4 ms·

There is a small methodology mistake. They ask people to self-evaluate and then call the people who evaluate themselves better than others as "top performers"

by cauch 4y ago

There is a small methodology mistake. They ask people to self-evaluate and then call the people who evaluate themselves better than others as "top performers" and the people who evaluate themselves as not better than others as "poor performers". But self-evaluation is really bad to show how someone will perform, especially if you focus on a group who has difficulties (or bad past experience) with team work and socialization (because they are obviously biased when they compare themselves to the team). In fact, I would be surprised if a big part of "poor performers" are not really good performers with imposter syndromes (which is more common amongst good performers) and a big part of "top performers" are not opinionated idiots who cannot accept that sometimes they get things wrong and therefore blame the team for their "good idea" (which is in fact a stupid idea) for not being taken on board.

BurningFrog 4y ago
[flagged]
- BizarreByte 4y ago
  I hold that opinion, but I also acknowledge I’m one of them. Most people, myself included, are not very smart and are generally insufferable. I don’t like other people and I never really have.
- ianleeclark 4y ago
  As does a neurotypical person with enough sense not to say such a thing, yet harbors the same opinion.
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    Sure, but I'd much rather work with that person. External interfaces matter much more than internal implementation details.
    - skeeter2020 4y ago
      Not when you still know how they feel and yet they put out a fake fascade. People are leakier abstractions than they think.
    - dkarl 4y ago
      Having poor interpersonal skills isn't the only social dysfunction people can have. People can have normal interpersonal skills and all kinds of emotional baggage that drives toxic behaviors. The worst developer I ever worked with, from a team productivity perspective, was a developer who had normal interpersonal skills, had an extremely high opinion of himself, had a disdain for development work relative to management, and had repeatedly failed at management. He was emotionally invested in the idea that he was a different and better kind of person than the other developers, but the people he identified with (managers) did not accept him as a peer, and he hated himself for it. The development work he was supposed to do made him feel bad about himself, so he did the minimum (though the work he did was solid, though old-fashioned) and invested his energy into anything where he got to judge and direct other developers: diagnosing problems of the team, dictating processes and tools for developers to use, making project plans. He made his manager feel like he was their eyes and ears in the development team. He was utterly focused on his relationship with his manager, to the point where he didn't realize that he needed to be concerned with his relationships with anybody else. He was always outwardly friendly, and people started out liking him, but after a month or so, people learned to read condescension into everything he said. Since he had earned the complete trust of the manager, the situation couldn't be repaired, and the team basically disintegrated. Nobody could put their heart into their work under those circumstances, even if they tried. He was always cordial and always had a graceful thing to say in any situation, the opposite of the toxic geek stereotype, but he had a worse impact on team dynamics than any of the egomaniac programmers I've worked with, including the ones who were overtly abusive towards other programmers.
- ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
  Why the need to marginalise people with autism? Just remove that word and your comment will be improved.
  - noduerme 4y ago
    I think it's an important detail because it shows the writer realizes the autistic "jerk" actually IS smarter, and they're just mad about it.
    - skeeter2020 4y ago
      Both viewpoints are extreme yet have some basis in reality. I've worked with numerous people on the spectrum and my take is the energies and effort missing in social interactions keeps them better focused on concrete execution. They are not jerks but often loosely anticipated as such, at least until you put in significant effort to understand their interactions. This is typically one-sided and I think that is unfair.
  - nsonha 4y ago
    are they typically team players or high performers?
    - ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
      I wouldn't know, but it seems as though the commenter is happy to work with the "I'm surrounded by IDIOTS" jerks, but not if they have autism.
- mlprt 4y ago
  That happens very rarely. Usually, dominant neurotypical people form a clique and rate each other as top performers while exploiting the quiet productive workers. Which brings me to another topic. Why do people always focus on the individual jerk, who may just be reacting to group pressure? Most atrocities and lies in human history have been perpetrated by ideologically or tribal groups. It is the group leaders who are dangerous, not a sigma male who is ignored anyway. (The answer to the question is of course that the group leaders control the narrative and communication infrastructure.)
  - KptMarchewa 4y ago
    Not really, the autist jerk that claims to be top performer sometimes does a ton of work, but it's mostly useless. On the other hand, team players might produce less - in terms of pure volume, but with higher quality and with more focused direction. At the end impact of team players is higher. I've seen that where the jerk outputs a lot of shit and fumes inside, then after trying to correct that behavior they explode and leave company. In the end the flaming pile of garbage takes a lot of time to throw out.
    - kderbyma 4y ago
      You seem to be ascribing a lot of power to one such jerk....your team should have been able to make due withoit too much influence....unless he was vital...
      - KptMarchewa 4y ago
        Every senior software engineer that works for more than few months and has some engagement in his work - aka, not works 4 jobs at the same time - has that amount of power.
bumby 4y ago
This reminds me of some study that showed something like 90% of drivers rated themselves as "above average". It seems like self-evaluations are actually measuring confidence and not ability (which aren't always well correlated).
- Jensson 4y ago
  Confidence and ability has high but imperfect correlation. You see it clearly in the Dunning Kruger experiment, performance is way higher among the more confident groups. Just don't assume displayed confidence is a good measure of their actual confidence, many confident people act humble since it is socially advantageous to do so. Edit: Also note that confidence and performance could be 100% correlated even if everyone rated themselves as higher than average. Correlation doesn't mean accuracy, it means that we can calculate their performance based on their confidence.
  - bumby 4y ago
    >Dunning Kruger experiment Does this not show a J-shaped relationship between confidence and ability to accurately assess skill? [1] shows a weak negative correlation (strongest between multiple studies was -0.36). [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167487013000949?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01674...

