5 ms·

I can't agree. My professional experience involves enough interaction with extraordinarily talented engineers who have extremely abrasive personalities. Often,

by 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.
- reduxredacted 15y ago
  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. Yeah, there's a not-so-subtle line there. I would be concerned if an employee of mine exhibited that behavior, because I've seen it before. We had a technically brilliant, but socially ... scary ... individual working as a sysadmin. He blew up about a decision to abandon all of our 1-off mail platforms and switch purely to Exchange (rather than GroupWise, which he preferred and most in our location used). He was the technical lead for our GroupWise deployment, so to voice his dissatisfaction with the decision that idiots in upper management made, he did us the courtesy of wiping out a swath of our employee's mailboxes contained on one of the servers. And, much like this guy but on a grander scale, began erasing the current set of tapes that had backed up most of our servers our location. We didn't end up losing much, and I can't remember why (we had tapes stored off-site off-line, but they were only moved weekly). The thing that was most shocking was all of the profanity and yelling originating from his cube while he was packing up his things under direct supervision of a member of corporate security. He seemed genuinely surprised he was told his services were no longer necessary (they even laid him off rather than firing him for cause, allowing him severance pay and unemployment during a hiring boom). At no point did he seem like a stable guy. His boss liked him because he was very smart and the result of his cleverness was enough of an improvement to services and reduction in costs that his instabilities could be argued away ("He launched this project that's bringing in X revenue, he's just a little strange, that's all."). Sad thing: he continued to find employment and continued to get laid off (5 places, I believe), then died at 37 of a heart attack. The guy who noticed the obit forwarded it out to our team like it was some sort of vindication "See, he DIED because he was such a jerk!". Even normally decent people have a mean streak about them, I guess.
  - ldar15 15y ago
    Let me be very clear. Anger management problems do NOT correlate with sociopathic behavior. Sociopaths can be charming just as likely as they can be assholes. Equally, someone who is charming is just as likely to be a sociopath as a frustrated technical person with no social skills. So thanks for your single data point of an angry person who was also a sociopath. Your post is equivalent to writing: "We had a technical guy. Very polite. But he was black. When we asked him to do something he deleted all our work. Turns out he did this at the next five jobs. Be careful hiring black people". Being black, or white, or martian, or having anger management issues, are not relevant. Being a sociopath is relevant.
itg 15y ago
I don't buy that argument at all. I've seen enough incredibly talented people in different fields who know at least the basic minimum of human interaction and know not to be assholes all the time. I've also seen plenty of incompetent morons who thought they were hotshots and had the worst personalities and absolute 0 people skills.
lhnz 15y ago
> helps them see through the seemingly-meaningless boilerplate and social grease that we call people skills. Seemingly-meaningless boilerplate? I disagree: (1) There's plenty of meaning to be found if you want to pick up a psychology, PR, or sociology book and actively try to learn something about people, (2) People skills are extremely important if your company needs to deal with the public or forge business relationships. You are just making your life difficult if you refuse to acknowledge or learn what most of the world takes for granted.
- rimantas 15y ago
  Regarding 1) — I very much doubt so. Some amount of social grease is needed but not in ammounts where it turns into mud where we are stuck. Believe me, I have read quite a few of the books in the fields you metioned. 2) There is a difference between refusing to learn, and learning and seeing no meaning in some of that stuff. The problem with so called people-skills is that they tend to become automated actions, some kind of cargo cult. You can execute them perfectly, and not care a bit about the people you so smoothly interact with. When you see that real thought are dilluted beyond any reconition in a sea of polite babbling you know that something is wrong.
Sidnicious 15y ago
I agree with you, requiring everyone at your company to have strong people skills would be, at the very least, wasteful. So, it seems that it should be the company’s responsibility to make sure that they don’t talk to frustrated customers — or terminate their accounts — just like the employees without strong computer skills shouldn’t touch the servers.
16bytes 15y ago
> Often, that abrasiveness is a side effect of their talent I think this is the crux of the argument. That there are people who are highly technical and good at soft skills proves that it is not a necessary side-effect. Why would it be? What evidence is there that there is a meaningful correlation beyond pure anecdotes? I agree with the author. Here's my take: extraordinarily talented engineers have been given carte blanche in this regard because there is an well accepted stereotype. If we stopped accepting this behavior, I believe engineers will adapt, or be replaced by those who can. I don't expect everybody to be a social butterfly, but I do expect people not to be an outright ass (i.e. 'abrasive personalities')
jamii 15y ago
[Edited to be less confrontational, I don't want the tone to obscure the message] > ... also helps them see through the seemingly-meaningless boilerplate and social grease that we call people skills. 'Seemingly-meaningless' being the key word. Such boilerplate exists for a reason. It would be nice if all communication were perfectly efficient and noone ever had to be anything but perfectly honest but the nature of the world is such that social skills are necessary. They can be learned, as plenty of people here have already attested. It is difficult and frightening but utterly worthwhile. Learn the rituals, play the game, fake it till you make it. Otherwise you are signalling to everyone around you that you don't value their presence enough to even bother with basic social niceties, whether or not that is actually the case.
cema 15y ago
see through the seemingly-meaningless boilerplate and social grease that we call people skills For what purpose?! I mean, seeing is one thing. But blowing it up in peoples' faces is something else.
mvzink 15y ago
I really don't give a shit about the rest of this argument, or yours, but I want to point something out. Plenty of others have quoted this part of your speech: helps them see through the seemingly-meaningless boilerplate and social grease that we call people skills but I would like to highlight a different aspect of it. Basically, my point (illustrated below, not argued) is that they aren't "seeing through" it, they are seeing it wrong. You see, I thought exactly this way about "people skills" when I was younger. If those "extraordinarily talented engineers who have extremely abrasive personalities" are anything like me, the they see it as boilerplate and grease because they are thinking of the whole thing from the orientation of utility. Employees have a function, customers have a function, engineers have a function, and why can't just you do your goddamn function and let me do mine? This fits with what I've learned from people who match your description. I myself often fashioned my social interactions from that direction quite deliberately. A highly technical engineer doing business would be very likely to approach "people skills" as another chore with a beginning, a process, and an end that hopefully meets your goals, for example. Those who think that process is "meaningless" are less likely to care how well they do it. Anyway, pretty soon I learned that people are people, not cogs. Now I have more friends, live a happier life, blah blah blah, buy my book and so can you, but most importantly, I've never had bad blood with an employeer, client, or... anyone, really. Nobody thinks I'm abrasive or mean any more, etc. I'm not going to weigh in on my talent, but I would like to think I started from a similar place, socially, to those engineers. I could be totally off base, but I've been thinking about this for a while. Approach interactions as interactions, from one mind to another, and try to communicate with a person.
- nathanb 15y ago
  I agree with everything you say here. I wasn't trying to claim that people skills are actually meaningless or somehow imply that these socially abrasive engineers operate on a higher plane of enlightenment where they have transcended our pointless niceties. I also know plenty of incredibly talented engineers who have great people skills. These engineers tend to rise faster and go further than the ones who are lacking in that area. I'm sure you have found this yourself.
  - 15y ago
mannicken 15y ago
>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. Or they are just socially inept. With the same approach I could propose that these talented engineers just see through the meaningless of distance running and hence are unable to run a mile under 4:10. Why, isn't it because they suck at running? Oh no, not that. They just _choose not to run a mile faster than 4:10_, right? No, not right. Why? Why? Because! If you are a genius at A that doesn't necessarily mean you're a genius at B, C, D, E, F and all the other areas. Let's not even talk about geniuses, most of the "oh, I can be an asshole" attitude comes from people who haven't actually accomplished anything that great for humanity.

