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Applying this to engineering orgs, one of my hiring principles has been “hire kind people.” My thought was that you can teach people lots of things, but you can
by madrox 5y ago
Applying this to engineering orgs, one of my hiring principles has been “hire kind people.” My thought was that you can teach people lots of things, but you can’t teach people to be kind. I’m probably wrong on that, but it’s seemed true in the context of building teams. You can more easily teach niceness than kindness, anyway.
The older I get, the more niceness drives me nuts when not also backed with kindness. If I have to choose who I’d rather work with, I’d rather work with kind people who aren’t nice. They’re not always easy to work with, but I can count on them to work with people instead of complain about them behind their back.
This is, of course, not a dichotomy. There are plenty of people who lack both qualities. Those brilliant jerks I am totally fine never hiring again.
- Breza 5y agoThe best coworker I've ever had was a CTO who was well known for being grumpy. He leaned into it, with a Darth Vader head on his desk, an internal email signature identifying him as "CTO, Grumpiness," etc. When I actually started working with him on projects, I realized he was unbelievably kind. He taught me most of what I know about software project management and designing architectures. Over the course of a few years, I spent dozens of hours in his office with him going over problems and possible solutions on his whiteboard and making sure I understood, followed by me watching him code a quick proof of concept.
- Tarq0n 5y agoI totally agree that kindness is a trait I love having in teammates, but how do you screen for that in interviews?
- spacemanmatt 5y agoVoight-Kampff test is traditional
- madrox 5y agoA really great question. In my experience, there is no single set of interview questions that get at that trait. However, you gain some sense of their capacity for kindness in how they answer interpersonal questions, conflict resolution, and how they think about working with teams. Also, in my experience kind people tend to recognize other kind people. I often think this is what "culture fit" x-factors end up amounting to.