they look for in new hires is a sense of understanding of someone else's mental state. He had a good technical term for it, but I forget what he called it. Empathy?
- asdfman123 7y agoIt wasn't a buzzword but it was a useful way to describe it. It's kind of like "not just going with your snap judgments about people."
- austincheney 7y agoEmpathy is different than that. It is about really reading peoples' emotions, like micro-expressions and body language. Empathy allows you to dig into a person's personal space when uncomfortable and pry out things that might be hard to discuss. I conducted some ethics investigations last year. I had to interview people and make assessments that resulted in potential harms to persons careers, forfeiture of pay, and possibly other legal consequences. You don't want to pass harmful judgement lightly. You really want to get the most detailed picture possible and recommend solutions that do more benefit than harm. You need to have a feel for what people were thinking, at the time, and why even when they may lie to you or withhold necessary information.
- morningseagulls 7y ago>My brother interviews for McKinsey and he says the number one thing they look for in new hires is a sense of understanding of someone else's mental state. He had a good technical term for it, but I forget what he called it. >It's basically though the ability to not think, "this person is a jerk who is wrong," but "this person has his reasons for reaching his conclusions and although I am angry with him after our disagreement, I see the personal factors that must have gone into it." Avoid the fundamental attribution error?[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error