> "Generally, your best technologists are those who are really good at listening. They’re also insufferably curious, which makes them really good at asking ques

> "Generally, your best technologists are those who are really good at listening. They’re also insufferably curious, which makes them really good at asking questions after listening. They’re the best at ferreting out the real intention behind your stated intention, if you will." Unfortunately, this ability is not really what many employers want; if the technologist figures out that the real goal is to commit fraud or something unpleasant like that. Or how about being asked to implement a user complaint system with a deliberately unfriendly user interface? "I see you want me to build something crappy to limit complaint reports, is that it?" > "You’ve heard the maxim: Don’t hire… we’ll go with "jerks." I’ll expand that to include prima donnas, misanthropes and garden-variety narcissists." Yes, you want to reserve these types for the executive suite, where being willing to screw over the employees and your customers so that the shareholders can reap big quartery profits is a job requirement (rewarded with large executive bonuses). Narcissitic jerks with no empathy for others are ideal for this role. I would really like to see more tech businesses where the scientists and engineers, not some crew of shareholders and their pet executives, are the ones making the business decisions.