10 ms·

> 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 gr

by 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.
- mrhyyyyde 5y ago
  "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." Very much this - to an extent, you need some deep-divers in places but the non-cohesive teams, I find, end up with a similar performance but lower levels of employee satisfaction. Having worked in a variety of settings and witnessing varying levels of team performance within those, this is what I, personally, have come to believe is true.
  - kayodelycaon 5y ago
    I feel that I should point out that there are deep-divers who are nice to people. I've worked with them. Technical ability and people skills are largely orthogonal. We are just more willing to tolerate poor people skills to get technical ability.
    - brabel 5y ago
      It's weird to me that people in this thread seem to divide people in two categories: those who are "nice" VS those who are highly skilled but dickheads. WTF? That's not how it works. The most highly skilled person in the world can also be the nicest person... or a dickhead, just like the nicest person in the world could also have really great skills, or not... there's no necessary relation between the two things.
      - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
        An unusually competent individual in a mediocre group will find it hard be a good fit no matter how nice they are. The opposite is also true for similar reasons - a mediocre individual will be a bad fit in an unusually competent group. This is almost the definition of cultural fit: people with complementary skills who are all working at more or less the same level. No one likes outliers because they just don't fit. This has nothing to do with whether or not they're friendly or likeable people. Not being social is orthogonal to that, and a different problem. It has everything to do with perceived hierarchy and the level of power and influence they have. They're tolerable as leaders if they have some ability in that direction. But they're intolerable as equals - unless perhaps they can be sidelined into a niche where they won't bother everyone else.
7thaccount 5y ago
I'll take competent or amazing with some annoying personality quirks over incompetent and highly likeable any day of the week. The latter might be fun for chatting during a coffee break, but they consume resources while providing little of value which ultimately means more work for you.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  No one was promoting this strawman though; it was likeable and good enough, not incompetent. Also there's a huge difference between "annoying personality quirks" and the toxic a-holes who are the usual manifestation.
- steveBK123 5y ago
  This is the 100x Dev myth, and straw man that devs are either 100x or -100x. As it turns out most devs are somewhere between 0.8x-1.2x. With a few 2x and 0x outliers. In many roles a 0.8x who plays well with others is vastly preferable to a 1.2x who cannot work as part of a team. Unless you are at the most prestigious, high paying, selective firm.. then maybe you have possibly higher performing people, but by your selection process they will also be clustered themselves.. just on a different range of the band.
  - cobbzilla 5y ago
    Pedantic note: there also exist developers with a negative multiplier.
    - steveBK123 5y ago
      Agree, I've worked with one. It may cap out at like -0.5x or -1x. Anyway if your team is competent you can box them into a corner and make them a 0x pretty quickly. Usually just need to give them some big "special project/feature" and put them on their own repo or branch and let them code themselves into a black hole.
peterangular 5y ago
Coming from the Midwest I was brought up in a weirdly religious meritocracy where it was all about worship of "hard work". Unfortunately over time I'm realizing that others perceptions of me are more important to career advancement over any of the actual work. So much more important. > But something feels off when we're justifying our simian prejudices It does, but in so many ways I feel like I'm trying to swim against the current if I continue down the "kick ass and take names" route vs. the "tread carefully and make sure everyone likes you" one. Even if you're successful at solving "Very Big Problem™" people tend to hate the wrecking ball who doesn't participate in 2:00pm office beers - even if they are getting shit done. Sorry to interject my own strong feelings here but work isn't about work as much as we like to think... It is my experience at every place that I've worked that SWEs that make the most friends, participate socially, and prioritize their own brand internally are the ones that move up. Practical example: instead of being the person who busts ass to optimize the core Postgres DB (by meticulously sussing out slow queries etc), be the person who starts the Friday book club. Although the former is of way more value to the tangible product, the latter is way more valuable to you socially. Your outward social narrative is more important than anything these days - this is just work culture anymore.
- vianneychevalie 5y ago
  Is the former of way more value to the tangible product, though? Where I work, the limiting factor in delivery is how good we are at retaining talent. Seniority is scarce, industry experience is valuable, and when we launch a book club... We keep people.
  - gglitch 5y ago
    This is my experience as well. Prioritizing narrow contributions based on expertise over broad contributions based on a congenial and welcoming working environment is an expense that compounds over time.
  - peterangular 5y ago
