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.

Yes, but as I said, that's a slippery slope to walk on - you're not there to make friends or have fun - you're there to do work. The whole point of that arrangement is that you do something that something else values enough to pay money for, perhaps something that you don't particularly want to do or something that bores you.

If you start adjusting the workplace to fit the needs of the employee (gosh, how wrong that sentence sounds!) you end up in situations where it's suddenly justifiable to let developers use technologies unsuited for the situation because they're "fun" and "interesting" to use and keeping them happy means they're more "productive". Or letting middle management play politics because it keeps them happy and more productive. Or forcing people into open offices because some boss likes the feeling of lording over his subordinates and that makes him happy and productive.

I guess what I'm trying to say is - some basic levels of courtesy and human empathy are needed for any group endeavor to work but beyond that, decisions should be made in the interest of the business rather than what makes individuals happy.

Not all of my compensation is in cash. Giving me time to experiment, learn, or god forbid enjoy myself is part of the cost for employers of software developers.

You obviously can not want that as an employer but you’re either gonna have empty roles for a long time or pay out the ass for the lack of fringe benefits

Do you really think workplace norms should never adjust for their employees? I think a balance between doing the bare minimum to avoid bankruptcy and squeezing employees for every last drop of productivity is needed and I don't see how listening to employee demands is somehow wrong in that context.

Oh, I think they should definitely adjust. But it should not be adjusted by employees or between employees but rather by the business, to serve its goals (retention, productivity, etc...).

I think in these situations, the employee should ask himself: "what is good for the business?" rather than "what do I want to do?".

The answer often is "what is good for employees is good for the business". This is a known recipee for success that rarely gets implemented because of greed and shortsightedness

It's also true that "what is good for the business is good for employees". So it's a two-way street that needs to be walked by honest employees and empoyers. Not possible in toxic cultures. So it's important to keep the toxic employees and managers (even shareholders!) out. This is what hiring should mostly focus on (not sure on how to keep toxic shareholders out, and businesses often rot from their heads down because of this)

You can usually weasel your way to describing a personal benefit as useful to the business, e.g. "I want a new chair" -> "I need a new chair to be more productive by being more comfortable", so I'm not sure this distinction is useful. In the end, you're still weighing upsides and downsides, just a bit more directly.

>you end up in situations where it's suddenly justifiable to let developers use technologies unsuited for the situation because they're "fun" and "interesting" to use and keeping them happy means they're more "productive"

Well, companies already do that and justify the practice as something that selects for more passionate developers and makes job postings seem more attractive. Exhibit A: YC's very own Paul Graham wrote "The Python Paradox" [1] back in 2004.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html

>Yes, but as I said, that's a slippery slope to walk on - you're not there to make friends or have fun - you're there to do work.

Both are important. Without friends and fun, in a heavily intellectual cooperative field like CS, you'll do subpar work.

“Should”. But how do you actually move towards doing that? I’ve never worked anywhere that was the case. It might be that there is no way to make that happen if it goes against human nature.

If I could answer that question, I'd be doing management consulting, not software development.

But I think a good first step is to just be aware of it. Many people don't even notice these subtle biases. Once you're aware of them, it's a matter of training yourself to ask the question: is this good for me, or good for the business? Am I doing this because it's good for me, or good for the business?

"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."

Any sources for this? Should we assume the '96 Bulls were "best buddies"? Are Amazon and Apple the "most tightly knit companies on Earth", thus reaching $1T valuation? This sounds like an "I assume this to be true by' common sense', therefore it's persuasive" type of claim.

The problem is, competence is important. Nice people who design airplanes that are "mostly right, but fall out of the sky slightly more than average" have real costs versus a team that's "a little cold to each other, but meshes well to create a high quality product."

Which matters more probably ultimately depends on the "mission criticality" / ramifications of failure of the product. But assuming that two Advanced Beginners will elevate each other to competence also ignores that they can create a "blind leading the blind" style of effect.

My instinct is that 90+ percent of all work is not mission-critical airplane design but is mostly shuffling things around between team members. So the 'good enough' metric is sufficient, where the extremely efficient but extremely unpleasant coworkers generally don't stick around unless they can be walled off.

I also suspect there's another MAJOR upside to cameraderie: cooperation rather than competition.

A huge factor with academics, and with anyone in high-skill professions (critically those where your boss does not know how to do your job) is that in a lot of job situations, one has to perform their actual job functions, and then, separately, one has to perform (literally) a PR show for their managers, putting on an outward display of competence. Managers can measure competence up to the point of obvious failure, but once you get above that it gets FAR harder to tell if someone's good, and the whole affair becomes susceptible to "con men". You see this with professors, you see this with engineers, with doctors, sometimes with lawyers, etc, etc.

So even if you're acting in good faith, you need to put on a theater act of being skilled at your job.

