13 ms·

In response to This*: Stop letting engineers get away with social ineptitude

132 points by hoop 15y ago

tedkalaw 15y ago
I know a few universities that are pushing programs to "fix" this problem in engineers by encouraging them to do more presentations and group projects. It seems like there will always parts of "geek culture" that just don't care. Perhaps they're even proud of social ineptitude? But those aren't engineers I would want to work with.
- Lost_BiomedE 15y ago
  Yeah, although the ones that are less capable in group dynamics usually just bail, making the others do the work. Where I saw the most exercising of social skills, involved cheating.
sabat 15y ago
I suppose some of it is attributable to Asperger's -- some of it. In many cases, though, I can't help but suspect laziness and a holier-than-thou attitude.
- koenigdavidmj 15y ago
  Laziness? He went and deleted the customer's backups.
  - recoiledsnake 15y ago
    He did not. Someone's being lazy here not finding out the full facts.
  - sabat 15y ago
    True, he did. I was talking about something slightly different -- laziness in terms of learning to interact well with other humans.
- dj_axl 15y ago
  > laziness and a holier-than-thou attitude A short explanation might be, socially skilled people are slow (lazy) to understand anything technical and are impatient (holier-than-thou) with unskilled people. Technically skilled people are slow (lazy) to understand anything social/political and are impatient (holier-than-thou) with unskilled people. I think it's possible, though slow, to teach any skill to anyone. To really fix the problem, maybe start by convincing companies that teaching skills outside your area of expertise is worthwhile. I can get technical training paid for by my company. Social/managerial training, not so much. Likewise project managers can't get reimbursed for technical training. The assumption seems to be "Oh well they don't really need it and what they do need they'll pick up on the job or on their own time."
araneae 15y ago
> yet employers often find that people filling these roles with poor people skills are still employable. This needs to stop. I’m of the opinion that every position is customer-facing. Well fuck me, then. I'm sorry, it's already hard enough for me to find jobs as it is. Frankly I'm glad we live in a society that has a place for us social retards. I really do believe that social "skills" can't be learned, at least not well. I'm glad there's a place for us, just like I'm glad there's a place for people who are short, black, or ugly. Yeah, there are fewer employment opportunities, and our salaries are handicapped consequentially (tech skills + people skills = high payed manager!) but telling us we should be out on our asses for something we can't help is cruel. Obviously the guy should have been fired though.
- generalk 15y ago
  > I really do believe that social "skills" can't be > learned, at least not well. Well, I believe they can, but that's not the point. Being a social butterfly or socially inept doesn't matter here. I have a customer-facing development position. I'm not the front-line of communication, but I am expected to answer the phone if I have to (esp. if it's a client), be polite, and not drive business away. That's really the all of it. I'm not expected to sell, or to cold-call anyone, but essentially the duties are: don't be a jerk. If you survived an interview you're probably socially aware enough to handle this.
  - jtbigwoo 15y ago
    Exactly, I don't think anybody expects everyone in the company to spend a ton of effort on being something they're not, but I do think it's reasonable to expect that employees to treat customers respectfully.
    - eropple 15y ago
      Customers and other employees. My employer (which doesn't expose customers to engineering, or vice versa) has a "no assholes" policy and it works fantastically. It seems very much that we'd honestly rather not hire someone than hire a social problem, and it's one of my favorite things about working here.
nathanb 15y ago
I can't agree. My professional experience involves enough interaction with extraordinarily talented engineers who have extremely abrasive personalities. Often, that abrasiveness is a side effect of their talent: the same ability which allows these talented men and women to see through the complexity and grasp the conceptually simple steps necessary to solve the problem also helps them see through the seemingly-meaningless boilerplate and social grease that we call people skills. You can argue that if the culture shifted such that these individuals were marginalized and forced out then they would change out of necessity. I could see this argument--idealistic to the point of fallacy though it is--presented at other venues. However, those who frequent Hacker News should know that these people will find talented others who are capable of dealing with their social immaturity and will end up co-founding their own company and, unencumbered by the enforced social niceties of this fictional society, may very well end up becoming a dominant player and returning to the status quo.
- ulisesroche 15y ago
  Ok, but in practical terms, the thing is I really don't want to work with immature jerks, because then I'm going to be uncomfortable all day, or they're going to end up pissing someone off and there's going to be a big hoopla about it, or a whole mess of other things which is stressing me out just to think about. I think "talented" just means they've spent a lot with an open terminal, and the side-effect of "abrasiveness" is really that sitting down for a long-time makes you tired and grumpy. So instead of crafting really complicated excuses, just go outside for a bit and stretch or something.
- kaitnieks 15y ago
  I don't buy it, if they can see through the boilerplate and if they are as smart as you claim then they should have no problems at least avoiding doing and saying things that hurt and block the interaction. The problem often is not lack of social grease but unnecessary remarks.
- generalk 15y ago
  > My professional experience involves enough interaction > with extraordinarily talented engineers who have > extremely abrasive personalities. There's a difference between "that guy's kind of a jerk, but I don't think he knows it" and deleting paid accounts and backups over some words on Twitter. I agree, very talented engineers tend to be abrasive. I know a handful myself. But each and every one of them is capable, at the very least, of not being an intentional jerk and being basically polite and respectful in their dealings.
cruise02 15y ago
I think the author needs to display a little bit of that compassion he's talking about and realize that learning social skills is not as easy for everyone as it might have been for him. The world is full of different kinds of people, and it takes all kinds to run a company. If Jules is truly great at the technical side of his job, I see no problem with freeing him to get on with it.
- generalk 15y ago
  This is not about social skills. The ability to function in a crowd of strangers doesn't matter here. Not being an asshole to paying customers is what matters here. That's not a social skill, that's a matter of maturity and respect.
  - aphyr 15y ago
