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Roger Sterling of Mad Men said it best [1]: > I don't know if anyone's ever told you that half the time this business comes down to 'I don't like that guy.' I

• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• imbnwa 5y ago
  > really they're just trying to find someone they like. It's what "culture fit" really means. And people like people like themselves. This is part of what can lead to unlawful discrimination. This can't be stated enough
• BlargMcLarg 5y ago
  >It's also why the perennial "hiring is broken" posts and threads miss the point completely I don't think they miss the point completely when many hiring processes don't test for team cohesion at all beyond a manager pointing a finger in the air and guessing what the fit will be based on a 15 minute talk. Given these people would in the same breath claim diversity in personalities is great and covering each other's weaknesses is essential. That's exactly how we end up with teams where not a single person has the spine to go up against clearly ridiculous requirements (that is assuming any perspective, not just technical), while claiming critical thinking is great.
• captainredbeard 5y ago
  > it's not about how good you are at your job. You just have to be liked The sad part is that many of us struggle with social interactions and end up being unliked despite our best efforts. No one cares about what you achieve, unless it's useful for them, or if they just like you because you "have it".
  • gameswithgo 5y ago
    There are those of us out there, teams and companies, who notice yall, don't give up hope! Especially in software/tech you can find places where people understand.
  • darthvoldemort 5y ago
    You don't have to be a social butterfly to be liked. You just mainly shouldn't be an asshole. And the key is to consistently not be an asshole, otherwise those things will accumulate and you will eventually get rejected. (I'm not accusing you of being an asshole.) If you're nice 90% of the time, but lash out or say shitty things 10% of the time, that's more than enough to get eventually rejected. My son, unfortunately, is like this. 95% a sweet kid but 5% really, really shitty and saying mean things. We are working on it. He started out immensely popular but over the course of this school year, his classmates look at him lukewarm now, instead of being his close friends, and it's entirely his issue.
    • ttfkam 5y ago
      In personal interactions, be on average at least 20% kinder/more considerate than you think is necessary to account for subjective bias.
    • BlargMcLarg 5y ago
      >You just mainly shouldn't be an asshole. This sounds so obvious on paper, but in my own experience, things have definitely shifted to include more traits and lower intensity of those traits as "asshole traits". I have no doubt many critical people who do not sugarcoat things and do not spend time trying to curry favor, despite staying stoic and civil, are often seen as negative and told to "be more outgoing / positive / extroverted / etc." Not only does that go against just not going out of one's way to upset people, it also shows the boundaries of what is / isn't an "asshole" can change over time.
• gopalv 5y ago
  > You just have to be liked while being sufficiently good. One of my friends has a joke series of posts titled the "32x engineer"[1], one of which is about niceness. People who aren't nice get routed around when crisis situations happen as adding them to the mix is not pleasant - this is probably different from the extrovert-friendly connotations people pick up in interviews, but a more clear "is this person going to yell at me or help me (first)". This lesson is probably doubled up in personal life as people have kids and try to get their tweenagers to communicate with them - the "you did WHAT?" reaction is basically equivalent with the not-nice people who are competent, but tired of cleaning up the mess of over years (not realizing their reaction has a long-term impact on what kids think adults do). The role growth part is also relevant, as people with context don't want to come to you unless they have to, you slowly lose context on what's going on until you are in a basement with a stapler. [1] - https://twitter.com/tdinkar/status/1149554345077137410 https://twitter.com/tdinkar/status/1149554345077137410
  • hinkley 5y ago
    I'd like to refine the sentiment a little bit. In technical circles, trustworthiness is sufficient to get you some traction, but you'll have a glass ceiling unless the bosses like you. If you don't plan to climb very high in the org, this might seem like a reasonable deal to you, but remember that there are other times besides getting promoted when you need to spend social capital with the management team. > The role growth part is also relevant, as people with context don't want to come to you unless they have to, you slowly lose context on what's going on until you are in a basement with a stapler. This is my first to promotions to lead in a nutshell. People who had been there longer lost context because I categorize some/many fuck-ups as reasonable, and I was good at bailing people out if my advice was wrong. If you broke something, or just thought something was broken (ie, QA) I was least likely to bite your head off. If something I asked you to do exploded, I'd help you fix it. Technically and emotionally trustworthy people hear about more 'dirt', and many serious architectural problems are hidden in that dirt. If you are technical you can parlay that information into bug fixes (including production outages) and technical initiatives. If you're getting stuff done and people generally seem to trust you (even if they don't like you), then that means they listen when you talk. Your boss would be stupid not to promote you.
