I can't agree. My professional experience involves enough interaction with extraordinarily talented engineers who have extremely abrasive personalities. Often, that abrasiveness is a side effect of their talent: the same ability which allows these talented men and women to see through the complexity and grasp the conceptually simple steps necessary to solve the problem also helps them see through the seemingly-meaningless boilerplate and social grease that we call people skills.
You can argue that if the culture shifted such that these individuals were marginalized and forced out then they would change out of necessity. I could see this argument--idealistic to the point of fallacy though it is--presented at other venues. However, those who frequent Hacker News should know that these people will find talented others who are capable of dealing with their social immaturity and will end up co-founding their own company and, unencumbered by the enforced social niceties of this fictional society, may very well end up becoming a dominant player and returning to the status quo.
> My professional experience involves enough interaction
> with extraordinarily talented engineers who have
> extremely abrasive personalities.
There's a difference between "that guy's kind of a jerk, but I don't think he knows it" and deleting paid accounts and backups over some words on Twitter.
I agree, very talented engineers tend to be abrasive. I know a handful myself. But each and every one of them is capable, at the very least, of not being an intentional jerk and being basically polite and respectful in their dealings.
I don't buy that argument at all. I've seen enough incredibly talented people in different fields who know at least the basic minimum of human interaction and know not to be assholes all the time. I've also seen plenty of incompetent morons who thought they were hotshots and had the worst personalities and absolute 0 people skills.
> Often, that abrasiveness is a side effect of their talent
I think this is the crux of the argument. That there are people who are highly technical and good at soft skills proves that it is not a necessary side-effect.
Why would it be? What evidence is there that there is a meaningful correlation beyond pure anecdotes?
I agree with the author. Here's my take: extraordinarily talented engineers have been given carte blanche in this regard because there is an well accepted stereotype. If we stopped accepting this behavior, I believe engineers will adapt, or be replaced by those who can.
I don't expect everybody to be a social butterfly, but I do expect people not to be an outright ass (i.e. 'abrasive personalities')
> helps them see through the seemingly-meaningless boilerplate and social grease that we call people skills.
Seemingly-meaningless boilerplate? I disagree: (1) There's plenty of meaning to be found if you want to pick up a psychology, PR, or sociology book and actively try to learn something about people, (2) People skills are extremely important if your company needs to deal with the public or forge business relationships. You are just making your life difficult if you refuse to acknowledge or learn what most of the world takes for granted.
I really don't give a shit about the rest of this argument, or yours, but I want to point something out. Plenty of others have quoted this part of your speech:
helps them see through the seemingly-meaningless boilerplate and social grease that we call people skills
but I would like to highlight a different aspect of it. Basically, my point (illustrated below, not argued) is that they aren't "seeing through" it, they are seeing it wrong.
You see, I thought exactly this way about "people skills" when I was younger. If those "extraordinarily talented engineers who have extremely abrasive personalities" are anything like me, the they see it as boilerplate and grease because they are thinking of the whole thing from the orientation of utility. Employees have a function, customers have a function, engineers have a function, and why can't just you do your goddamn function and let me do mine? This fits with what I've learned from people who match your description. I myself often fashioned my social interactions from that direction quite deliberately. A highly technical engineer doing business would be very likely to approach "people skills" as another chore with a beginning, a process, and an end that hopefully meets your goals, for example. Those who think that process is "meaningless" are less likely to care how well they do it.
Anyway, pretty soon I learned that people are people, not cogs. Now I have more friends, live a happier life, blah blah blah, buy my book and so can you, but most importantly, I've never had bad blood with an employeer, client, or... anyone, really. Nobody thinks I'm abrasive or mean any more, etc. I'm not going to weigh in on my talent, but I would like to think I started from a similar place, socially, to those engineers. I could be totally off base, but I've been thinking about this for a while. Approach interactions as interactions, from one mind to another, and try to communicate with a person.
[Edited to be less confrontational, I don't want the tone to obscure the message]
> ... also helps them see through the seemingly-meaningless boilerplate and social grease that we call people skills.
'Seemingly-meaningless' being the key word. Such boilerplate exists for a reason. It would be nice if all communication were perfectly efficient and noone ever had to be anything but perfectly honest but the nature of the world is such that social skills are necessary. They can be learned, as plenty of people here have already attested. It is difficult and frightening but utterly worthwhile. Learn the rituals, play the game, fake it till you make it. Otherwise you are signalling to everyone around you that you don't value their presence enough to even bother with basic social niceties, whether or not that is actually the case.