    It is about social skills. What do you think "maturity and respect" means in the context of interacting with other humans? These are cultural norms, and different people conform to culture in different ways. Place "respectful, mature" American employees in a Japanese zaibatsu, and I think you'll discover respect is more a convention than a universal standard. ;-) Pedantry aside, that engineer still comes off as a dick in this context.
    - generalk 15y ago
      > What do you think "maturity and respect" means in the > context of interacting with other humans? We're not talking cross-cultural divides here, we're talking about engineers not being allowed to hide behind the excuse that they're "not good with people" to allow them to be jerks.
      - aphyr 15y ago
        One could argue a certain kind of engineering personality tends to comprise its own distinct culture. As an INTJ, a cross-cultural divide is precisely how I look at it. I'm speaking more in general, though. To reiterate, this guy acted as a jerk, and I agree with you.
methodin 15y ago
"The understanding that they represent their employer and that people are relying on them" - Most developers have huge, inflated egos. "A compassionate, helpful, and courteous attitude" - See above. "The knowledge of whatever their supporting" - An understanding of the technical side of a product is vastly different from the functional side as its easy for a developer to say "This is sample. You hit X, then Y then select Z and find Q" which does not translate in any way to a client understanding a product and the frustration of dealing with "simpletons" shines through - thus leading to outbursts like we've seen. This is of course the standard. I would imagine entrepreneurs and such do not follow this guideline, but for a generic programmer these traits are not something that are a typical side-effect of the craft unless you start moving up in rank. The fact that the author would be offended by the statements mentioned really reiterates the point that most developers take things entirely too personally. I know I did for the better part of 10 years.
- cousin_it 15y ago
  > Most developers have huge, inflated egos. I think that stereotype is about as likely to be true as the "typical" developer's stereotype of designers and managers being the ones with inflated egos. The "typical" programming company seems to be quite the ego contest, if you listen to what everyone secretly thinks about everyone else!
Jach 15y ago
Wrong problem. This whole issue was just typical assholery, it's not a failure of introverts or antisocial behavior. By all means, stop hiring assholes, but don't blame it on people who just hate smalltalk and never bothered to learn.
JimmyMiller 15y ago
I would have canned Julius on the spot. No questions asked.
ulisesroche 15y ago
What's so hard about kindness that engineers can't figure out? I really don't buy that excuse.
- swilliams 15y ago
  Here's the problem with poor social skills: you put a low ceiling over your head. If you can't interact well with your co-workers, managers, and others, you won't get very far in your company. You are free to be an asshole. But don't complain about the corners you put yourself into because of the choices you made.
- drivingmenuts 15y ago
  "Kindness" is a pretty vague term. I think "empathy" might better suit your question. It's rather difficult for some types of people to learn, especially if they're not exactly wired for that or their cultural or familial background didn't put much emphasis on it. In the programming profession, it's not particularly useful when you primarily deal with computers (computers just don't care).
  - eropple 15y ago
    No programmer in any company of any reasonable size deals primarily with computers.
Rantenki 15y ago
Offence: Engineer is offended by customer and flushes the customers livelihood (website) Cure: Management should be offended by engineers and flush THEIR livelihood (job) Seems symmetrical, but perhaps over-simplifying the problem? Of course I realize that the article above doesn't directly advocate firing the engineer, but many high-functioning technical people just cannot realistically be trained to be social animals too. Those abrasive nerds are really productive outside of a customer service role, so wouldn't a better solution be to fix the mis-allocation of tech staffing resources to customer facing roles? edit: and yeah, maybe the problem is that this particular engineer was just a dick, and we shouldn't use him as an example in the discussion of technical vs social roles in our companies.
kahawe 15y ago
I think one problem here is that they non-chalantly made "poor people skills" equal to "abusive behavior towards costumers" and used the "awesome tech with poor people skills" image as a euphemism in their PR to comb over a VERY ugly situation where they were getting a shit storm of bad PR - it was probably the only way out of that situation short of publishing "welp, sorry, he was a total jerk-off asshole and we fired him". I do think the (stereo-)typical techs can be said to prefer focusing on interesting problems and on their computers rather than having to deal with people all day long - possibly angry or even downright abusive customers demanding support. I don't see the (stereo-)typical techs as slimy and very skilled at playing the political game and manipulating people and advancing the career ladder through it. (which is something I would see as very specific but definitely STRONG people skills, no matter how repulsive.) But that doesn't mean all techs don't have any manners or empathy.
mrcharles 15y ago
500 - Internal Server Error Stop letting writers get away with technical ineptitude!
- hoop 15y ago
  Yep, sorry about this, my Linode is buckling under the pressure. I'm increasing caching as I type!
- epochwolf 15y ago
  Hey, cut the guy some slack, that's a proper error page instead of a debugging message. :) Edit: added a smiley
  - mrcharles 15y ago
    I just couldn't pass up the obvious joke. He had it back up a few minutes after I posted that, which makes him a winner compared to some. I posted a real comment as well.
sdfjkl 15y ago
500 - Internal Server Error Someone needs a socially inept engineer to fix their website.
- hoop 15y ago
  Hi there, you must have caught me right before I increased the level of caching in place on my very-undersized Linode. You should be able to access the site now. Thank you!
russell 15y ago
I clicked on the link and got a "500 Server Error". I cal that pretty damned rude and socially inept.
- hoop 15y ago
  Hi there, you must have caught me right before I increased the level of caching in place on my very-undersized Linode. You should be able to access the site now. Thank you!
badusername 15y ago
500 - Internal Server Error. Can anyone post up a copy? Seems like a sensational title - would love to see the argument.
- hoop 15y ago
  Hi there, you must have caught me right before I increased the level of caching in place on my very-undersized Linode. You should be able to access the site now. Thank you!
recoiledsnake 15y ago