by nathanb 15y ago

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.

reduxredacted 15y ago
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. Yeah, there's a not-so-subtle line there. I would be concerned if an employee of mine exhibited that behavior, because I've seen it before. We had a technically brilliant, but socially ... scary ... individual working as a sysadmin. He blew up about a decision to abandon all of our 1-off mail platforms and switch purely to Exchange (rather than GroupWise, which he preferred and most in our location used). He was the technical lead for our GroupWise deployment, so to voice his dissatisfaction with the decision that idiots in upper management made, he did us the courtesy of wiping out a swath of our employee's mailboxes contained on one of the servers. And, much like this guy but on a grander scale, began erasing the current set of tapes that had backed up most of our servers our location. We didn't end up losing much, and I can't remember why (we had tapes stored off-site off-line, but they were only moved weekly). The thing that was most shocking was all of the profanity and yelling originating from his cube while he was packing up his things under direct supervision of a member of corporate security. He seemed genuinely surprised he was told his services were no longer necessary (they even laid him off rather than firing him for cause, allowing him severance pay and unemployment during a hiring boom). At no point did he seem like a stable guy. His boss liked him because he was very smart and the result of his cleverness was enough of an improvement to services and reduction in costs that his instabilities could be argued away ("He launched this project that's bringing in X revenue, he's just a little strange, that's all."). Sad thing: he continued to find employment and continued to get laid off (5 places, I believe), then died at 37 of a heart attack. The guy who noticed the obit forwarded it out to our team like it was some sort of vindication "See, he DIED because he was such a jerk!". Even normally decent people have a mean streak about them, I guess.
- ldar15 15y ago
  Let me be very clear. Anger management problems do NOT correlate with sociopathic behavior. Sociopaths can be charming just as likely as they can be assholes. Equally, someone who is charming is just as likely to be a sociopath as a frustrated technical person with no social skills. So thanks for your single data point of an angry person who was also a sociopath. Your post is equivalent to writing: "We had a technical guy. Very polite. But he was black. When we asked him to do something he deleted all our work. Turns out he did this at the next five jobs. Be careful hiring black people". Being black, or white, or martian, or having anger management issues, are not relevant. Being a sociopath is relevant.

itg 15y ago

I don't buy that argument at all. I've seen enough incredibly talented people in different fields who know at least the basic minimum of human interaction and know not to be assholes all the time. I've also seen plenty of incompetent morons who thought they were hotshots and had the worst personalities and absolute 0 people skills.