I don't buy it, if they can see through the boilerplate and if they are as smart as you claim then they should have no problems at least avoiding doing and saying things that hurt and block the interaction. The problem often is not lack of social grease but unnecessary remarks.
>My professional experience involves enough interaction with extraordinarily talented engineers who have extremely abrasive personalities. Often, that abrasiveness is a side effect of their talent: the same ability which allows these talented men and women to see through the complexity and grasp the conceptually simple steps necessary to solve the problem also helps them see through the seemingly-meaningless boilerplate and social grease that we call people skills.
Or they are just socially inept.
With the same approach I could propose that these talented engineers just see through the meaningless of distance running and hence are unable to run a mile under 4:10. Why, isn't it because they suck at running? Oh no, not that. They just _choose not to run a mile faster than 4:10_, right? No, not right. Why?
Why? Because! If you are a genius at A that doesn't necessarily mean you're a genius at B, C, D, E, F and all the other areas.
Let's not even talk about geniuses, most of the "oh, I can be an asshole" attitude comes from people who haven't actually accomplished anything that great for humanity.
I agree with you, requiring everyone at your company to have strong people skills would be, at the very least, wasteful.
So, it seems that it should be the company’s responsibility to make sure that they don’t talk to frustrated customers — or terminate their accounts — just like the employees without strong computer skills shouldn’t touch the servers.
Ok, but in practical terms, the thing is I really don't want to work with immature jerks, because then I'm going to be uncomfortable all day, or they're going to end up pissing someone off and there's going to be a big hoopla about it, or a whole mess of other things which is stressing me out just to think about.
I think "talented" just means they've spent a lot with an open terminal, and the side-effect of "abrasiveness" is really that sitting down for a long-time makes you tired and grumpy. So instead of crafting really complicated excuses, just go outside for a bit and stretch or something.
I don't think the issue is one of social incapability, but one of failing to match a hire with his responsibilities. If you're going to have your technical guy interacting with customers, then being technically brilliant but lacking customer service skills is not a good fit.
I work for MegaCorp. We have developers here that are incredibly difficult to get along with and a few that are great. There seems to be this sense that the more capable and intelligent a person is the more frequently they're jerks to deal with. I haven't found this to be true. There are plenty of good devs that aren't "holier than thou" (and one of the best devs I worked with was clearly on the extroverted side, though most of them land on the introverted side of things).
I will say, though, that more people have ended up being let go for attitude, rather than work quality where I am employed. To put it plainly, in a large corporation where you have to work amongst imaginary and real bureaucracy, it doesn't matter how skilled you are, if you can't work with people you won't get anything done. Your fantastic project/work will not be looked at because nobody will care to see it and your manager (often non-technical) won't want to show it off because you keep aggravating him or putting him in the awkward position of defending your behavior to his superiors.
"I work for MegaCorp. We have developers here that are incredibly difficult to get along with and a few that are great. There seems to be this sense that the more capable and intelligent a person is the more frequently they're jerks to deal with. I haven't found this to be true. There are plenty of good devs that aren't "holier than thou" (and one of the best devs I worked with was clearly on the extroverted side, though most of them land on the introverted side of things)."
I agree with you here. I also find that the jerks, may seemingly be intelligent, but don't learn much from other people (which usually happens if you are smart+socially aware) because they think are right all the time
I think the 2 "skills" in question here are "tact and maturity".
No one is asking engineers to be salesmen or glad-handing PR people. But as so many others have pointed out, any mature adult, no matter their vocation, should have the basic social understanding of "this is ok to do/say" and "this is not ok to do/say" for most given situations.
i.e. tact..
And to all of you who hide behind the "that's not learnable for me, I'm awkward/nerdy/shy/neckbearded" excuses, I call bullshit. Grow up.
I was the epitome of awkward, shy and socially inept (since childhood) as a developer, and in my mid-20s I made the conscious choice to overcome these things. To become more professional and to learn how to communicate and interact properly with my co-workers, superiors, reports and YES even customers.
And I did it by just throwing myself in the fire. It was hard at first, but I figured it out. And it has opened so many doors and opportunities for me.
The combination of my technical competency as a developer and my professional communication skills has been a huge asset for me when looking for work and new opportunities.
Plus, on the lighter side, it eventually helped me with my inter-personal communication and social skills as an added bonus! (i.e. it got me laid more) :-)
> yet employers often find that people filling these roles with poor people skills are still employable. This needs to stop.