• monkeybutton 5y ago
  Trustworthiness is not hard to define at all. When a coworker tells you they will do something, do they do it? When you tell them something in confidence, do they keep it to themselves? When there's a problem, even when its their fault, do they address it honestly and factually? When I write this out, it starts to sound like trust is a lot like professionalism and I think that's it. I trust someone who acts professionally, and I don't trust someone who doesn't.
  • heurisko 5y ago
    I think trustworthiness can also apply to the code itself. There are so many times where I have thought, "I better add this test here, even though I know I will probably only be the person who knows there needs to be a test here." And I add the test, as I like to think I can be trusted to do the right thing, even though nobody will in all likelihood see it.
    • agustif 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_a_tree_falls_in_a_forest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_a_tree_falls_in_a_forest If a tree can fall in a forest, better test it, just in case! Or the tree falling in a forest test for short
  • antonzabirko 5y ago
    He's talking about the perception of trust, like in an interview. They won't have a history with you to see how trustworthy you are at that point.
  • hinkley 5y ago
    We discount the value of psychological safety too. Nobody wants to look stupid, especially in front of others, and if you punish people for mistakes then they either stop interacting with you or all of your interactions are engineered to avoid those situations. At this point candor has gone out the window, and your impression of what's really going on becomes progressively more inaccurate. I have a couple coworkers who say, "I haven't heard of any of this," as if it's a statement that a problem doesn't exist, instead of a realization that they're in the dark on something important. It's because one feeds you optimism, and the other is grouchy and writes exhaustingly byzantine code and then doesn't understand why people don't think he's brilliant (I think this is the root of most of the grouchiness).
• tomc1985 5y ago
  This sort of crap is why I left software. Niceness over competence. I didn't enter this (at the time) largely solitary profession to have all the best, juiciest parts of the job get taken over by these people-oriented idiots. There needs to be a revolution that returns programming back into the hands of solitary nerds working on sheer competence. More people need to care about the quality of the final output than whether or not the guy who wrote it is "a nice fellow". I feel like this is 'participation trophy' culture coming back to haunt us. Stop being so afraid of getting yelled at, anger is a part of life!
  • endisneigh 5y ago
    I can't tell if this post is sarcastic or not, haha. What are you doing now?
    • tomc1985 5y ago
      Not sarcastic. I am now software-adjacent, working solo. Got sick of the people aspect and the fact that my employer takes 99% of the value I create and then forces me to practically beg for a 5% raise each year Fuck that industry. I became a programmer because I love computers, not people
      • endisneigh 5y ago
        > then forces me to practically beg for a 5% raise each year I hear you. thanks for the reply
      • robocat 5y ago
        > Got sick of the people aspect and the fact that my employer takes 99% of the value I create You are on ycombinator, where there is all the information you need to know on how to capture your value. If I deconstruct your complaint, it is inherently capitalist. If you want to receive profits you need to be a risk-taking owner. Why is it fair that employees do not get paid what they are “worth”? Firstly, a startup example. What you perceive as profits, are often the returns for risks. Risks a well paid employee doesn’t take. A VC needs to get 30x* returns from the 1 in 10 successes they get, just to break even on the risk adjusted returns for an investment where capital is locked up for more than a decade. Employee’s risk free wages are sometimes the largest cost for a startup. If you are a very early employee then only you have the incentive to negotiate ownership (and also deal with all the risks of ownership!). Secondly, an example of an existing business. Apple is a business that makes huge profits: Apple pays as little as possible to create as much profit as possible. A new employee never created the money machine (e.g. Apple), instead the employee joined it long after it was created, and the employee has no right to claim to the profits that the machine creates. Anytime you are late to the party to become an employee of any business, you will struggle to claim profits, and will only receive what you beg for. Capitalism 101. I