Comment by WalterBright
1 month ago
> I think you might be confusing "productive" with "smart" or "easy to work with".
Working in teams for most of my career, and especially when I make or lose money depending on how the team performs, I am not confusing them.
At work, I am not really interested in how smart they are or how easy to work with they are, or how nice a person they are. At work I'm interested in results. I've had workers come to me and complain about "Bob" who has annoying habits and an abrasive personality. I defend the ones that produce results.
Outside of work, I value smart people who are good friends. I've had several friends who were laid off for poor performance, yet we continued as friends.
(Being somewhat on the spectrum myself, I recognize that in others and give them a lot of slack.)
> you might be underestimating how oblivious some (most?) people are of those things.
The oblivious ones were the ones who got laid off. They honestly believed they were god's gift to the company. Frankly, it was tragic. The ones I kept in contact with would ruefully admit to me years later that the company was right in laying them off.
> At work, I am not really interested in how smart they are or how easy to work with they are, or how nice a person they are. At work I'm interested in results. I've had workers come to me and complain about "Bob" who has annoying habits and an abrasive personality. I defend the ones that produce results.
And what if "Bob" makes it so that "Alice" who is almost as smart as him can't work effectively?
That's why being a manager is not a trivial job.
Amusing story: one day, I got a call from "Bob" who complained that our receptionist "Alice" refused to forward his phone messages to him. Apparently, this was because "Alice" didn't like "Bob". What was this, high school? So "Alice" was informed that she was taking messages for the company, and "Bob" needed those messages to perform his job. She got the message.
Sounds like Alice was the one who was difficult to work with in this case?
You mean what if Alice is intolerant? Bob would have to be pretty egregious to make it so Alice cannot work effectively, and that is when HR gets involved. But if Bob is just not the easiest to work with, then it is up to Alice and Bob to work together. You can't expect everyone else to always adjust to what you want.
No, I don't mean that. You assume that this is a logical conclusion but the problem is that "Bob would have to be pretty egregious to make it so Alice cannot work effectively" is not actually true. Bob, being the slightly better coder, could make Alice's life miserable without, like, doing a harassment that HR would be interested in. Constantly changing APIs that Alice relies on ("they're better now, why are you complaining?"), being overly nitpicky in reviews ("I'm not wrong, aren't I?"), or just outright taking the more interesting work ("I think I would do it faster than Alice") are all ways Bob could reduce Alice's productivity. If Alice is 0.9 of Bob, then instead of getting 1.9 Bobs you might get 1.2, while Alice plus Carl–who is just merely half a Bob–might be able to outperform that.
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