Here's the thing: It's a million times easier if all of your teammates are supporting you. If you're in a cooperative relationship with your teammates, then your teammates can "allow you to admit your mistakes". Quietly amongst your peers, in a way that doesn't hurt your chances of promotion. But the important thing is the mistakes get exposed AND FIXED. Also - the confidence intervals get exposed, and guarded against.

In an adversarial relationship (which you see in more zero-sum games like professors fighting over tenure), people have to hide their incompetence, and the horrible, dangerous thing is:

—they get away with it—

… because the time-scales are long, and the confidence intervals are high enough that it's a reasonably safe bet. They might have a 1-in-5 chance of having it blow up on them, but if they talk a big game, exude confidence, push a risky bet, and have it work out, they could easily become a team lead, and basically seal their career. Life is short and lots of people take those risks.

Being cooperative simply boosts competence; not merely as a team, but as an individual. Since they don't need to pretend they're always making the right choices, people don't have to double-down on "inferior choices" to avoid pretending they're wrong. They can just shamelessly change their minds and pivot to being more correct.

I would think "good enough" in case of airplanes mean they don't fall out of the sky.

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.

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.

The friends I've enjoyed working with and whom I've learned the most from and been the most productive with are generally a bit disagreeable (in the Big Five definition of the word).

Your personal bias towards agreeableness as a universally good trait is muddying what I think is an otherwise valid point, that people are more productive working with people they like (and sometimes, they like working with disagreeable people, as hard as that may be to believe).

I'm not drawing up a psychological profile here, so no need to try and bring in psychological definitions of words.

Agreeable/disagreeable is a subjective judgement, and I'm the one making the judgement in this scenario. Whether someone is agreeable and whether I like to work with them are synonyms.

The conversation was generally talking culture fit and not universal qualities, after all.

Honestly, a lot of the people I'd consider disagreeable to work with are actually so overwhelmingly positive that it makes me feel like a cynical asshole if I don't severely self-censor. To the wrong group, I am the asshole.

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.

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.

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.

Just a small thing here: you wrapped up two things in one sentence.

> people tend to hate the wrecking ball who doesn't participate in 2:00pm office beers

The former (wrecking ball), people will tend to hate. The latter (beers), people should be fine with. I speak from experience on this.

Find out why people perceive you as a wrecking ball and change your behaviour to not actively antagonise your colleagues.

If you do this and it’s not drinking beer in the office that’s holding you back, I’d seriously look for alternative employment. The good news is you’ll be infinitely more employable as a result.

So the wrecking ball thing is just a turn-of-phrase that means "someone who knocks it down" - ie: the person getting it done. It's not necessarily meant as a negative nor derogatory term, it's the person who shows up on-time to work and is nose-down and very effective. Or at least culturally, that's how I meant it and what it meant growing up.

To scratch at it, yeah I'm painting myself here a bit because I'm very annoyed at having to socialize in an office vs. just being able to show up and work. 100% I would rather work through my afternoons than go do team building activities - those things have been more about weird in-group "culture fit" crap vs. growing closer to my coworkers. Going from being a professional in Iowa where this didn't happen as much to California where "tech-bro" is a thing... well let's just say way more weird socializing happens out here.

> If you do this and it’s not drinking beer in the office that’s holding you back, I’d seriously look for alternative employment. The good news is you’ll be infinitely more employable as a result.

Exactly - and that's exactly what I did in the anecdotal situation I outlined above. I promise you though, many places are like this and you will ostracize yourself if you make the same mistakes I did. Keeping your nose down while everyone else is making their buddies is a very bad idea. Apparently, I'm paid to drink, go play minigolf, and race gokarts - sure this sounds like it's awesome to a lot of folks but for this middle aged engineer I just want to finish the work and go home. I have a damn family.

> I'm very annoyed at having to socialize in an office vs. just being able to show up and work. 100% I would rather work through my afternoons than go do team building activities

This is part of the reason I felt like work from home was kind of "the great equalizer" via the way it took those who coast by on social capital down and increased the visibility of the non-social high producers. At my firm at least we laid off some middle management who were highly visible but weren't big contributors for specific deliverables during the pandemic.

I've got to say, I've never heard "wrecking ball" used as a positive description before.

> Or at least culturally, that's how I meant it and what it meant growing up.

Outside of that particular bubble, "wrecking ball" carries inherently destructive connotations. Even in positive usage, I've only seen it used to convey creative destruction.

I read wrecking ball as just being the person who didn’t want to participate in drinking and so was perceived as a party pooper. Not as someone actively destroying things.

Yep - just someone keeping their nose down actively working their butt off to chip away at their workload.

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.

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.

