[erikbern]

This is probably just a variant of Berkson's paradox, similar to Google's observation that success in programming competitions is negatively correlated with job performance: http://www.catonmat.net/blog/programming-competitions-work-p...

The mechanism would work this way: sales people exhibit multiple features, and they are promoted based on some combination of those. If a sales person has outstanding other credentials, they might be promoted despite poor sales percentile. Those other credentials might actually be better predictors of managerial experience. Conversely, many of the top sales people might have been promoted on the grounds that they were good sales people, without exhibiting any other skills.

Note that there might still be a positive correlations between sales skills and managerial skills, but due to how the promotions are selected, you end up observing a negative correlation in the promoted group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox

[geocar]

> similar to Google's observation that success in programming competitions is negatively correlated with job performance

I find it very interesting that Google then interviews with programming challenges...

[s2g]

I'm pretty convinced half of that is ability to handle arbitrary bullshit, and the rest is just an IQ test with a different name.

[citrin_ru]

If Google knows that success in programming competitions is negatively correlated with job performance, then why Google organizes codejam and invites participants with good results to a job interview? Also as mentioned above Google interview questions looks like problems from programmings competitions.

[lkrubner]

True, and someone who is a great salesperson probably has skills that are optimized for the context of sales. But another aspect of getting promoted is that a person is given oversight of new kinds of activities, where teams work with different cultures and different rules. I've seen some sales manager succeed by being bullies to their sales team. But I think it is a disaster when someone attempts to bully a tech team. So what works in one context fails in another context. I've tried to describe this previously:

----------------------------

Every industry has certain euphemisms for the least savory aspects of its business. In sales, there is the secretly ugly phrase, “goal-oriented.” That sounds pleasant, doesn’t it? If I point at a woman and I say, “That entrepreneur is goal-oriented,” then you probably think I am complimenting her. But if I point at her and say, “That entrepreneur is a lying, manipulative, soulless psychopath who brutally exploits labor from the eleven-year-olds she employs in her sweatshops in Indonesia,” then you probably think I am insulting her, unless you are a libertarian. And yet both statements mean about the same thing: that she is someone who is willing to do whatever is necessary to ensure the success of her business.

When I read about Milburn online, I’d seen testimonials from his colleagues in which he was often described as a goal-oriented salesperson. That probably meant that he was a master of manipulating other people’s emotions. He knew all the tricks: praise, shame, laughter, anger, promises, guilt, threats.

Whether his use of these tools was conscious or unconscious is, of course, unknowable. But it doesn’t matter much. A lifetime as a sales professional left him with an arsenal of psychological ploys that had become second nature to him.

...Milburn truly had a genius for the strategic use of anger. If he sensed the risk of losing control of the conversation, he would indulge in another outburst. If I were to ever switch over to the Dark Side, I would want to study with him. His techniques were fundamentally dishonest and manipulative, but that is probably what made him so good at sales. And his tactics were probably an effective way to drive a sales team, but I sincerely believed that such tactics were the wrong way to run a software development team. Especially when doing something cutting-edge original, like we were doing, I think open and honest communications were extremely important. (I have worked with many companies where the sales team was both friendly and successful. One does not need to use abusive tactics to have success in sales. Indeed, the sales manager who relies on abuse is typically more interested in aggrandizing their own success, rather than the success of the company they work for.)

https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/09...