    In my experience both are valuable, especially when the work you're cranking through is your assigned work. I 100% agree with you but I would say that many places will turn the lack of participation in Friday beers, book club, and gokarting back at you as not being a good culture fit. I'm from Iowa where the work culture is much different - even for SWEs. I prefer it to this weird "culture fit" environment out here on the coast because I am paid to work, I am paid to be a software professional. I am most happy when I am working, and I am most happy when I am effectively making software that solves people's problems. If I want to stick around and focus on my assigned work I feel that should never turn around and bite me in the ass... It does consistently. I've made a huge shift in my career where I realize that I have to go against my own wishes and participate in the gokarting, beers, game nights, etc. You have to go - every time. You have to make as many friends there - every time. My career has gotten much easier the more social I've become. I just resent it because I want to do good work, and go home. I have a family god dammit.
codyb 5y ago
It’s important to balance an individual’s individual competence vs their effects on others. If working with a competent person means the rest of the team constantly feels stressed, bullied, aggrandized, looked down on, or whatever else then those people are less likely to perform to expectations which may have more of an impact than the competence gain.
- sumnole 5y ago
  As long as that person is being tactful, there's no reason the rest of the team should feel stressed. Work should be an environment where people can learn from each other, a meritocracy where people get rewarded for results and being the best they can be. But this is sadly not the case for most workplaces, so why bother working hard? Just do the bare minimum and play politics.
  - codyb 5y ago
    Yea, if someone is tactful, that, to me at least, implies consideration of others. I think it’s about those who’re competent without tact.
- splistud 5y ago
  Agree. And frankly, anyone that meets half those negative standards is nowhere near competent.
Buttons840 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. He is not speaking to those choosing who to hire, he is speaking to those being interviewed. He's not saying to hire those you like, he is saying you will only be hired if you are liked. It does suck, but it's been true for me. Making the interviewers like me is at least as important as convincing them of my skills.
asdff 5y ago
There's a pragmatic reason too for that. You work more efficiently when you work with your friends imo vs rigid or unagreeable personalities. You show up excited to work and contribute and share ideas vs wanting to get out of there and watching the clock tick slowly all day. I'd say the friend effect is able to elevate people who have 'mediocre' skills on paper to be efficient enough and start learning at a rate that sees them performing well above their qualifications. There is definitely a performance advantage towards feeling engaged and focused.
- sumnole 5y ago
  You're assuming the 'unagreeable' personalities aren't hard workers and the people in favor are. There's no guarantee those 'inside the group' are elevating each other either. I'd rather work with competent strangers who are sufficiently polite than get dragged down by friends who can't carry their weight. No need to mix personal life with work life.
  - asdff 5y ago
    I'm not saying they are not hard workers. For some jobs its also important to be collaborative with a team as well as a hard worker, to make sure you are working hard on the thing you should be working on and not wasting effort working on the wrong problem due to poor communication.
  - Talanes 5y ago
    But what if you reduce the range in the example? Would you rather work with an asshole who is mildly better than you are, or someone agreeable who is mildly worse? Given a collaborative environment, I'll always choose agreeable/worse. Because with the disagreeable/better collaborator, I suddenly have a barrier between potential productivity and output: I have to co-ordinate with the asshole.
    - sumnole 5y ago
      If they are truely an asshole or barrier to productivity then that's a nonstarter, they need to be dropped. All things being equal, certainly the friendlier the better.
sokoloff 5y ago
I have a good friend who is extremely like-able. He’s also smart and generally capable, but his likability is a significant driver of his success. IMO, that’s as it should be, because he’s gravitated/been pushed toward roles where likability matters and contributes to effectiveness.
notTheAuth 5y ago
This is where open source can shine. Contributors must maintain standards but can work anywhere. From a logistics and utilitarian human need standpoint we don’t all need to go down to the market square and debate over commodities now. Office life whether it’s university or Google seems to want to replicate that obligation. In the US everyone is theoretically given the same privilege under the law. Why is there a clearly manipulated free market? We’re not to the point where the machines work without the people. That we have to accept a few billionaires views on how the world must be organized is as ephemeral an obligation as following the churches take on the Bible. Let’s do for people what they’re doing to the monetary system; they use math to carve up a fiat supply, an infinitely big little number in a database at this point… let’s use each persons atomic being as our value store. Let’s use math to carve up the finite one reality in a more responsible way to that value store. Instead of Paul Grahams meager four quadrants of conformity, why not 300 million+ unique political agents afforded equal conditions under the law? Why does he stop at 4? I don’t have to accept that math as meaningful. Inflating their worth is effectively government sanctioned quota on the masses through deflated buying power. Oops, we’re all mathy now.
agumonkey 5y ago
I think on average, most group fail to avoid primitive tribal instincts. At least in some cultures. I gave my best in all dimension to get hired, the only time I did was because I knew a guy who knew a guy. [0] I heard that anglo-saxon work ethos was skills first, character second (to an extent)