I think he's reading too much into it. I have seen waitresses get moody and piss off customers, MBAs that have had violent disagreements and stomped out or quit on the spot. A Tmobile once hung up on me when I complained loudly about not getting cell service and being stuck in the office unable to call a cab. There are tons of geeks who are really personable. Taking one example of an engineer who may have had a bad day because of people being rude/confrontational and extrapolating them to social ineptitude of engineers is missing the forest for the trees.
- dasil003 15y ago
  Or the infamous flight attendant grabbing a beer and pulling the escape chute... I'm an engineer with "people skills" who has worked large and small organizations including a hosting company and many freelance jobs. No one should be really surprised when a hosting company employee goes off, because it is one of the shittiest customer service jobs you can have in terms of the entitlement factor and low margins. That's not to say the guy should be excused, but just pointing out that it doesn't necessarily means he lacks people skills, it may just have been the straw that broke the camel's back. As far as engineers talking to customers goes, I think that depends heavily on the company. Obviously engineers can provide better customer support than someone with little technical knowledge, but if there are many customers then there's most likely more bang for the buck solving technical problems that affect many people. Personally I've often felt visceral frustration with taking the time to provide quality support when I know full well that I'm sacrificing potential productivity to help one person when there are issues affecting hundreds or thousands that are still unresolved. I justify it by chalking it up to the (perhaps) intangible benefit of providing truly exceptional customer service.
- generalk 15y ago
  > Taking one example of an engineer who may have had a bad day [...] Well wait a second. Look, if I get moody and pissed off and start cursing to myself at my desk, hey, just another Tuesday. But if I then decide to terminate paid accounts and backups? Engage in a flamewar in a public forum with paying customers? Wow, that's beyond "may have had a bad day" and into "destroying shareholder value" and "employment terminated immediately."
hong 15y ago
Good engineers' poor personal skill is often a manifestation of traits that allow them to be good engineers in the first place (though not a necessary condition). The same way Steve Jobs and James Cameron are horrible bosses to work for, the same way CEOs often suffer from ADD and bi-polar disorder, and the same way so many amazing Nobel Laureate have autism problems. If you appear ordinary in your personalities and traits, then chances are that you aren't the outstanding leader of your field.
- foobarbazoo 15y ago
  I would disagree with your characterization of Steve Jobs and James Cameron as horrible bosses to work for, but I certainly see why you say it. Many, many people I'm certain have asked themselves "why, oh why can't Steve (or Jim) be nicer" (and still be the same in every other way). People just don't work like that. Great post!
drivingmenuts 15y ago
I'd put the blame on whoever hired the guy and put him out front as the customer support guy, without monitoring him. Some of it's attributable to the support guy, but most of the blame should fall on his bosses.
reduxredacted 15y ago
I don't think the issue is one of social incapability, but one of failing to match a hire with his responsibilities. If you're going to have your technical guy interacting with customers, then being technically brilliant but lacking customer service skills is not a good fit. I work for MegaCorp. We have developers here that are incredibly difficult to get along with and a few that are great. There seems to be this sense that the more capable and intelligent a person is the more frequently they're jerks to deal with. I haven't found this to be true. There are plenty of good devs that aren't "holier than thou" (and one of the best devs I worked with was clearly on the extroverted side, though most of them land on the introverted side of things). I will say, though, that more people have ended up being let go for attitude, rather than work quality where I am employed. To put it plainly, in a large corporation where you have to work amongst imaginary and real bureaucracy, it doesn't matter how skilled you are, if you can't work with people you won't get anything done. Your fantastic project/work will not be looked at because nobody will care to see it and your manager (often non-technical) won't want to show it off because you keep aggravating him or putting him in the awkward position of defending your behavior to his superiors.
- rick888 15y ago
  "I work for MegaCorp. We have developers here that are incredibly difficult to get along with and a few that are great. There seems to be this sense that the more capable and intelligent a person is the more frequently they're jerks to deal with. I haven't found this to be true. There are plenty of good devs that aren't "holier than thou" (and one of the best devs I worked with was clearly on the extroverted side, though most of them land on the introverted side of things)." I agree with you here. I also find that the jerks, may seemingly be intelligent, but don't learn much from other people (which usually happens if you are smart+socially aware) because they think are right all the time
mrcharles 15y ago
The last line of the article really just sums it up for me. If you don't have basic every day people skills, you'd better be damn good at what you do, otherwise, it's probably not worth it as you alienate your coworkers and make life difficult for those around you. And that's before you get a customer-facing role.
dsl 15y ago
The vast majority of web hosting shops are not "companies" with "employees" and "management." They are one or a few guys with some dedicated servers and most tier-1 support outsourced to huge web hosting support shops. This seems like a whole lot of attention over what seems like one guy who is an asshole.
ldar15 15y ago
"As a technical person who has worked many customer-facing support roles" Stopped reading right there. "I am a technical person who also has ability Y, therefore all technical people should have ability Y." This is the thinking that would sit Magic Johnson down and say "Your ball game is pretty good, but your golf game is awful. Stop working on your basketball skills and start golf training." Bottom line: customer support requires ability, certain personality traits, and training. Do not let anyone (technical, non-technical, CFO, anyone) handle customer support if they are not qualified. It will end badly.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  Social skills are not comparable to golf, they're comparable to being able to move around physically without tripping or falling into everybody within a 5 meter radius of you. It's not a sport, it is a critical skill that everyone who expects to participate in modern society needs to have.
  - tomjen3 15y ago
    Bullshit. Steven Hawking can't even move his arms yet he produce more value than most people. What we need is the social equivalent of a wheelchair and then get back to more important matters.