I’m of the opinion that every position is customer-facing.
Well fuck me, then. I'm sorry, it's already hard enough for me to find jobs as it is.
Frankly I'm glad we live in a society that has a place for us social retards. I really do believe that social "skills" can't be learned, at least not well. I'm glad there's a place for us, just like I'm glad there's a place for people who are short, black, or ugly. Yeah, there are fewer employment opportunities, and our salaries are handicapped consequentially (tech skills + people skills = high payed manager!) but telling us we should be out on our asses for something we can't help is cruel.
> "I really do believe that social "skills" can't be learned, at least not well."
As someone who, 5 years ago, couldn't stammer out 5 words in front of a crowd without shrinking so far back into his seat that he'd disappear... I strongly disagree.
I've gone from incredibly shy and socially clueless to being able to square off with management in meetings on important issues. I've gone from being unable to hold a conversation about anything non-tech to being a half-decent conversationalist that can hold non-techies' interests for more than 20 minutes.
I've also gone from dreading social events to looking forward to them. It's a great feeling, believe me.
It didn't come magically, it took a lot of extreme self-consciousness, a lot of deliberate self training, a whole lot of beating up oneself, and forcing myself to step well outside of my comfort zone for this to happen. But these things can very well be learned.
> I really do believe that social "skills" can't be
> learned, at least not well.
Well, I believe they can, but that's not the point. Being a social butterfly or socially inept doesn't matter here.
I have a customer-facing development position. I'm not the front-line of communication, but I am expected to answer the phone if I have to (esp. if it's a client), be polite, and not drive business away. That's really the all of it. I'm not expected to sell, or to cold-call anyone, but essentially the duties are: don't be a jerk.
If you survived an interview you're probably socially aware enough to handle this.
> I'm glad there's a place for us, just like I'm glad there's a place for people who are short, black, or ugly
Am I reading this correctly? Do you believe you have as little control over your behavior towards other people as a person has over their race, height, or facial structure? Even then, your analogy fails because short, black, or ugly people do not harm those around them merely by having those attributes, whereas if you behave like an asshole . . . ahem, a social retard . . . you do. I'm afraid that most people around you will feel differently about this issue than you do.
Actually, people skills can and are learned, but a lot occurs at an early age when you are not exactly in control of your education. Dealing with other children at <5 years is kind of important.
I had a friend in college who grew up on a farm. He was an only child, and I got the feeling his parents didn't really pay him much mind beyond rules and schedule. He did not play team sports or do team activities of any kind and really didn't mix after school with his peers. You could see his lack of comprehension he exhibited behavior and said words that caused offense. He did become a high school teacher.
I too believe not everyone needs to deal with customers. I blame the company for putting someone with that personality type in a job that has customer implications. Their response is also inadequate and should have been much more inline with "all our fault".
That being said, like you, I think he should be gone or put on leave for a while. Deleting backup data is a super no-no. That's a trust violation and has nothing to do with social skills.
> "social "skills" can't be learned, at least not well"
Yes they can. I grew up missing a bunch of key social skills (something akin to Asperger Syndrome). After I was married, my wife taught me to make eye contact when I spoke to her. I was a teaching assistant in grad school, and later an educator with a museum, and developed several skills through that. By the time I left to pursue full-time parenting, teachers would regularly compliment me on my people skills.
If somebody like me (who didn't even learn eye contact as a child) can learn decent "people skills", there's no excuse for any but the most extreme cases (and some of them even manage to make serious progress with the right training.)
Seriously. Companies retain these people because they provide value despite their poor social skills. Why shouldn't they keep them, if that's the case? If only those with good social skills were employable, the workforce would be cut in half.
Wrong problem. This whole issue was just typical assholery, it's not a failure of introverts or antisocial behavior. By all means, stop hiring assholes, but don't blame it on people who just hate smalltalk and never bothered to learn.
This guy is mistaking "poor people skills" with "being an asshole". I'm not sure whether the two are so clearly related : there are a few different manifestations of lack of social skills, and there are jerks who don't have much social skills issues.
"All it takes for someone to be good at customer service is: [...]".
This sounds so simple. And it misses quite the point. Lacking "social skills", is precisely this : not knowing how to behave completely "normally" (whatever that means) with other people. Like, not grasping the effect of your words, or not being able to think them through fast enough before saying them. Of course, I want to be helpful, and to answer the person in front of me (or on the phone). That doesn't mean that it is what the person will see or hear.