lhnz 15y ago

> helps them see through the seemingly-meaningless boilerplate and social grease that we call people skills. Seemingly-meaningless boilerplate? I disagree: (1) There's plenty of meaning to be found if you want to pick up a psychology, PR, or sociology book and actively try to learn something about people, (2) People skills are extremely important if your company needs to deal with the public or forge business relationships. You are just making your life difficult if you refuse to acknowledge or learn what most of the world takes for granted.

rimantas 15y ago
Regarding 1) — I very much doubt so. Some amount of social grease is needed but not in ammounts where it turns into mud where we are stuck. Believe me, I have read quite a few of the books in the fields you metioned. 2) There is a difference between refusing to learn, and learning and seeing no meaning in some of that stuff. The problem with so called people-skills is that they tend to become automated actions, some kind of cargo cult. You can execute them perfectly, and not care a bit about the people you so smoothly interact with. When you see that real thought are dilluted beyond any reconition in a sea of polite babbling you know that something is wrong.

Sidnicious 15y ago

I agree with you, requiring everyone at your company to have strong people skills would be, at the very least, wasteful. So, it seems that it should be the company’s responsibility to make sure that they don’t talk to frustrated customers — or terminate their accounts — just like the employees without strong computer skills shouldn’t touch the servers.

16bytes 15y ago

> Often, that abrasiveness is a side effect of their talent I think this is the crux of the argument. That there are people who are highly technical and good at soft skills proves that it is not a necessary side-effect. Why would it be? What evidence is there that there is a meaningful correlation beyond pure anecdotes? I agree with the author. Here's my take: extraordinarily talented engineers have been given carte blanche in this regard because there is an well accepted stereotype. If we stopped accepting this behavior, I believe engineers will adapt, or be replaced by those who can. I don't expect everybody to be a social butterfly, but I do expect people not to be an outright ass (i.e. 'abrasive personalities')

jamii 15y ago

[Edited to be less confrontational, I don't want the tone to obscure the message] > ... also helps them see through the seemingly-meaningless boilerplate and social grease that we call people skills. 'Seemingly-meaningless' being the key word. Such boilerplate exists for a reason. It would be nice if all communication were perfectly efficient and noone ever had to be anything but perfectly honest but the nature of the world is such that social skills are necessary. They can be learned, as plenty of people here have already attested. It is difficult and frightening but utterly worthwhile. Learn the rituals, play the game, fake it till you make it. Otherwise you are signalling to everyone around you that you don't value their presence enough to even bother with basic social niceties, whether or not that is actually the case.

cema 15y ago

see through the seemingly-meaningless boilerplate and social grease that we call people skills For what purpose?! I mean, seeing is one thing. But blowing it up in peoples' faces is something else.

mvzink 15y ago

I really don't give a shit about the rest of this argument, or yours, but I want to point something out. Plenty of others have quoted this part of your speech: helps them see through the seemingly-meaningless boilerplate and social grease that we call people skills but I would like to highlight a different aspect of it. Basically, my point (illustrated below, not argued) is that they aren't "seeing through" it, they are seeing it wrong. You see, I thought exactly this way about "people skills" when I was younger. If those "extraordinarily talented engineers who have extremely abrasive personalities" are anything like me, the they see it as boilerplate and grease because they are thinking of the whole thing from the orientation of utility. Employees have a function, customers have a function, engineers have a function, and why can't just you do your goddamn function and let me do mine? This fits with what I've learned from people who match your description. I myself often fashioned my social interactions from that direction quite deliberately. A highly technical engineer doing business would be very likely to approach "people skills" as another chore with a beginning, a process, and an end that hopefully meets your goals, for example. Those who think that process is "meaningless" are less likely to care how well they do it. Anyway, pretty soon I learned that people are people, not cogs. Now I have more friends, live a happier life, blah blah blah, buy my book and so can you, but most importantly, I've never had bad blood with an employeer, client, or... anyone, really. Nobody thinks I'm abrasive or mean any more, etc. I'm not going to weigh in on my talent, but I would like to think I started from a similar place, socially, to those engineers. I could be totally off base, but I've been thinking about this for a while. Approach interactions as interactions, from one mind to another, and try to communicate with a person.

nathanb 15y ago
I agree with everything you say here. I wasn't trying to claim that people skills are actually meaningless or somehow imply that these socially abrasive engineers operate on a higher plane of enlightenment where they have transcended our pointless niceties. I also know plenty of incredibly talented engineers who have great people skills. These engineers tend to rise faster and go further than the ones who are lacking in that area. I'm sure you have found this yourself.
- 15y ago

mannicken 15y ago

>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. Or they are just socially inept. With the same approach I could propose that these talented engineers just see through the meaningless of distance running and hence are unable to run a mile under 4:10. Why, isn't it because they suck at running? Oh no, not that. They just _choose not to run a mile faster than 4:10_, right? No, not right. Why? Why? Because! If you are a genius at A that doesn't necessarily mean you're a genius at B, C, D, E, F and all the other areas. Let's not even talk about geniuses, most of the "oh, I can be an asshole" attitude comes from people who haven't actually accomplished anything that great for humanity.