know all the above is stating the completely obvious, but your statement is simply not coherent with reality, and that disturbs me. YC is about as capitalist as you can get so your statement seems jarring - HN is one of the few places founders can get good advice. If you wanted to “get your value”, perhaps join a cooperative (where membership is ownership). Or go to a country where rewards are spread more evenly to everyone. Or parse the benefits of being in the top 1% of the world as your rewards (assuming you work as a programmer in the US, you are likely in the top 1% of earners in the world). Actually you appear pretty angry, bitter and disappointed with your work. Perhaps investigate if you can learn a new attitude and be more satisfied with what you have. Just becoming an owner is unlikely solve your negative feelings IMHO. Note that I know plenty of people that echo what you are feeling - it is natural and you are definitely not alone! Disclaimer: I am a well off hippy capitalist that chooses to live in a socialist democratic country. I have been a whiner about wages in the past, and I have had a minor win at the capitalist lottery. * https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/the-meeting-that-showed-me-the-truth-about-vcs/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/the-meeting-that-showed-me... PG quote: “Great programmers are sometimes said to be indifferent to money. This isn't quite true. It is true that all they really care about is doing interesting work.”. Quote from https://corecursive.com/leaving-debian/ https://corecursive.com/leaving-debian/ ””” Adam: Around this time is when I first heard of Joey. And the thing that caught my interest about him was he looked like this platonic ideal of a hardcore software developer. He was just working on what he cared about and living out in the woods. At the time, everybody was talking about entrepreneurship and startups and how you can work crazy hard as a software developer and make a whole bunch of money, and then you’d be set for life. And here was Joey, and he had been through the first bubble and it seemed like he had cracked the code. He said, you’re looking at the numerator how much money you need to do what you want, but I’m looking at the denominator. I’ve just decreased my cost of living. I made the Zen move, so instead of hitting a big score, I can just do what I want right now. At least this was my impression from the outside. So that’s really the question, I wanted to ask Joey: Was this idyllic life you’ve built in a cabin in the woods as great as it looks? Joey: There’s always a backstory that might not live up to the romanticism. But I certainly do feel very lucky that I do have a lot of ability to take some time and just think about an idea and then be, okay, I’m going to go spend whatever amount of time it ends up taking, because it’s worth doing this. It’s hills around me here and a few mountains in the distance, but dense forest and I’m kind of down an oval bowl with basically completely isolated from whatever’s going on, except for whatever noise might filter up from the distant road a mile away. And yeah, it’s a very calm and peaceful place. And for me that’s more of just a background thing, I just know that, I can sit down and work for five hours and that’s a really nice thing. And I know that if I need a break, I can go and easily take a walk and refresh my mind. And so yeah, it’s the little things really that make living in a rural place nice. I wish more people have that ability and I feel very, very lucky to have it right now. Who knows how long it will continue. ”””
• didibus 5y ago
  At the point where you are sufficiently good at the core skills, I would argue it matters more that you are also pleasant, fun and trustworthy. The truth is, most jobs don't need the best of the best, problems are not always needing a breakthrough, often it's business as usual, so sufficiently good is good enough, and then you need to be able to collaborate effectively. That latter quality is as important to business success as the former.
  • cletus 5y ago
    To clarify, "sufficiently good" doesn't imply "good" or even "competent". In a toxic work environment "sufficiently good" may still be "incompetent".
    • chiefalchemist 5y ago
      Being nice does not - or at least should not - make up for being incompetent. True story: I once worked for place that at one point hired a front-end engineer who didn't know JavaScript. Nice guy, generally. But from my POV had listening skills that led to friction (and crap output for clients). I was never able to wrap my head around the fact that within out team was a front end engineer who had no experience with JS. I don't want to work with a-holes but my job / career shouldn't be tied to someone who can't swim.
