4 ms·
Whenever you see someone describe "types of people" you should have the understanding that nobody has a type. People behave in complex ways and display traits t
by vasco 3y ago
Whenever you see someone describe "types of people" you should have the understanding that nobody has a type. People behave in complex ways and display traits that can be attributed to several types. Like a scientific model that has limits, putting fictional people into types allows us to describe patterns of behavior and their caracteritics in better ways than just going "ahhh chuck everyone is different there's nothing I can learn". You can apply this thinking to "archetypes of staff engineers" or any sort of personality trait quiz that purports to find your "type".
I'm always surprised when people think that other people actually fit into a box while obviously seeing that themselves could fit into many boxes at different times.
- uoaei 3y agoYou can think of archetypes as "principal components" if it helps to assuage the reaction to being unfairly labeled or pigeonholed. People are more or less of one thing or another and the loadings change over time and depending on circumstances. The goal is not to build a set of discrete categories but to build a vector space of sorts.
- ukj 3y agoThere's no such thing as "principal component" to a human. To quote Walt Whitman - I am large, I contain multitudes. There's only the particular behaviour that's getting in your way within a given context. The bug you have to patch to make me line up with your expectations. What the author describes as "procrastination" (focusing on less important tasks while ignoring the critical ones.) in one context is "attention to detail" in another.
- thfuran 3y agoThey mean principal component as in principal component analysis. There can be a multitude of principal components.
- ukj 3y agoI know what they mean and we aren't disagereing. Given that we are a complex multitude of principle components the single principle component in focus and of interest to a manager is that which the manager has (mis?)identified as the minimum viable change in behaviour necessary to get the employee back on track. They've already done the analysis - the employee's behaviour is the problem now all the manager just has to correct it. Even if the behaviour is intentional and rational given the employee's (mis?)understanding of the situation; or a systemic organizational failure of sorts. But hey, pointing out systemic issues which are making it difficult to deliver in accordance with expectations is confirming what the manager already believes - that the engineer is difficult to manage. It would be so much easier if the engineer just shuts up and does what they are told... All these strong opinons aren't necessary from people with zero autonomy.
- fasterik 3y agoThe problem with most so-called personality archetypes is they aren't based on any rigorous empirical research. They're just arbitrary categories someone came up with. The Big Five personality traits (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) actually have empirical data supporting them. Unless someone has done similar research on engineering personality types, we're basically talking astrology and horoscopes.
- mrguyorama 3y agoarchetypes are no better than astrology.
- js8 3y ago> I'm always surprised when people think that other people actually fit into a box while obviously seeing that themselves could fit into many boxes at different times. That's just https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_erro..., isn't it?
- fhd2 3y agoI fully agree. Our industry is obsessed with tools, frameworks and methodologies, but when it comes to people, I find those barely useful for anything other than teaching those without any experience. All models are wrong, some are useful.