There seems to be a convention amongst the techie crowd that social rules are a silly bit of nonsense that dumber people engage in. This is not at all the case.
When I handle a project from beginning to end, it goes smoother. I find any mistakes I've made myself; I know what assumptions I made at every step; I don't have to get my head around the job over and over again; it's all-round easier.
When a team does projects, it requires rules, with some rigidity. Each person has to act somewhat like an object-oriented sub-routine, with guaranteed input, guaranteed output. This does add some overhead, but it allows each person to function with relative freedom in his own space.
Social rules and conventions are the rules for the team comprised of a culture doing the project of living. They allow us to get through the day using hundreds of social shortcuts; assumptions about each other's behavior, needs, wants, expectations.
Assuming that people show up on time, do what they have agreed to, etc obviously isn't stupid social rules. They have practical utility.
Sugar-coating peoples screw-ups, pretending they aren't wrong when they are or have a point when they don't, playing politics or favorites, etc however tends to make smart people look with distain on all social rules.
wait, what? There is a difference between being socially inept and destroying data because you think someone is a jerk. This difference is similar, I think, to the difference between honking or flipping someone off in traffic and, say, ramming them.
I mean, one of those things is just being rude. The other is going out of your way to damage someone else.
Personally, I would put up with a lot of the first. Rude people, of course, shouldn't be in customer service, but on the back end, eh, if they are good enough, I think they are worth keeping around. Especially if they are the extremely direct, blunt and honest kind of rude, I think they can actually be better back end people, sometimes, than people who try to twist things to look better than they are.
But people who destroy things when they are angry or insulted? yeah, those people should not be let anywhere near a root prompt.
I believe that what many are quick to refer to as social ineptitude is a keener sense of bullshit detection, combined with the inability to take it with a smile.
Imo, most socially-inept tech people are simply individuals that are more sensitive to the hypocrisy and nonsense one is exposed to when dealing with the public.
I don't know if being a tech person is a cause or an effect of that bullshit sensitivity, but as a programmer who used to be a bouncer in a bar a few years ago, I can tell you that some of my non-tech colleagues were by far very quick at losing their temper than I was.
Now, there's a difference between being bullshit intolerant and being malicious. I am of the firm opinion that the actions of that Tech support guy (deleting data out of pure spite) are certainly not characteristic of the tech-guy stereotype as we know it.
Good engineers' poor personal skill is often a manifestation of traits that allow them to be good engineers in the first place (though not a necessary condition). The same way Steve Jobs and James Cameron are horrible bosses to work for, the same way CEOs often suffer from ADD and bi-polar disorder, and the same way so many amazing Nobel Laureate have autism problems. If you appear ordinary in your personalities and traits, then chances are that you aren't the outstanding leader of your field.
Here's the problem with poor social skills: you put a low ceiling over your head. If you can't interact well with your co-workers, managers, and others, you won't get very far in your company.
You are free to be an asshole. But don't complain about the corners you put yourself into because of the choices you made.
"Kindness" is a pretty vague term. I think "empathy" might better suit your question.
It's rather difficult for some types of people to learn, especially if they're not exactly wired for that or their cultural or familial background didn't put much emphasis on it.
In the programming profession, it's not particularly useful when you primarily deal with computers (computers just don't care).
Based on some digging around I have a very strong suspicion that Jules is the founder and only employee of This*. I think the "new employee" will likely just be a new email account with a different name.
"The understanding that they represent their employer and that people are relying on them" - Most developers have huge, inflated egos.
"A compassionate, helpful, and courteous attitude" - See above.
"The knowledge of whatever their supporting" - An understanding of the technical side of a product is vastly different from the functional side as its easy for a developer to say "This is sample. You hit X, then Y then select Z and find Q" which does not translate in any way to a client understanding a product and the frustration of dealing with "simpletons" shines through - thus leading to outbursts like we've seen.
This is of course the standard. I would imagine entrepreneurs and such do not follow this guideline, but for a generic programmer these traits are not something that are a typical side-effect of the craft unless you start moving up in rank.
The fact that the author would be offended by the statements mentioned really reiterates the point that most developers take things entirely too personally. I know I did for the better part of 10 years.
I think that stereotype is about as likely to be true as the "typical" developer's stereotype of designers and managers being the ones with inflated egos. The "typical" programming company seems to be quite the ego contest, if you listen to what everyone secretly thinks about everyone else!