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      Social skills have nothing to do with paralysis. Steven Hawking is permitted to lack mobility all he wants so long as he has some social skills. It's not that we can't put up with people with no social skills, it's that we shouldn't have to. If I can avoid dealing with your lack of social skills by simply not hiring you, you can be damned sure that's what I'm going to do.
sbarre 15y ago
I think the 2 "skills" in question here are "tact and maturity". No one is asking engineers to be salesmen or glad-handing PR people. But as so many others have pointed out, any mature adult, no matter their vocation, should have the basic social understanding of "this is ok to do/say" and "this is not ok to do/say" for most given situations. i.e. tact.. And to all of you who hide behind the "that's not learnable for me, I'm awkward/nerdy/shy/neckbearded" excuses, I call bullshit. Grow up. I was the epitome of awkward, shy and socially inept (since childhood) as a developer, and in my mid-20s I made the conscious choice to overcome these things. To become more professional and to learn how to communicate and interact properly with my co-workers, superiors, reports and YES even customers. And I did it by just throwing myself in the fire. It was hard at first, but I figured it out. And it has opened so many doors and opportunities for me. The combination of my technical competency as a developer and my professional communication skills has been a huge asset for me when looking for work and new opportunities. Plus, on the lighter side, it eventually helped me with my inter-personal communication and social skills as an added bonus! (i.e. it got me laid more) :-)
duggan 15y ago
Yeah, I don't believe for a second that this is a trait that belongs exclusively to engineers. Here's a thought: anyone in a position of "power" is susceptible to this dynamic; if "social" relationships were described as an equation, then power (P) would be inversely proportional to the effort or energy (E) you need to expend to maintain any given social relationship (R), P = R/E The more power/authority you wield, the more of a jerk you can be (not should be or are), because the value of the relationship is lopsided - you don't need to spend as much energy on it. The power an engineer holds is that they are often quite valuable within an organization, and tend to have an easily transferable skill set.
Wilya 15y ago
This guy is mistaking "poor people skills" with "being an asshole". I'm not sure whether the two are so clearly related : there are a few different manifestations of lack of social skills, and there are jerks who don't have much social skills issues. "All it takes for someone to be good at customer service is: [...]". This sounds so simple. And it misses quite the point. Lacking "social skills", is precisely this : not knowing how to behave completely "normally" (whatever that means) with other people. Like, not grasping the effect of your words, or not being able to think them through fast enough before saying them. Of course, I want to be helpful, and to answer the person in front of me (or on the phone). That doesn't mean that it is what the person will see or hear.
jarin 15y ago
Based on some digging around I have a very strong suspicion that Jules is the founder and only employee of This*. I think the "new employee" will likely just be a new email account with a different name.
mekoka 15y ago
I believe that what many are quick to refer to as social ineptitude is a keener sense of bullshit detection, combined with the inability to take it with a smile. Imo, most socially-inept tech people are simply individuals that are more sensitive to the hypocrisy and nonsense one is exposed to when dealing with the public. I don't know if being a tech person is a cause or an effect of that bullshit sensitivity, but as a programmer who used to be a bouncer in a bar a few years ago, I can tell you that some of my non-tech colleagues were by far very quick at losing their temper than I was. Now, there's a difference between being bullshit intolerant and being malicious. I am of the firm opinion that the actions of that Tech support guy (deleting data out of pure spite) are certainly not characteristic of the tech-guy stereotype as we know it.
lsc 15y ago
wait, what? There is a difference between being socially inept and destroying data because you think someone is a jerk. This difference is similar, I think, to the difference between honking or flipping someone off in traffic and, say, ramming them. I mean, one of those things is just being rude. The other is going out of your way to damage someone else. Personally, I would put up with a lot of the first. Rude people, of course, shouldn't be in customer service, but on the back end, eh, if they are good enough, I think they are worth keeping around. Especially if they are the extremely direct, blunt and honest kind of rude, I think they can actually be better back end people, sometimes, than people who try to twist things to look better than they are. But people who destroy things when they are angry or insulted? yeah, those people should not be let anywhere near a root prompt.
joshu 15y ago
I kinda wish there were ways to add URLs to an extant thread rather than starting new threads with URLs. Because, for fuck's sake, this is like the fourth link on this boring topic.
ori_b 15y ago
That's not social ineptitude. That's malicious behavior and destruction of property. There is a difference. Please don't conflate the two.
CapitalistCartr 15y ago
There seems to be a convention amongst the techie crowd that social rules are a silly bit of nonsense that dumber people engage in. This is not at all the case. When I handle a project from beginning to end, it goes smoother. I find any mistakes I've made myself; I know what assumptions I made at every step; I don't have to get my head around the job over and over again; it's all-round easier. When a team does projects, it requires rules, with some rigidity. Each person has to act somewhat like an object-oriented sub-routine, with guaranteed input, guaranteed output. This does add some overhead, but it allows each person to function with relative freedom in his own space. Social rules and conventions are the rules for the team comprised of a culture doing the project of living. They allow us to get through the day using hundreds of social shortcuts; assumptions about each other's behavior, needs, wants, expectations.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  Assuming that people show up on time, do what they have agreed to, etc obviously isn't stupid social rules. They have practical utility. Sugar-coating peoples screw-ups, pretending they aren't wrong when they are or have a point when they don't, playing politics or favorites, etc however tends to make smart people look with distain on all social rules.
cHalgan 15y ago
I don't believe this is something special to engineers. Hey, back home, in "less civilized" part of the world, you can be beaten up by waiters if you are complaining (being asshole) about meals at a restaurant. In order words, "tact" is something you need to learn. Especially in internet world where doing something stupid is just a click away.
mahmud 15y ago
Web hosting tech-support people are NOT "Engineers". Or for that matter tech.
jpr 15y ago
As soon as people stop letting non-engineers get away with total, utter technical incompetence and stupidity.