by sbacic 5y ago

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.
mrhyyyyde 5y ago
"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." Very much this - to an extent, you need some deep-divers in places but the non-cohesive teams, I find, end up with a similar performance but lower levels of employee satisfaction. Having worked in a variety of settings and witnessing varying levels of team performance within those, this is what I, personally, have come to believe is true.
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  I feel that I should point out that there are deep-divers who are nice to people. I've worked with them. Technical ability and people skills are largely orthogonal. We are just more willing to tolerate poor people skills to get technical ability.
  - brabel 5y ago
    It's weird to me that people in this thread seem to divide people in two categories: those who are "nice" VS those who are highly skilled but dickheads. WTF? That's not how it works. The most highly skilled person in the world can also be the nicest person... or a dickhead, just like the nicest person in the world could also have really great skills, or not... there's no necessary relation between the two things.
    - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
      An unusually competent individual in a mediocre group will find it hard be a good fit no matter how nice they are. The opposite is also true for similar reasons - a mediocre individual will be a bad fit in an unusually competent group. This is almost the definition of cultural fit: people with complementary skills who are all working at more or less the same level. No one likes outliers because they just don't fit. This has nothing to do with whether or not they're friendly or likeable people. Not being social is orthogonal to that, and a different problem. It has everything to do with perceived hierarchy and the level of power and influence they have. They're tolerable as leaders if they have some ability in that direction. But they're intolerable as equals - unless perhaps they can be sidelined into a niche where they won't bother everyone else.

7thaccount 5y ago

I'll take competent or amazing with some annoying personality quirks over incompetent and highly likeable any day of the week. The latter might be fun for chatting during a coffee break, but they consume resources while providing little of value which ultimately means more work for you.

skeeter2020 5y ago
No one was promoting this strawman though; it was likeable and good enough, not incompetent. Also there's a huge difference between "annoying personality quirks" and the toxic a-holes who are the usual manifestation.
steveBK123 5y ago
This is the 100x Dev myth, and straw man that devs are either 100x or -100x. As it turns out most devs are somewhere between 0.8x-1.2x. With a few 2x and 0x outliers. In many roles a 0.8x who plays well with others is vastly preferable to a 1.2x who cannot work as part of a team. Unless you are at the most prestigious, high paying, selective firm.. then maybe you have possibly higher performing people, but by your selection process they will also be clustered themselves.. just on a different range of the band.
- cobbzilla 5y ago
  Pedantic note: there also exist developers with a negative multiplier.
  - steveBK123 5y ago
    Agree, I've worked with one. It may cap out at like -0.5x or -1x. Anyway if your team is competent you can box them into a corner and make them a 0x pretty quickly. Usually just need to give them some big "special project/feature" and put them on their own repo or branch and let them code themselves into a black hole.

peterangular 5y ago

Coming from the Midwest I was brought up in a weirdly religious meritocracy where it was all about worship of "hard work". Unfortunately over time I'm realizing that others perceptions of me are more important to career advancement over any of the actual work. So much more important. > But something feels off when we're justifying our simian prejudices It does, but in so many ways I feel like I'm trying to swim against the current if I continue down the "kick ass and take names" route vs. the "tread carefully and make sure everyone likes you" one. Even if you're successful at solving "Very Big Problem™" people tend to hate the wrecking ball who doesn't participate in 2:00pm office beers - even if they are getting shit done. Sorry to interject my own strong feelings here but work isn't about work as much as we like to think... It is my experience at every place that I've worked that SWEs that make the most friends, participate socially, and prioritize their own brand internally are the ones that move up. Practical example: instead of being the person who busts ass to optimize the core Postgres DB (by meticulously sussing out slow queries etc), be the person who starts the Friday book club. Although the former is of way more value to the tangible product, the latter is way more valuable to you socially. Your outward social narrative is more important than anything these days - this is just work culture anymore.

vianneychevalie 5y ago
Is the former of way more value to the tangible product, though? Where I work, the limiting factor in delivery is how good we are at retaining talent. Seniority is scarce, industry experience is valuable, and when we launch a book club... We keep people.
- gglitch 5y ago
  This is my experience as well. Prioritizing narrow contributions based on expertise over broad contributions based on a congenial and welcoming working environment is an expense that compounds over time.
- peterangular 5y ago
  In my experience both are valuable, especially when the work you're cranking through is your assigned work. I 100% agree with you but I would say that many places will turn the lack of participation in Friday beers, book club, and gokarting back at you as not being a good culture fit. I'm from Iowa where the work culture is much different - even for SWEs. I prefer it to this weird "culture fit" environment out here on the coast because I am paid to work, I am paid to be a software professional. I am most happy when I am working, and I am most happy when I am effectively making software that solves people's problems. If I want to stick around and focus on my assigned work I feel that should never turn around and bite me in the ass... It does consistently. I've made a huge shift in my career where I realize that I have to go against my own wishes and participate in the gokarting, beers, game nights, etc. You have to go - every time. You have to make as many friends there - every time. My career has gotten much easier the more social I've become. I just resent it because I want to do good work, and go home. I have a family god dammit.