I know a few universities that are pushing programs to "fix" this problem in engineers by encouraging them to do more presentations and group projects.
It seems like there will always parts of "geek culture" that just don't care. Perhaps they're even proud of social ineptitude? But those aren't engineers I would want to work with.
Offence: Engineer is offended by customer and flushes the customers livelihood (website)
Cure: Management should be offended by engineers and flush THEIR livelihood (job)
Seems symmetrical, but perhaps over-simplifying the problem? Of course I realize that the article above doesn't directly advocate firing the engineer, but many high-functioning technical people just cannot realistically be trained to be social animals too. Those abrasive nerds are really productive outside of a customer service role, so wouldn't a better solution be to fix the mis-allocation of tech staffing resources to customer facing roles?
edit: and yeah, maybe the problem is that this particular engineer was just a dick, and we shouldn't use him as an example in the discussion of technical vs social roles in our companies.
Yeah, I don't believe for a second that this is a trait that belongs exclusively to engineers.
Here's a thought: anyone in a position of "power" is susceptible to this dynamic; if "social" relationships were described as an equation, then power (P) would be inversely proportional to the effort or energy (E) you need to expend to maintain any given social relationship (R),
P = R/E
The more power/authority you wield, the more of a jerk you can be (not should be or are), because the value of the relationship is lopsided - you don't need to spend as much energy on it.
The power an engineer holds is that they are often quite valuable within an organization, and tend to have an easily transferable skill set.
I'd put the blame on whoever hired the guy and put him out front as the customer support guy, without monitoring him. Some of it's attributable to the support guy, but most of the blame should fall on his bosses.
I think the author needs to display a little bit of that compassion he's talking about and realize that learning social skills is not as easy for everyone as it might have been for him. The world is full of different kinds of people, and it takes all kinds to run a company. If Jules is truly great at the technical side of his job, I see no problem with freeing him to get on with it.
[+] [-] nathanb|14 years ago|reply
You can argue that if the culture shifted such that these individuals were marginalized and forced out then they would change out of necessity. I could see this argument--idealistic to the point of fallacy though it is--presented at other venues. However, those who frequent Hacker News should know that these people will find talented others who are capable of dealing with their social immaturity and will end up co-founding their own company and, unencumbered by the enforced social niceties of this fictional society, may very well end up becoming a dominant player and returning to the status quo.
[+] [-] generalk|14 years ago|reply
I agree, very talented engineers tend to be abrasive. I know a handful myself. But each and every one of them is capable, at the very least, of not being an intentional jerk and being basically polite and respectful in their dealings.
[+] [-] itg|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 16bytes|14 years ago|reply
I think this is the crux of the argument. That there are people who are highly technical and good at soft skills proves that it is not a necessary side-effect.
Why would it be? What evidence is there that there is a meaningful correlation beyond pure anecdotes?
I agree with the author. Here's my take: extraordinarily talented engineers have been given carte blanche in this regard because there is an well accepted stereotype. If we stopped accepting this behavior, I believe engineers will adapt, or be replaced by those who can.
I don't expect everybody to be a social butterfly, but I do expect people not to be an outright ass (i.e. 'abrasive personalities')
[+] [-] lhnz|14 years ago|reply
Seemingly-meaningless boilerplate? I disagree: (1) There's plenty of meaning to be found if you want to pick up a psychology, PR, or sociology book and actively try to learn something about people, (2) People skills are extremely important if your company needs to deal with the public or forge business relationships. You are just making your life difficult if you refuse to acknowledge or learn what most of the world takes for granted.
[+] [-] mvzink|14 years ago|reply
helps them see through the seemingly-meaningless boilerplate and social grease that we call people skills
but I would like to highlight a different aspect of it. Basically, my point (illustrated below, not argued) is that they aren't "seeing through" it, they are seeing it wrong.
You see, I thought exactly this way about "people skills" when I was younger. If those "extraordinarily talented engineers who have extremely abrasive personalities" are anything like me, the they see it as boilerplate and grease because they are thinking of the whole thing from the orientation of utility. Employees have a function, customers have a function, engineers have a function, and why can't just you do your goddamn function and let me do mine? This fits with what I've learned from people who match your description. I myself often fashioned my social interactions from that direction quite deliberately. A highly technical engineer doing business would be very likely to approach "people skills" as another chore with a beginning, a process, and an end that hopefully meets your goals, for example. Those who think that process is "meaningless" are less likely to care how well they do it.