I can identify; but the farther I go in my career, the more I see socializing as part of the actual work--i.e., not peripheral or ancillary to it, but as an important part of the success of the company. My mentor says that what used to be called knowledge work should more properly be called relationship work, and I see it more with every year. We used to be Taylorist cogs in a machine, but that's not what work is anymore. At least not anywhere where groups of people have to solve hard problems and make difficult decisions up and down the ladder of abstraction.

I grew up in the midwest and have also worked software on both coasts. They are all different cultures, work and otherwise.

I expect the emergence of remote, distributed work to change that in the same way that mass media affected regional dialects.

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.

Yes because some people believe that kicking ass and taking names means that one can afford to be rude or antisocial because the mission takes priority. Utimately these very same people sometimes do not take the time to listen to other around and spend time working on the wrong issues or going down rabbit holes because their vision is superior to those around them...with a group it is often more important for everyone to be rowing in roughly the same direction...even if its off, its better than people rowing in different directions.

People keep conflating my example with non-assigned work, ie: "spend time working on the wrong issues or going down rabbit holes because their vision is superior to those around them"

Clearly this would be a problem, and I understand why people are conflating it with what I am describing because it is both related and relatable.

But, I'm talking about doing your assigned work - maybe calling out the specific Postgres example is why everyone assumes it's just some jackass running off on their own... in the hypothetical I posited I did not mean this. I also did not mean to paint the hypothetical worker staying back at the office as rude/a jackass...

Truly - there are many people who are only interested in keeping their nose down 100% focused on what work is assigned to them vs. the amorphous "culture fit" socializing. Hell - lots of them for fully rational reasons like social anxiety.

Many people want to come to work to work, and then go home.

I think painting the contrast:

"kick ass and take names" route vs. the "tread carefully and make sure everyone likes you"

combined with the wrecking ball idea just paints a picture of someone who is grinding to get their work done but not worried about their relationships with or the collateral damage they cause for their coworkers. Reading your other comments I don't think it was your intent, just the way it came off to me at first blush.

I dont really understand how your comments refute what I wrote...I am saying that the ability to communicate and get on with others (if you want to call it emotional intelligence) is important in helping people work together. Therefore being more effective as a team.

Coming from the midwest as well, I've also got a take on it:

The ideal political capital is being the person who saves other people from embarrassing "good faith" screwups. Cynically, bad-faith ones (where they're being derelict or doing something sketchy) on their part can give you some blackmail, but there's a related concept that happens, that I don't really have a name for (whitemail?), where someone just makes an "honest mistake" where they're working in good faith and working hard, but things just go wrong. And you help them out, and guard their reputation. You get stuff like that on your ledger, where you've quietly saved their ass in a tough spot, and it's solid gold.

If you get that snowballing, you can build a "band of brothers" (or some other sappy military meme). It becomes a great environment to work in because you know people have your back, and are defending you; not merely your reputation, but also are defending (through maintenance) the actual quality of your material work.

Machiavelli had it backwards with his classic quote of "it is better to be feared than to be loved" — being loved is what makes it possible for others to fear you. Love is genuine loyalty. Loyalty is genuine political power. And in most organizations, that's really the only thing that makes people fear.

folkhack and other people who share this view, I would be happy to introduce ourselves and perhaps work with each other in the future

My email is in my profile.

I'm using a throwaway to not associate my email to my usual username.

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.

“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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

> An unusually competent individual in a mediocre group will find it hard be a good fit no matter how nice they are.

As the unusually competent individual who rarely “fits in”, this hasn’t been my experience. Mutual respect and some humility can bridge any experience gap I’ve encountered. I’m always happy to teach. If someone doesn’t know something, it’s an exciting opportunity to learn.

If someone just doesn’t have the ability, I’ll be gently honest with them and work to find their strengths. Not everyone is cut out for deep work, but everyone has things they are good at.

To do this effectively, I carefully guard my time. I block out at least two 4-hour blocks during the week for my own responsibilities. Usually Tuesday and Thursday at the same time every day.

I manage this with a disability that limits me to 40 hours or less each week. I never overcommit and set expectations early and often. I’ve never been more productive in my career, even before my disability.

> I manage this with a disability that limits me to 40 hours or less each week.

Where I live, everyone has this disability :D it's called the law.

My disability goes well beyond being limited to 40hr/wk. I simply picked a metric people in the United States would most easily understand and relate to.

In my experience an unusually competent person in an org, if they can communicate their competency and rally their peers towards initiatives they (with their unusual competency) view as necessary for the whole department, actually gains a ton of social capital and respect. There’s very little they couldn’t accomplish in such an org once good faith is established.

Excellent point!

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.

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.

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.

Agree. And frankly, anyone that meets half those negative standards is nowhere near competent.

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.

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.

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.

Pedantic note: there also exist developers with a negative multiplier.

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.

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.

>> 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.

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)