132 points by hoop 15y ago

I know a few universities that are pushing programs to "fix" this problem in engineers by encouraging them to do more presentations and group projects. It seems like there will always parts of "geek culture" that just don't care. Perhaps they're even proud of social ineptitude? But those aren't engineers I would want to work with.

Lost_BiomedE 15y ago
Yeah, although the ones that are less capable in group dynamics usually just bail, making the others do the work. Where I saw the most exercising of social skills, involved cheating.

sabat 15y ago

I suppose some of it is attributable to Asperger's -- some of it. In many cases, though, I can't help but suspect laziness and a holier-than-thou attitude.

koenigdavidmj 15y ago
Laziness? He went and deleted the customer's backups.
- recoiledsnake 15y ago
  He did not. Someone's being lazy here not finding out the full facts.
- sabat 15y ago
  True, he did. I was talking about something slightly different -- laziness in terms of learning to interact well with other humans.
dj_axl 15y ago
> laziness and a holier-than-thou attitude A short explanation might be, socially skilled people are slow (lazy) to understand anything technical and are impatient (holier-than-thou) with unskilled people. Technically skilled people are slow (lazy) to understand anything social/political and are impatient (holier-than-thou) with unskilled people. I think it's possible, though slow, to teach any skill to anyone. To really fix the problem, maybe start by convincing companies that teaching skills outside your area of expertise is worthwhile. I can get technical training paid for by my company. Social/managerial training, not so much. Likewise project managers can't get reimbursed for technical training. The assumption seems to be "Oh well they don't really need it and what they do need they'll pick up on the job or on their own time."

araneae 15y ago

> yet employers often find that people filling these roles with poor people skills are still employable. This needs to stop. I’m of the opinion that every position is customer-facing. Well fuck me, then. I'm sorry, it's already hard enough for me to find jobs as it is. Frankly I'm glad we live in a society that has a place for us social retards. I really do believe that social "skills" can't be learned, at least not well. I'm glad there's a place for us, just like I'm glad there's a place for people who are short, black, or ugly. Yeah, there are fewer employment opportunities, and our salaries are handicapped consequentially (tech skills + people skills = high payed manager!) but telling us we should be out on our asses for something we can't help is cruel. Obviously the guy should have been fired though.

generalk 15y ago
> I really do believe that social "skills" can't be > learned, at least not well. Well, I believe they can, but that's not the point. Being a social butterfly or socially inept doesn't matter here. I have a customer-facing development position. I'm not the front-line of communication, but I am expected to answer the phone if I have to (esp. if it's a client), be polite, and not drive business away. That's really the all of it. I'm not expected to sell, or to cold-call anyone, but essentially the duties are: don't be a jerk. If you survived an interview you're probably socially aware enough to handle this.
- jtbigwoo 15y ago
  Exactly, I don't think anybody expects everyone in the company to spend a ton of effort on being something they're not, but I do think it's reasonable to expect that employees to treat customers respectfully.
  - eropple 15y ago
    Customers and other employees. My employer (which doesn't expose customers to engineering, or vice versa) has a "no assholes" policy and it works fantastically. It seems very much that we'd honestly rather not hire someone than hire a social problem, and it's one of my favorite things about working here.

nathanb 15y ago

I can't agree. My professional experience involves enough interaction with extraordinarily talented engineers who have extremely abrasive personalities. Often, that abrasiveness is a side effect of their talent: the same ability which allows these talented men and women to see through the complexity and grasp the conceptually simple steps necessary to solve the problem also helps them see through the seemingly-meaningless boilerplate and social grease that we call people skills. You can argue that if the culture shifted such that these individuals were marginalized and forced out then they would change out of necessity. I could see this argument--idealistic to the point of fallacy though it is--presented at other venues. However, those who frequent Hacker News should know that these people will find talented others who are capable of dealing with their social immaturity and will end up co-founding their own company and, unencumbered by the enforced social niceties of this fictional society, may very well end up becoming a dominant player and returning to the status quo.

ulisesroche 15y ago
Ok, but in practical terms, the thing is I really don't want to work with immature jerks, because then I'm going to be uncomfortable all day, or they're going to end up pissing someone off and there's going to be a big hoopla about it, or a whole mess of other things which is stressing me out just to think about. I think "talented" just means they've spent a lot with an open terminal, and the side-effect of "abrasiveness" is really that sitting down for a long-time makes you tired and grumpy. So instead of crafting really complicated excuses, just go outside for a bit and stretch or something.
kaitnieks 15y ago
I don't buy it, if they can see through the boilerplate and if they are as smart as you claim then they should have no problems at least avoiding doing and saying things that hurt and block the interaction. The problem often is not lack of social grease but unnecessary remarks.
generalk 15y ago
> My professional experience involves enough interaction > with extraordinarily talented engineers who have > extremely abrasive personalities. There's a difference between "that guy's kind of a jerk, but I don't think he knows it" and deleting paid accounts and backups over some words on Twitter. I agree, very talented engineers tend to be abrasive. I know a handful myself. But each and every one of them is capable, at the very least, of not being an intentional jerk and being basically polite and respectful in their dealings.

cruise02 15y ago

I think the author needs to display a little bit of that compassion he's talking about and realize that learning social skills is not as easy for everyone as it might have been for him. The world is full of different kinds of people, and it takes all kinds to run a company. If Jules is truly great at the technical side of his job, I see no problem with freeing him to get on with it.