      • Dudeman112 5y ago
        Maybe they did lots of front-end jobs outside the web stack? God knows OpenGL ain't no joke.
        • chiefalchemist 5y ago
          Maybe. Good point. But that wasn't the case.
      • 71a54xd 5y ago
        I tend to agree here. I've been on teams where being too nice has lead to slipping deadlines and crippling miscommunication or more generally unmaintainable code that leads to dozens of bug tickets months down the line. For real though, how on earth did that org hire a front-end dev who didn't know js?
• Clubber 5y ago
  >It's also why the perennial "hiring is broken" posts and threads miss the point completely If people are trying to find someone they like, the current common tech interview process certainly isn't the way to do it. Back when I started, interviewers would ask open ended questions about prior projects that were worked on; explain some mistakes; explain some benefits and made the judgement based on that. That seems like a much better way to find a culture fit as opposed to obscure tech gotcha questions.
• DoneWithAllThat 5y ago
  Mad Men is a story about people working for a company that is exclusively focused of human emotions (and manipulating them). I don’t think any “lessons” it may teach about workplace politics are any more generalizable than any other single industry.
  • pcmoney 5y ago
    Sure, but I feel the quote still stands. The hard reality is high school is more representative of life than we would like to believe. If everyone likes you, you probably don’t get laid off or fired, can still happen though (the other half of the business)
    • Nasrudith 5y ago
      Isn't that a complete tautology? If most people spent their youths chained up in a cold basement we would see it reflected in life.
• sbacic 5y ago
  > Except for marginal cases, it's not about how good you are at your job. You just have to be liked while being sufficiently good. I think this is dangerous ground to thread. I don't like to work with assholes any more than the next guy and I'd certainly prefer working with people I personally like but that kind of thinking opens doors to all kinds of abuse; from favoritism (I like him, therefore he gets a pass when somebody else might not), through promotions (what does giving a promotion to somebody likeable over somebody more competent do to morale?) to plain fuckarounditis (playing career games rather than what's good for the business, wasting company resources on petty political games). I mean, I get it - it's human nature. But something feels off when we're justifying our simian prejudices in an environment where we're supposed to prioritize somebody else's satisfaction (whoever is paying us) but instead we do what we feel is best for us personally, using a fairly emotional and error prone system of judgment (I don't care if this guy sucks, I like him because he's my friend).
  • Loughla 5y ago
    I agree with you, 100%. 'Culture fit', in my experience, leads to discrimination and in- and out-group thinking. That being said; a challenge to your statements: >[. . .] instead we do what we feel is best for us personally, using a fairly emotional and error prone system of judgment [. . .]. My experience has shown that a very cohesive team who like and appreciate each other, but is made of middle-ability individuals is much, much more productive to my measure as the boss than a team comprised of high-ability, but un-cohesive (non-cohesive?) individuals. Soft skills and the ability to work well together without judgment are both wildly important. In a team of antagonists, it is difficult, if not impossible, to feel comfortable enough to take chances. Not sure what the challenge is in that statement, but it's in there somewhere.
    • kube-system 5y ago
      “Culture fit” is predicated on the type of culture an organization has. I’ve worked with some groups that genuinely respected and valued diversity of both identity and opinion. In my experience it gets harder to do this as organizations grow and become less focused in their hiring strategy. It really requires a high bar for every single hire. There’s a couple things I try to determine in every interview process: * is this person comfortable in giving themselves an honest criticism of their own work? If they can’t comfortably find their own faults, they’re not likely to respect when others do it. * can the person logically entertain an idea without emotionally committing to it? And if they have a bias, do they recognize it? Just with simple stuff: “I’m partial to [insert technology] because I have experience with it” is a great answer, and “[x technology] is what you need to do this” is a red flag.