Anyway, pretty soon I learned that people are people, not cogs. Now I have more friends, live a happier life, blah blah blah, buy my book and so can you, but most importantly, I've never had bad blood with an employeer, client, or... anyone, really. Nobody thinks I'm abrasive or mean any more, etc. I'm not going to weigh in on my talent, but I would like to think I started from a similar place, socially, to those engineers. I could be totally off base, but I've been thinking about this for a while. Approach interactions as interactions, from one mind to another, and try to communicate with a person.
[+] [-] jamii|14 years ago|reply
> ... also helps them see through the seemingly-meaningless boilerplate and social grease that we call people skills.
'Seemingly-meaningless' being the key word. Such boilerplate exists for a reason. It would be nice if all communication were perfectly efficient and noone ever had to be anything but perfectly honest but the nature of the world is such that social skills are necessary. They can be learned, as plenty of people here have already attested. It is difficult and frightening but utterly worthwhile. Learn the rituals, play the game, fake it till you make it. Otherwise you are signalling to everyone around you that you don't value their presence enough to even bother with basic social niceties, whether or not that is actually the case.
[+] [-] kaitnieks|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mannicken|14 years ago|reply
Or they are just socially inept.
With the same approach I could propose that these talented engineers just see through the meaningless of distance running and hence are unable to run a mile under 4:10. Why, isn't it because they suck at running? Oh no, not that. They just _choose not to run a mile faster than 4:10_, right? No, not right. Why?
Why? Because! If you are a genius at A that doesn't necessarily mean you're a genius at B, C, D, E, F and all the other areas.
Let's not even talk about geniuses, most of the "oh, I can be an asshole" attitude comes from people who haven't actually accomplished anything that great for humanity.
[+] [-] Sidnicious|14 years ago|reply
So, it seems that it should be the company’s responsibility to make sure that they don’t talk to frustrated customers — or terminate their accounts — just like the employees without strong computer skills shouldn’t touch the servers.
[+] [-] ulisesroche|14 years ago|reply
I think "talented" just means they've spent a lot with an open terminal, and the side-effect of "abrasiveness" is really that sitting down for a long-time makes you tired and grumpy. So instead of crafting really complicated excuses, just go outside for a bit and stretch or something.
[+] [-] cema|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reduxredacted|14 years ago|reply
I work for MegaCorp. We have developers here that are incredibly difficult to get along with and a few that are great. There seems to be this sense that the more capable and intelligent a person is the more frequently they're jerks to deal with. I haven't found this to be true. There are plenty of good devs that aren't "holier than thou" (and one of the best devs I worked with was clearly on the extroverted side, though most of them land on the introverted side of things).
I will say, though, that more people have ended up being let go for attitude, rather than work quality where I am employed. To put it plainly, in a large corporation where you have to work amongst imaginary and real bureaucracy, it doesn't matter how skilled you are, if you can't work with people you won't get anything done. Your fantastic project/work will not be looked at because nobody will care to see it and your manager (often non-technical) won't want to show it off because you keep aggravating him or putting him in the awkward position of defending your behavior to his superiors.
[+] [-] rick888|14 years ago|reply
I agree with you here. I also find that the jerks, may seemingly be intelligent, but don't learn much from other people (which usually happens if you are smart+socially aware) because they think are right all the time
[+] [-] sbarre|14 years ago|reply
No one is asking engineers to be salesmen or glad-handing PR people. But as so many others have pointed out, any mature adult, no matter their vocation, should have the basic social understanding of "this is ok to do/say" and "this is not ok to do/say" for most given situations.
i.e. tact..
And to all of you who hide behind the "that's not learnable for me, I'm awkward/nerdy/shy/neckbearded" excuses, I call bullshit. Grow up.
I was the epitome of awkward, shy and socially inept (since childhood) as a developer, and in my mid-20s I made the conscious choice to overcome these things. To become more professional and to learn how to communicate and interact properly with my co-workers, superiors, reports and YES even customers.
And I did it by just throwing myself in the fire. It was hard at first, but I figured it out. And it has opened so many doors and opportunities for me.
The combination of my technical competency as a developer and my professional communication skills has been a huge asset for me when looking for work and new opportunities.
Plus, on the lighter side, it eventually helped me with my inter-personal communication and social skills as an added bonus! (i.e. it got me laid more) :-)
[+] [-] araneae|14 years ago|reply
Well fuck me, then. I'm sorry, it's already hard enough for me to find jobs as it is.