generalk 15y ago
This is not about social skills. The ability to function in a crowd of strangers doesn't matter here. Not being an asshole to paying customers is what matters here. That's not a social skill, that's a matter of maturity and respect.
- aphyr 15y ago
  It is about social skills. What do you think "maturity and respect" means in the context of interacting with other humans? These are cultural norms, and different people conform to culture in different ways. Place "respectful, mature" American employees in a Japanese zaibatsu, and I think you'll discover respect is more a convention than a universal standard. ;-) Pedantry aside, that engineer still comes off as a dick in this context.
  - generalk 15y ago
    > What do you think "maturity and respect" means in the > context of interacting with other humans? We're not talking cross-cultural divides here, we're talking about engineers not being allowed to hide behind the excuse that they're "not good with people" to allow them to be jerks.
    - aphyr 15y ago
      One could argue a certain kind of engineering personality tends to comprise its own distinct culture. As an INTJ, a cross-cultural divide is precisely how I look at it. I'm speaking more in general, though. To reiterate, this guy acted as a jerk, and I agree with you.

methodin 15y ago

"The understanding that they represent their employer and that people are relying on them" - Most developers have huge, inflated egos. "A compassionate, helpful, and courteous attitude" - See above. "The knowledge of whatever their supporting" - An understanding of the technical side of a product is vastly different from the functional side as its easy for a developer to say "This is sample. You hit X, then Y then select Z and find Q" which does not translate in any way to a client understanding a product and the frustration of dealing with "simpletons" shines through - thus leading to outbursts like we've seen. This is of course the standard. I would imagine entrepreneurs and such do not follow this guideline, but for a generic programmer these traits are not something that are a typical side-effect of the craft unless you start moving up in rank. The fact that the author would be offended by the statements mentioned really reiterates the point that most developers take things entirely too personally. I know I did for the better part of 10 years.

cousin_it 15y ago
> Most developers have huge, inflated egos. I think that stereotype is about as likely to be true as the "typical" developer's stereotype of designers and managers being the ones with inflated egos. The "typical" programming company seems to be quite the ego contest, if you listen to what everyone secretly thinks about everyone else!

Jach 15y ago

Wrong problem. This whole issue was just typical assholery, it's not a failure of introverts or antisocial behavior. By all means, stop hiring assholes, but don't blame it on people who just hate smalltalk and never bothered to learn.

JimmyMiller 15y ago

I would have canned Julius on the spot. No questions asked.

ulisesroche 15y ago

What's so hard about kindness that engineers can't figure out? I really don't buy that excuse.

swilliams 15y ago
Here's the problem with poor social skills: you put a low ceiling over your head. If you can't interact well with your co-workers, managers, and others, you won't get very far in your company. You are free to be an asshole. But don't complain about the corners you put yourself into because of the choices you made.
drivingmenuts 15y ago
"Kindness" is a pretty vague term. I think "empathy" might better suit your question. It's rather difficult for some types of people to learn, especially if they're not exactly wired for that or their cultural or familial background didn't put much emphasis on it. In the programming profession, it's not particularly useful when you primarily deal with computers (computers just don't care).
- eropple 15y ago
  No programmer in any company of any reasonable size deals primarily with computers.

Rantenki 15y ago

Offence: Engineer is offended by customer and flushes the customers livelihood (website) Cure: Management should be offended by engineers and flush THEIR livelihood (job) Seems symmetrical, but perhaps over-simplifying the problem? Of course I realize that the article above doesn't directly advocate firing the engineer, but many high-functioning technical people just cannot realistically be trained to be social animals too. Those abrasive nerds are really productive outside of a customer service role, so wouldn't a better solution be to fix the mis-allocation of tech staffing resources to customer facing roles? edit: and yeah, maybe the problem is that this particular engineer was just a dick, and we shouldn't use him as an example in the discussion of technical vs social roles in our companies.

kahawe 15y ago

I think one problem here is that they non-chalantly made "poor people skills" equal to "abusive behavior towards costumers" and used the "awesome tech with poor people skills" image as a euphemism in their PR to comb over a VERY ugly situation where they were getting a shit storm of bad PR - it was probably the only way out of that situation short of publishing "welp, sorry, he was a total jerk-off asshole and we fired him". I do think the (stereo-)typical techs can be said to prefer focusing on interesting problems and on their computers rather than having to deal with people all day long - possibly angry or even downright abusive customers demanding support. I don't see the (stereo-)typical techs as slimy and very skilled at playing the political game and manipulating people and advancing the career ladder through it. (which is something I would see as very specific but definitely STRONG people skills, no matter how repulsive.) But that doesn't mean all techs don't have any manners or empathy.

mrcharles 15y ago

500 - Internal Server Error Stop letting writers get away with technical ineptitude!

hoop 15y ago
Yep, sorry about this, my Linode is buckling under the pressure. I'm increasing caching as I type!
epochwolf 15y ago
Hey, cut the guy some slack, that's a proper error page instead of a debugging message. :) Edit: added a smiley
- mrcharles 15y ago
  I just couldn't pass up the obvious joke. He had it back up a few minutes after I posted that, which makes him a winner compared to some. I posted a real comment as well.

sdfjkl 15y ago

500 - Internal Server Error Someone needs a socially inept engineer to fix their website.

hoop 15y ago
Hi there, you must have caught me right before I increased the level of caching in place on my very-undersized Linode. You should be able to access the site now. Thank you!

russell 15y ago

I clicked on the link and got a "500 Server Error". I cal that pretty damned rude and socially inept.

hoop 15y ago
Hi there, you must have caught me right before I increased the level of caching in place on my very-undersized Linode. You should be able to access the site now. Thank you!

badusername 15y ago

500 - Internal Server Error. Can anyone post up a copy? Seems like a sensational title - would love to see the argument.

hoop 15y ago
Hi there, you must have caught me right before I increased the level of caching in place on my very-undersized Linode. You should be able to access the site now. Thank you!