• nimbius 5y ago
  trust is easy to define. Trust = Character * Competence. zero competence will still result in a low level of trust. I think what the article is saying is that its easy to overwhelmingly improve your character at a job you may only have marginal competence at. This boosts your Trust, and in doing so makes you palatable to all but the hard-working tech people with low character and high competence, who view you as a grinning moron they occasionally have to stop to support.
  • bennysomething 5y ago
    But how do you define character?
    • louisswiss 5y ago
      easy... character = trust / competence
• Tarucho 5y ago
  >> people like people like themselves And it happens both on the positive and the negative. Nasty people tends to bring more nasty people on board. "Skin in the game" being the game changer.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• supernova87a 5y ago
  I am confused why people are so outraged at the idea that some part of selecting people to work with may be based on whether you get along with them. People are social beings. Part of working together comes from feeling like you want to cooperate. You could have someone who is incredibly smart and clever as your business partner, but will you really feel like you want to go the extra mile for him/her? Do you have to watch your back constantly? Do you have the same goals in life? Does every interaction drain energy from you? We come from families, social structures. We have people in our families who are incompetent but we love them. It's not unreasonable to think that some of this behavior would continue in our work worlds. "Diversity" in the trendy usage today, for most people still doesn't trump whether you want to work with someone, and that hopefully doesn't have much to do with race/background/gender/etc. I say hopefully of course, and helping people overcome or not be prejudiced that some characteristic correlates with ability/desire to work with them, is an important thing to do. But forcing people to believe that someone's <x> characteristic is more important than whether you want to work with them is a recipe for dissatisfaction and backlash against people who insist that it should be so.
  • _fat_santa 5y ago
    > I am confused why people are so outraged at the idea that some part of selecting people to work with may be based on whether you get along with them. It's rather simple. If you apply for a job and get hired because they like you, then the system is good. But if you apply to that job and don't get it, it turns into "fuck this old boys club". The outrage isn't logical, it's almost purely emotional.
    • Nasrudith 5y ago
      That is in turn just a rationalization of a social system you think will be beneficial. It makes no more sense than a literal caste system or astronomy as a basis for selection of competence. I shouldn't have to say this but actual competence matters - without it at best you get stunted potential and mediocrity. At worst the whole thing falls apart like the cliqueish house of cards it is.
• CountDrewku 5y ago
  I like people that are competent. If you're incompetent but friendly then I'll probably find you unlikable. I don't think I'm alone in this either.
• steveBK123 5y ago
  It's weird that Devs find this so surprising, other than that we are mostly a bunch of introverted misanthropes. I mean - you spend more time with your teammates than you do with your spouse, it's not hard to understand why friendliness is ranked as high importance. If you've ever REALLY worked with a team full of assholes, you'd get it too. If not, maybe you were one of the assholes. That said, this isn't a question of whats best for the firm, it's what people prefer in their work environment. Goes along with higher pay, less hours, better benefits.
• scotuswroteus 5y ago
  They sell b.s. on Mad Men, so that's not exactly reflective of the broader economy. People like to sell soft skills in web forums where humanities majors exchange ideas, without thinking about all the hard tech decisions that went into building those forums. We're exchanging text via bits sent across wires installed in the ground and across the public rights of way, all brought about by the military industrial complex. This online post is brought to you by tons of unliked guys
• bobthechef 5y ago
  > You just have to be liked while being sufficiently good. I would caution that this not become an invitation to become a Willy Loman. Dead fish float downstream. Wanting to be liked is a recipe for obsequiousness, cowardice, and mediocrity of character. The doormats of the world are people who need to be liked. It is the ethos of the undignified, the dishonest, and the resentful. We should not care if we are liked. We should care about doing what we ought. One ought not be an asshole, not because you won't be liked (and there is bound to be someone that will like the asshole, btw), but because being an asshole is a defect of character which you should recognize and repair instead. Of course, the side effect of doing what we ought is the respect of good people, but that is incidental.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• nbzso 5y ago
  >It's also why the perennial "hiring is broken" posts and threads miss the point completely: really they're just trying to find someone they like. It's what "culture fit" really means. And people like people like themselves. This is part of what can lead to unlawful discrimination. I don't care about this, and never will care. How startups expect to make progress or deliver a groundbreaking products following this inverted psychology is beyond me. In simple words possible: I have hired people who I don't like naturally only on professional expertise and the value that they delivered to my company was immense. You cannot learn to be likeable. You don't need this nonsense. You, as a professional, must learn to communicate and respect people for their skills and accomplishments, not for similarities in music taste, consumer purchases or favorite movies. All of this crap is produced by companies who want to exploit overtime by creating emotional bonding and subjective preferences. The added "benefit" is that this artificial divide leads to generational hostility and mistrust (which is handy when someone old with experience will try to share useful information to someone young and full with illusions). I have managed teams of people who didn't like each other at all, and this was not a problem because of clear communication, procedure and company mission. It's about time, this "cultural fit" nonsense to die. Companies who are operating with this mentality will never produce long-term value. Period. It's about time, we as a community, to grow up and stop pretending that we are not having a role in growing ageism and tribalism in our industry. Can you imagine if engineers of the Apollo Program were selected by friendliness?