Frankly I'm glad we live in a society that has a place for us social retards. I really do believe that social "skills" can't be learned, at least not well. I'm glad there's a place for us, just like I'm glad there's a place for people who are short, black, or ugly. Yeah, there are fewer employment opportunities, and our salaries are handicapped consequentially (tech skills + people skills = high payed manager!) but telling us we should be out on our asses for something we can't help is cruel.
Obviously the guy should have been fired though.
[+] [-] potatolicious|14 years ago|reply
As someone who, 5 years ago, couldn't stammer out 5 words in front of a crowd without shrinking so far back into his seat that he'd disappear... I strongly disagree.
I've gone from incredibly shy and socially clueless to being able to square off with management in meetings on important issues. I've gone from being unable to hold a conversation about anything non-tech to being a half-decent conversationalist that can hold non-techies' interests for more than 20 minutes.
I've also gone from dreading social events to looking forward to them. It's a great feeling, believe me.
It didn't come magically, it took a lot of extreme self-consciousness, a lot of deliberate self training, a whole lot of beating up oneself, and forcing myself to step well outside of my comfort zone for this to happen. But these things can very well be learned.
[+] [-] generalk|14 years ago|reply
I have a customer-facing development position. I'm not the front-line of communication, but I am expected to answer the phone if I have to (esp. if it's a client), be polite, and not drive business away. That's really the all of it. I'm not expected to sell, or to cold-call anyone, but essentially the duties are: don't be a jerk.
If you survived an interview you're probably socially aware enough to handle this.
[+] [-] metafour|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesaguilar|14 years ago|reply
Am I reading this correctly? Do you believe you have as little control over your behavior towards other people as a person has over their race, height, or facial structure? Even then, your analogy fails because short, black, or ugly people do not harm those around them merely by having those attributes, whereas if you behave like an asshole . . . ahem, a social retard . . . you do. I'm afraid that most people around you will feel differently about this issue than you do.
[+] [-] protomyth|14 years ago|reply
I had a friend in college who grew up on a farm. He was an only child, and I got the feeling his parents didn't really pay him much mind beyond rules and schedule. He did not play team sports or do team activities of any kind and really didn't mix after school with his peers. You could see his lack of comprehension he exhibited behavior and said words that caused offense. He did become a high school teacher.
I too believe not everyone needs to deal with customers. I blame the company for putting someone with that personality type in a job that has customer implications. Their response is also inadequate and should have been much more inline with "all our fault".
That being said, like you, I think he should be gone or put on leave for a while. Deleting backup data is a super no-no. That's a trust violation and has nothing to do with social skills.
[+] [-] lotharbot|14 years ago|reply
Yes they can. I grew up missing a bunch of key social skills (something akin to Asperger Syndrome). After I was married, my wife taught me to make eye contact when I spoke to her. I was a teaching assistant in grad school, and later an educator with a museum, and developed several skills through that. By the time I left to pursue full-time parenting, teachers would regularly compliment me on my people skills.
If somebody like me (who didn't even learn eye contact as a child) can learn decent "people skills", there's no excuse for any but the most extreme cases (and some of them even manage to make serious progress with the right training.)
[+] [-] mikeash|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jach|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Wilya|14 years ago|reply
"All it takes for someone to be good at customer service is: [...]".
This sounds so simple. And it misses quite the point. Lacking "social skills", is precisely this : not knowing how to behave completely "normally" (whatever that means) with other people. Like, not grasping the effect of your words, or not being able to think them through fast enough before saying them. Of course, I want to be helpful, and to answer the person in front of me (or on the phone). That doesn't mean that it is what the person will see or hear.
[+] [-] CapitalistCartr|14 years ago|reply
When I handle a project from beginning to end, it goes smoother. I find any mistakes I've made myself; I know what assumptions I made at every step; I don't have to get my head around the job over and over again; it's all-round easier.
When a team does projects, it requires rules, with some rigidity. Each person has to act somewhat like an object-oriented sub-routine, with guaranteed input, guaranteed output. This does add some overhead, but it allows each person to function with relative freedom in his own space.
Social rules and conventions are the rules for the team comprised of a culture doing the project of living. They allow us to get through the day using hundreds of social shortcuts; assumptions about each other's behavior, needs, wants, expectations.
[+] [-] tomjen3|14 years ago|reply
Sugar-coating peoples screw-ups, pretending they aren't wrong when they are or have a point when they don't, playing politics or favorites, etc however tends to make smart people look with distain on all social rules.