recoiledsnake 15y ago

I think he's reading too much into it. I have seen waitresses get moody and piss off customers, MBAs that have had violent disagreements and stomped out or quit on the spot. A Tmobile once hung up on me when I complained loudly about not getting cell service and being stuck in the office unable to call a cab. There are tons of geeks who are really personable. Taking one example of an engineer who may have had a bad day because of people being rude/confrontational and extrapolating them to social ineptitude of engineers is missing the forest for the trees.

dasil003 15y ago
Or the infamous flight attendant grabbing a beer and pulling the escape chute... I'm an engineer with "people skills" who has worked large and small organizations including a hosting company and many freelance jobs. No one should be really surprised when a hosting company employee goes off, because it is one of the shittiest customer service jobs you can have in terms of the entitlement factor and low margins. That's not to say the guy should be excused, but just pointing out that it doesn't necessarily means he lacks people skills, it may just have been the straw that broke the camel's back. As far as engineers talking to customers goes, I think that depends heavily on the company. Obviously engineers can provide better customer support than someone with little technical knowledge, but if there are many customers then there's most likely more bang for the buck solving technical problems that affect many people. Personally I've often felt visceral frustration with taking the time to provide quality support when I know full well that I'm sacrificing potential productivity to help one person when there are issues affecting hundreds or thousands that are still unresolved. I justify it by chalking it up to the (perhaps) intangible benefit of providing truly exceptional customer service.
generalk 15y ago
> Taking one example of an engineer who may have had a bad day [...] Well wait a second. Look, if I get moody and pissed off and start cursing to myself at my desk, hey, just another Tuesday. But if I then decide to terminate paid accounts and backups? Engage in a flamewar in a public forum with paying customers? Wow, that's beyond "may have had a bad day" and into "destroying shareholder value" and "employment terminated immediately."

hong 15y ago

Good engineers' poor personal skill is often a manifestation of traits that allow them to be good engineers in the first place (though not a necessary condition). The same way Steve Jobs and James Cameron are horrible bosses to work for, the same way CEOs often suffer from ADD and bi-polar disorder, and the same way so many amazing Nobel Laureate have autism problems. If you appear ordinary in your personalities and traits, then chances are that you aren't the outstanding leader of your field.

foobarbazoo 15y ago
I would disagree with your characterization of Steve Jobs and James Cameron as horrible bosses to work for, but I certainly see why you say it. Many, many people I'm certain have asked themselves "why, oh why can't Steve (or Jim) be nicer" (and still be the same in every other way). People just don't work like that. Great post!

drivingmenuts 15y ago

I'd put the blame on whoever hired the guy and put him out front as the customer support guy, without monitoring him. Some of it's attributable to the support guy, but most of the blame should fall on his bosses.

reduxredacted 15y ago

I don't think the issue is one of social incapability, but one of failing to match a hire with his responsibilities. If you're going to have your technical guy interacting with customers, then being technically brilliant but lacking customer service skills is not a good fit. I work for MegaCorp. We have developers here that are incredibly difficult to get along with and a few that are great. There seems to be this sense that the more capable and intelligent a person is the more frequently they're jerks to deal with. I haven't found this to be true. There are plenty of good devs that aren't "holier than thou" (and one of the best devs I worked with was clearly on the extroverted side, though most of them land on the introverted side of things). I will say, though, that more people have ended up being let go for attitude, rather than work quality where I am employed. To put it plainly, in a large corporation where you have to work amongst imaginary and real bureaucracy, it doesn't matter how skilled you are, if you can't work with people you won't get anything done. Your fantastic project/work will not be looked at because nobody will care to see it and your manager (often non-technical) won't want to show it off because you keep aggravating him or putting him in the awkward position of defending your behavior to his superiors.

rick888 15y ago
"I work for MegaCorp. We have developers here that are incredibly difficult to get along with and a few that are great. There seems to be this sense that the more capable and intelligent a person is the more frequently they're jerks to deal with. I haven't found this to be true. There are plenty of good devs that aren't "holier than thou" (and one of the best devs I worked with was clearly on the extroverted side, though most of them land on the introverted side of things)." I agree with you here. I also find that the jerks, may seemingly be intelligent, but don't learn much from other people (which usually happens if you are smart+socially aware) because they think are right all the time

mrcharles 15y ago

The last line of the article really just sums it up for me. If you don't have basic every day people skills, you'd better be damn good at what you do, otherwise, it's probably not worth it as you alienate your coworkers and make life difficult for those around you. And that's before you get a customer-facing role.

dsl 15y ago

The vast majority of web hosting shops are not "companies" with "employees" and "management." They are one or a few guys with some dedicated servers and most tier-1 support outsourced to huge web hosting support shops. This seems like a whole lot of attention over what seems like one guy who is an asshole.

ldar15 15y ago

"As a technical person who has worked many customer-facing support roles" Stopped reading right there. "I am a technical person who also has ability Y, therefore all technical people should have ability Y." This is the thinking that would sit Magic Johnson down and say "Your ball game is pretty good, but your golf game is awful. Stop working on your basketball skills and start golf training." Bottom line: customer support requires ability, certain personality traits, and training. Do not let anyone (technical, non-technical, CFO, anyone) handle customer support if they are not qualified. It will end badly.

burgerbrain 15y ago
Social skills are not comparable to golf, they're comparable to being able to move around physically without tripping or falling into everybody within a 5 meter radius of you. It's not a sport, it is a critical skill that everyone who expects to participate in modern society needs to have.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  Bullshit. Steven Hawking can't even move his arms yet he produce more value than most people. What we need is the social equivalent of a wheelchair and then get back to more important matters.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    Social skills have nothing to do with paralysis. Steven Hawking is permitted to lack mobility all he wants so long as he has some social skills. It's not that we can't put up with people with no social skills, it's that we shouldn't have to. If I can avoid dealing with your lack of social skills by simply not hiring you, you can be damned sure that's what I'm going to do.