by cauch 4y ago

BurningFrog 4y ago

[flagged]

BizarreByte 4y ago
I hold that opinion, but I also acknowledge I’m one of them. Most people, myself included, are not very smart and are generally insufferable. I don’t like other people and I never really have.
ianleeclark 4y ago
As does a neurotypical person with enough sense not to say such a thing, yet harbors the same opinion.
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  Sure, but I'd much rather work with that person. External interfaces matter much more than internal implementation details.
  - skeeter2020 4y ago
    Not when you still know how they feel and yet they put out a fake fascade. People are leakier abstractions than they think.
  - dkarl 4y ago
    Having poor interpersonal skills isn't the only social dysfunction people can have. People can have normal interpersonal skills and all kinds of emotional baggage that drives toxic behaviors. The worst developer I ever worked with, from a team productivity perspective, was a developer who had normal interpersonal skills, had an extremely high opinion of himself, had a disdain for development work relative to management, and had repeatedly failed at management. He was emotionally invested in the idea that he was a different and better kind of person than the other developers, but the people he identified with (managers) did not accept him as a peer, and he hated himself for it. The development work he was supposed to do made him feel bad about himself, so he did the minimum (though the work he did was solid, though old-fashioned) and invested his energy into anything where he got to judge and direct other developers: diagnosing problems of the team, dictating processes and tools for developers to use, making project plans. He made his manager feel like he was their eyes and ears in the development team. He was utterly focused on his relationship with his manager, to the point where he didn't realize that he needed to be concerned with his relationships with anybody else. He was always outwardly friendly, and people started out liking him, but after a month or so, people learned to read condescension into everything he said. Since he had earned the complete trust of the manager, the situation couldn't be repaired, and the team basically disintegrated. Nobody could put their heart into their work under those circumstances, even if they tried. He was always cordial and always had a graceful thing to say in any situation, the opposite of the toxic geek stereotype, but he had a worse impact on team dynamics than any of the egomaniac programmers I've worked with, including the ones who were overtly abusive towards other programmers.
ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
Why the need to marginalise people with autism? Just remove that word and your comment will be improved.
- noduerme 4y ago
  I think it's an important detail because it shows the writer realizes the autistic "jerk" actually IS smarter, and they're just mad about it.
  - skeeter2020 4y ago
    Both viewpoints are extreme yet have some basis in reality. I've worked with numerous people on the spectrum and my take is the energies and effort missing in social interactions keeps them better focused on concrete execution. They are not jerks but often loosely anticipated as such, at least until you put in significant effort to understand their interactions. This is typically one-sided and I think that is unfair.
- nsonha 4y ago
  are they typically team players or high performers?
  - ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
    I wouldn't know, but it seems as though the commenter is happy to work with the "I'm surrounded by IDIOTS" jerks, but not if they have autism.
mlprt 4y ago
That happens very rarely. Usually, dominant neurotypical people form a clique and rate each other as top performers while exploiting the quiet productive workers. Which brings me to another topic. Why do people always focus on the individual jerk, who may just be reacting to group pressure? Most atrocities and lies in human history have been perpetrated by ideologically or tribal groups. It is the group leaders who are dangerous, not a sigma male who is ignored anyway. (The answer to the question is of course that the group leaders control the narrative and communication infrastructure.)
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  Not really, the autist jerk that claims to be top performer sometimes does a ton of work, but it's mostly useless. On the other hand, team players might produce less - in terms of pure volume, but with higher quality and with more focused direction. At the end impact of team players is higher. I've seen that where the jerk outputs a lot of shit and fumes inside, then after trying to correct that behavior they explode and leave company. In the end the flaming pile of garbage takes a lot of time to throw out.
  - kderbyma 4y ago
    You seem to be ascribing a lot of power to one such jerk....your team should have been able to make due withoit too much influence....unless he was vital...
    - KptMarchewa 4y ago
      Every senior software engineer that works for more than few months and has some engagement in his work - aka, not works 4 jobs at the same time - has that amount of power.

bumby 4y ago

This reminds me of some study that showed something like 90% of drivers rated themselves as "above average". It seems like self-evaluations are actually measuring confidence and not ability (which aren't always well correlated).

Jensson 4y ago
Confidence and ability has high but imperfect correlation. You see it clearly in the Dunning Kruger experiment, performance is way higher among the more confident groups. Just don't assume displayed confidence is a good measure of their actual confidence, many confident people act humble since it is socially advantageous to do so. Edit: Also note that confidence and performance could be 100% correlated even if everyone rated themselves as higher than average. Correlation doesn't mean accuracy, it means that we can calculate their performance based on their confidence.
- bumby 4y ago
  >Dunning Kruger experiment Does this not show a J-shaped relationship between confidence and ability to accurately assess skill? [1] shows a weak negative correlation (strongest between multiple studies was -0.36). [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167487013000949?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01674...