[+] [-] lsc|14 years ago|reply
I mean, one of those things is just being rude. The other is going out of your way to damage someone else.
Personally, I would put up with a lot of the first. Rude people, of course, shouldn't be in customer service, but on the back end, eh, if they are good enough, I think they are worth keeping around. Especially if they are the extremely direct, blunt and honest kind of rude, I think they can actually be better back end people, sometimes, than people who try to twist things to look better than they are.
But people who destroy things when they are angry or insulted? yeah, those people should not be let anywhere near a root prompt.
[+] [-] mekoka|14 years ago|reply
Imo, most socially-inept tech people are simply individuals that are more sensitive to the hypocrisy and nonsense one is exposed to when dealing with the public.
I don't know if being a tech person is a cause or an effect of that bullshit sensitivity, but as a programmer who used to be a bouncer in a bar a few years ago, I can tell you that some of my non-tech colleagues were by far very quick at losing their temper than I was.
Now, there's a difference between being bullshit intolerant and being malicious. I am of the firm opinion that the actions of that Tech support guy (deleting data out of pure spite) are certainly not characteristic of the tech-guy stereotype as we know it.
[+] [-] hong|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrcharles|14 years ago|reply
Stop letting writers get away with technical ineptitude!
[+] [-] hoop|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epochwolf|14 years ago|reply
Edit: added a smiley
[+] [-] ori_b|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ulisesroche|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swilliams|14 years ago|reply
You are free to be an asshole. But don't complain about the corners you put yourself into because of the choices you made.
[+] [-] drivingmenuts|14 years ago|reply
It's rather difficult for some types of people to learn, especially if they're not exactly wired for that or their cultural or familial background didn't put much emphasis on it.
In the programming profession, it's not particularly useful when you primarily deal with computers (computers just don't care).
[+] [-] jarin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] methodin|14 years ago|reply
"A compassionate, helpful, and courteous attitude" - See above.
"The knowledge of whatever their supporting" - An understanding of the technical side of a product is vastly different from the functional side as its easy for a developer to say "This is sample. You hit X, then Y then select Z and find Q" which does not translate in any way to a client understanding a product and the frustration of dealing with "simpletons" shines through - thus leading to outbursts like we've seen.
This is of course the standard. I would imagine entrepreneurs and such do not follow this guideline, but for a generic programmer these traits are not something that are a typical side-effect of the craft unless you start moving up in rank.
The fact that the author would be offended by the statements mentioned really reiterates the point that most developers take things entirely too personally. I know I did for the better part of 10 years.
[+] [-] cousin_it|14 years ago|reply
I think that stereotype is about as likely to be true as the "typical" developer's stereotype of designers and managers being the ones with inflated egos. The "typical" programming company seems to be quite the ego contest, if you listen to what everyone secretly thinks about everyone else!
[+] [-] tedkalaw|14 years ago|reply
It seems like there will always parts of "geek culture" that just don't care. Perhaps they're even proud of social ineptitude? But those aren't engineers I would want to work with.
[+] [-] Lost_BiomedE|14 years ago|reply
Where I saw the most exercising of social skills, involved cheating.
[+] [-] Rantenki|14 years ago|reply
Cure: Management should be offended by engineers and flush THEIR livelihood (job)
Seems symmetrical, but perhaps over-simplifying the problem? Of course I realize that the article above doesn't directly advocate firing the engineer, but many high-functioning technical people just cannot realistically be trained to be social animals too. Those abrasive nerds are really productive outside of a customer service role, so wouldn't a better solution be to fix the mis-allocation of tech staffing resources to customer facing roles?
edit: and yeah, maybe the problem is that this particular engineer was just a dick, and we shouldn't use him as an example in the discussion of technical vs social roles in our companies.
[+] [-] duggan|14 years ago|reply
Here's a thought: anyone in a position of "power" is susceptible to this dynamic; if "social" relationships were described as an equation, then power (P) would be inversely proportional to the effort or energy (E) you need to expend to maintain any given social relationship (R),
P = R/E
The more power/authority you wield, the more of a jerk you can be (not should be or are), because the value of the relationship is lopsided - you don't need to spend as much energy on it.
The power an engineer holds is that they are often quite valuable within an organization, and tend to have an easily transferable skill set.
[+] [-] drivingmenuts|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cruise02|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] generalk|14 years ago|reply
Not being an asshole to paying customers is what matters here. That's not a social skill, that's a matter of maturity and respect.