sbarre 15y ago

I think the 2 "skills" in question here are "tact and maturity". No one is asking engineers to be salesmen or glad-handing PR people. But as so many others have pointed out, any mature adult, no matter their vocation, should have the basic social understanding of "this is ok to do/say" and "this is not ok to do/say" for most given situations. i.e. tact.. And to all of you who hide behind the "that's not learnable for me, I'm awkward/nerdy/shy/neckbearded" excuses, I call bullshit. Grow up. I was the epitome of awkward, shy and socially inept (since childhood) as a developer, and in my mid-20s I made the conscious choice to overcome these things. To become more professional and to learn how to communicate and interact properly with my co-workers, superiors, reports and YES even customers. And I did it by just throwing myself in the fire. It was hard at first, but I figured it out. And it has opened so many doors and opportunities for me. The combination of my technical competency as a developer and my professional communication skills has been a huge asset for me when looking for work and new opportunities. Plus, on the lighter side, it eventually helped me with my inter-personal communication and social skills as an added bonus! (i.e. it got me laid more) :-)

duggan 15y ago

Yeah, I don't believe for a second that this is a trait that belongs exclusively to engineers. Here's a thought: anyone in a position of "power" is susceptible to this dynamic; if "social" relationships were described as an equation, then power (P) would be inversely proportional to the effort or energy (E) you need to expend to maintain any given social relationship (R), P = R/E The more power/authority you wield, the more of a jerk you can be (not should be or are), because the value of the relationship is lopsided - you don't need to spend as much energy on it. The power an engineer holds is that they are often quite valuable within an organization, and tend to have an easily transferable skill set.

Wilya 15y ago

This guy is mistaking "poor people skills" with "being an asshole". I'm not sure whether the two are so clearly related : there are a few different manifestations of lack of social skills, and there are jerks who don't have much social skills issues. "All it takes for someone to be good at customer service is: [...]". This sounds so simple. And it misses quite the point. Lacking "social skills", is precisely this : not knowing how to behave completely "normally" (whatever that means) with other people. Like, not grasping the effect of your words, or not being able to think them through fast enough before saying them. Of course, I want to be helpful, and to answer the person in front of me (or on the phone). That doesn't mean that it is what the person will see or hear.

jarin 15y ago

Based on some digging around I have a very strong suspicion that Jules is the founder and only employee of This*. I think the "new employee" will likely just be a new email account with a different name.

mekoka 15y ago

I believe that what many are quick to refer to as social ineptitude is a keener sense of bullshit detection, combined with the inability to take it with a smile. Imo, most socially-inept tech people are simply individuals that are more sensitive to the hypocrisy and nonsense one is exposed to when dealing with the public. I don't know if being a tech person is a cause or an effect of that bullshit sensitivity, but as a programmer who used to be a bouncer in a bar a few years ago, I can tell you that some of my non-tech colleagues were by far very quick at losing their temper than I was. Now, there's a difference between being bullshit intolerant and being malicious. I am of the firm opinion that the actions of that Tech support guy (deleting data out of pure spite) are certainly not characteristic of the tech-guy stereotype as we know it.

lsc 15y ago

wait, what? There is a difference between being socially inept and destroying data because you think someone is a jerk. This difference is similar, I think, to the difference between honking or flipping someone off in traffic and, say, ramming them. I mean, one of those things is just being rude. The other is going out of your way to damage someone else. Personally, I would put up with a lot of the first. Rude people, of course, shouldn't be in customer service, but on the back end, eh, if they are good enough, I think they are worth keeping around. Especially if they are the extremely direct, blunt and honest kind of rude, I think they can actually be better back end people, sometimes, than people who try to twist things to look better than they are. But people who destroy things when they are angry or insulted? yeah, those people should not be let anywhere near a root prompt.

joshu 15y ago

I kinda wish there were ways to add URLs to an extant thread rather than starting new threads with URLs. Because, for fuck's sake, this is like the fourth link on this boring topic.

ori_b 15y ago

That's not social ineptitude. That's malicious behavior and destruction of property. There is a difference. Please don't conflate the two.

CapitalistCartr 15y ago

There seems to be a convention amongst the techie crowd that social rules are a silly bit of nonsense that dumber people engage in. This is not at all the case. When I handle a project from beginning to end, it goes smoother. I find any mistakes I've made myself; I know what assumptions I made at every step; I don't have to get my head around the job over and over again; it's all-round easier. When a team does projects, it requires rules, with some rigidity. Each person has to act somewhat like an object-oriented sub-routine, with guaranteed input, guaranteed output. This does add some overhead, but it allows each person to function with relative freedom in his own space. Social rules and conventions are the rules for the team comprised of a culture doing the project of living. They allow us to get through the day using hundreds of social shortcuts; assumptions about each other's behavior, needs, wants, expectations.

tomjen3 15y ago
Assuming that people show up on time, do what they have agreed to, etc obviously isn't stupid social rules. They have practical utility. Sugar-coating peoples screw-ups, pretending they aren't wrong when they are or have a point when they don't, playing politics or favorites, etc however tends to make smart people look with distain on all social rules.

cHalgan 15y ago

I don't believe this is something special to engineers. Hey, back home, in "less civilized" part of the world, you can be beaten up by waiters if you are complaining (being asshole) about meals at a restaurant. In order words, "tact" is something you need to learn. Especially in internet world where doing something stupid is just a click away.

mahmud 15y ago

Web hosting tech-support people are NOT "Engineers". Or for that matter tech.

jpr 15y ago

As soon as people stop letting non-engineers get away with total, utter technical incompetence and stupidity.