  • RandallBrown 5y ago
    If your goal is to deliver the most value possible to the company you work for, your attitude is correct. My goal is to enjoy my life. To a certain extent, bringing value is enjoyable. So I try and work hard and do a good job. But if someone makes my day worse, no matter how valuable they are to my employer, I don't want to work with them. I just can't imagine hiring someone you know you won't like. I'm not saying every person that's hired has to be best friends, but with the amount of time everyone spends together there should be at least some level of friendship.
    • makeitdouble 5y ago
• sethammons 5y ago
  > Trustworthiness is an interesting one as it seems to be hard to define but some people just have it and some don't It is interesting, but that is me. I am always brought into inner circles. From work to friend's families. People feel like bringing me into folds; it is odd. Maybe it is because I'm trusting, who knows. But what I also find odd is that I don't have a large friend network, so I'm not gaining friends from this odd ability. Strange. </greybeard_ramble>
• agumonkey 5y ago
  My small experience of non small work groups also taught me a few things: - nobody wants to come to work (duh but hold on) - above points creates a constant laziness drag - the system maintains some socially / somatically critical functions - hierarchy is function of criticality, the more important, the higher it's gonna propagate - the rest is fluff that can be delayed, forgotten, half assed - learn the critical functions by heart, never ever miss them - to spot them check whenever your superior comes down, and when he talks about his/her superior coming down (remember, people don't care, they don't wanna be here, they never want to come down unless they're forced to) - then crack jokes with your colleagues - everybody will ignore you doing nothing, unless critical functions are rolling ps: your point about hiring/culture-fit is a sad realization to me, they could have told me so after HS.. instead of learning sublinear Fibonacci computations during a master, I'd have spent one year at burning man to be chill. All in all, I kinda agree about the need to fit, humans cannot operate nice if they don't click with their colleagues, it's only gonna lead to walking pressure cookers who cannot make progress. But the lack of honesty around this is staggering
• madrox 5y ago
  All interviewing comes down to answering three questions: 1. Can they do the job? 2. Will they like the job? 3. Will I like working with them? 1 and 2 are the easiest to determine, yet we overemphasize it in interview time. We usually save 3 for the last five minutes of any session.
• cyanydeez 5y ago
  culture fit aoso covers up yugely unwarranted bias, at worst, racism.
• bluepoint 5y ago
  Is it me or this just leads to mediocrity?
• gremloni 5y ago
  Totally agree. It’s not just trustworthiness though- it’s insidious tribal traits like looks, race, gender/sex, intelligence, height, built- ie things you can’t control. The only way we’re going to get around this in society is genetic modifications, and not just before birth. People need to have full free choice to change all of the above.
  • txsoftwaredev 5y ago
    That won't work. It'll just turn into who has the most money can afford the best genetic modifications.
    • gremloni 5y ago
      Probably initially, but genetic manipulation can be cheap. Think viruses doing recombinant replacement. Could be out of peoples garages in the near future.