codyb 5y ago

It’s important to balance an individual’s individual competence vs their effects on others. If working with a competent person means the rest of the team constantly feels stressed, bullied, aggrandized, looked down on, or whatever else then those people are less likely to perform to expectations which may have more of an impact than the competence gain.

sumnole 5y ago
As long as that person is being tactful, there's no reason the rest of the team should feel stressed. Work should be an environment where people can learn from each other, a meritocracy where people get rewarded for results and being the best they can be. But this is sadly not the case for most workplaces, so why bother working hard? Just do the bare minimum and play politics.
- codyb 5y ago
  Yea, if someone is tactful, that, to me at least, implies consideration of others. I think it’s about those who’re competent without tact.
splistud 5y ago
Agree. And frankly, anyone that meets half those negative standards is nowhere near competent.

Buttons840 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. He is not speaking to those choosing who to hire, he is speaking to those being interviewed. He's not saying to hire those you like, he is saying you will only be hired if you are liked. It does suck, but it's been true for me. Making the interviewers like me is at least as important as convincing them of my skills.

asdff 5y ago

There's a pragmatic reason too for that. You work more efficiently when you work with your friends imo vs rigid or unagreeable personalities. You show up excited to work and contribute and share ideas vs wanting to get out of there and watching the clock tick slowly all day. I'd say the friend effect is able to elevate people who have 'mediocre' skills on paper to be efficient enough and start learning at a rate that sees them performing well above their qualifications. There is definitely a performance advantage towards feeling engaged and focused.

sumnole 5y ago
You're assuming the 'unagreeable' personalities aren't hard workers and the people in favor are. There's no guarantee those 'inside the group' are elevating each other either. I'd rather work with competent strangers who are sufficiently polite than get dragged down by friends who can't carry their weight. No need to mix personal life with work life.
- asdff 5y ago
  I'm not saying they are not hard workers. For some jobs its also important to be collaborative with a team as well as a hard worker, to make sure you are working hard on the thing you should be working on and not wasting effort working on the wrong problem due to poor communication.
- Talanes 5y ago
  But what if you reduce the range in the example? Would you rather work with an asshole who is mildly better than you are, or someone agreeable who is mildly worse? Given a collaborative environment, I'll always choose agreeable/worse. Because with the disagreeable/better collaborator, I suddenly have a barrier between potential productivity and output: I have to co-ordinate with the asshole.
  - sumnole 5y ago
    If they are truely an asshole or barrier to productivity then that's a nonstarter, they need to be dropped. All things being equal, certainly the friendlier the better.

sokoloff 5y ago

I have a good friend who is extremely like-able. He’s also smart and generally capable, but his likability is a significant driver of his success. IMO, that’s as it should be, because he’s gravitated/been pushed toward roles where likability matters and contributes to effectiveness.

notTheAuth 5y ago

This is where open source can shine. Contributors must maintain standards but can work anywhere. From a logistics and utilitarian human need standpoint we don’t all need to go down to the market square and debate over commodities now. Office life whether it’s university or Google seems to want to replicate that obligation. In the US everyone is theoretically given the same privilege under the law. Why is there a clearly manipulated free market? We’re not to the point where the machines work without the people. That we have to accept a few billionaires views on how the world must be organized is as ephemeral an obligation as following the churches take on the Bible. Let’s do for people what they’re doing to the monetary system; they use math to carve up a fiat supply, an infinitely big little number in a database at this point… let’s use each persons atomic being as our value store. Let’s use math to carve up the finite one reality in a more responsible way to that value store. Instead of Paul Grahams meager four quadrants of conformity, why not 300 million+ unique political agents afforded equal conditions under the law? Why does he stop at 4? I don’t have to accept that math as meaningful. Inflating their worth is effectively government sanctioned quota on the masses through deflated buying power. Oops, we’re all mathy now.

agumonkey 5y ago

I think on average, most group fail to avoid primitive tribal instincts. At least in some cultures. I gave my best in all dimension to get hired, the only time I did was because I knew a guy who knew a guy. [0] I heard that anglo-saxon work ethos was skills first, character second (to an extent)