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> There's little worse than a friendly but incompetent teammate Except that you can teach them things. It's hard to teach an unfriendly person anything, and i

> There's little worse than a friendly but incompetent teammate Except that you can teach them things. It's hard to teach an unfriendly person anything, and it's impossible to teach an arrogant asshole anything at all, because they think they're better than anyone else.

mym1990 5y ago
Second this. It is weird that parent went from incompetence directly to being terminated. Competence is built over long periods of time, and if you're lucky you can positively influence an "incompetent" person rather than putting them back into the water.
bagacrap 5y ago
I don't know about;"teaching", but I think people can change their nature and it's life experience that causes this to happen. It would be pretty surprising to me if someone acted the same way at 23 and 32. Arrogance in particular is something that often ebbs with age. OTOH, for software, the most important skill is resourcefulness, and that seems like more of an intrinsic property of someone's personality.
- gorbachev 5y ago
  True, however, arrogant assholes remain arrogant assholes, in general, much longer than friendly incompetent people remain incompetent.
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  > Arrogance in particular is something that often ebbs with age. I would argue that arrogance ebbs with experiencing or observing failure just enough times. Failures and their lessons usually correlate with age. However, it is not unusual to find people with enough age and nous yet lacking the graciousness you expect from experts/mentors.
Jensson 5y ago
The best predictor of teachability is how much they learned in the past. If a person is incompetent today then most likely they will be hard to teach, and if a person is competent today they will soak up most things you say. There are exceptions of course, but friendly and unteachable and unfriendly but very teachable are both very common scenarios. Teaching the unfriendly person might not be fun but it still works.

mym1990 5y ago

Second this. It is weird that parent went from incompetence directly to being terminated. Competence is built over long periods of time, and if you're lucky you can positively influence an "incompetent" person rather than putting them back into the water.

bagacrap 5y ago

I don't know about;"teaching", but I think people can change their nature and it's life experience that causes this to happen. It would be pretty surprising to me if someone acted the same way at 23 and 32. Arrogance in particular is something that often ebbs with age. OTOH, for software, the most important skill is resourcefulness, and that seems like more of an intrinsic property of someone's personality.

gorbachev 5y ago
True, however, arrogant assholes remain arrogant assholes, in general, much longer than friendly incompetent people remain incompetent.
DoingIsLearning 5y ago
> Arrogance in particular is something that often ebbs with age. I would argue that arrogance ebbs with experiencing or observing failure just enough times. Failures and their lessons usually correlate with age. However, it is not unusual to find people with enough age and nous yet lacking the graciousness you expect from experts/mentors.

Jensson 5y ago

The best predictor of teachability is how much they learned in the past. If a person is incompetent today then most likely they will be hard to teach, and if a person is competent today they will soak up most things you say. There are exceptions of course, but friendly and unteachable and unfriendly but very teachable are both very common scenarios. Teaching the unfriendly person might not be fun but it still works.