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.
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.
Being well liked among your coworkers and enjoying their company instead of dreading it everyday is a little bit too ineffable to work on.
> I really do believe that social "skills" can't be
> learned, at least not well.
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.
...and my actual life takes up a lot of time...
As adults, I think its pretty mature to accept ourselves the way we are, and move on without wasting time agonizing over our many imperfections.
Faulty or not, I still have stuff I need to do.
I'm short, too, and I've learned to accept that, just as I've learned to accept the fact that some of my friends have more people posting "happy birthday" on their wall than I do.
No visible progress != not even attempt.
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.
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.
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.)
There'll always be exceptions that go on to become president and whatever, but it's a lot of work and a lot of luck.
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.
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.
Yeah, there's a not-so-subtle line there.
I would be concerned if an employee of mine exhibited that behavior, because I've seen it before. We had a technically brilliant, but socially ... scary ... individual working as a sysadmin. He blew up about a decision to abandon all of our 1-off mail platforms and switch purely to Exchange (rather than GroupWise, which he preferred and most in our location used).
He was the technical lead for our GroupWise deployment, so to voice his dissatisfaction with the decision that idiots in upper management made, he did us the courtesy of wiping out a swath of our employee's mailboxes contained on one of the servers. And, much like this guy but on a grander scale, began erasing the current set of tapes that had backed up most of our servers our location.
We didn't end up losing much, and I can't remember why (we had tapes stored off-site off-line, but they were only moved weekly). The thing that was most shocking was all of the profanity and yelling originating from his cube while he was packing up his things under direct supervision of a member of corporate security. He seemed genuinely surprised he was told his services were no longer necessary (they even laid him off rather than firing him for cause, allowing him severance pay and unemployment during a hiring boom). At no point did he seem like a stable guy. His boss liked him because he was very smart and the result of his cleverness was enough of an improvement to services and reduction in costs that his instabilities could be argued away ("He launched this project that's bringing in X revenue, he's just a little strange, that's all.").
Sad thing: he continued to find employment and continued to get laid off (5 places, I believe), then died at 37 of a heart attack. The guy who noticed the obit forwarded it out to our team like it was some sort of vindication "See, he DIED because he was such a jerk!". Even normally decent people have a mean streak about them, I guess.
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')
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.
2) There is a difference between refusing to learn, and learning and seeing no meaning in some of that stuff. The problem with so called people-skills is that they tend to become automated actions, some kind of cargo cult. You can execute them perfectly, and not care a bit about the people you so smoothly interact with. When you see that real thought are dilluted beyond any reconition in a sea of polite babbling you know that something is wrong.
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.
I also know plenty of incredibly talented engineers who have great people skills. These engineers tend to rise faster and go further than the ones who are lacking in that area. I'm sure you have found this yourself.
> ... 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.
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.
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.
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.
see through the seemingly-meaningless boilerplate
and social grease that we call people skills
A short explanation might be, socially skilled people are slow (lazy) to understand anything technical and are impatient (holier-than-thou) with unskilled people. Technically skilled people are slow (lazy) to understand anything social/political and are impatient (holier-than-thou) with unskilled people. I think it's possible, though slow, to teach any skill to anyone. To really fix the problem, maybe start by convincing companies that teaching skills outside your area of expertise is worthwhile. I can get technical training paid for by my company. Social/managerial training, not so much. Likewise project managers can't get reimbursed for technical training. The assumption seems to be "Oh well they don't really need it and what they do need they'll pick up on the job or on their own time."
Stop letting writers get away with technical ineptitude!
Edit: added a smiley
You are free to be an asshole. But don't complain about the corners you put yourself into because of the choices you made.
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).
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.
Pedantry aside, that engineer still comes off as a dick in this context.
Stopped reading right there.
"I am a technical person who also has ability Y, therefore all technical people should have ability Y."
This is the thinking that would sit Magic Johnson down and say "Your ball game is pretty good, but your golf game is awful. Stop working on your basketball skills and start golf training."
Bottom line: customer support requires ability, certain personality traits, and training. Do not let anyone (technical, non-technical, CFO, anyone) handle customer support if they are not qualified. It will end badly.
What we need is the social equivalent of a wheelchair and then get back to more important matters.
There are tons of geeks who are really personable.
Taking one example of an engineer who may have had a bad day because of people being rude/confrontational and extrapolating them to social ineptitude of engineers is missing the forest for the trees.
I'm an engineer with "people skills" who has worked large and small organizations including a hosting company and many freelance jobs. No one should be really surprised when a hosting company employee goes off, because it is one of the shittiest customer service jobs you can have in terms of the entitlement factor and low margins. That's not to say the guy should be excused, but just pointing out that it doesn't necessarily means he lacks people skills, it may just have been the straw that broke the camel's back.
As far as engineers talking to customers goes, I think that depends heavily on the company. Obviously engineers can provide better customer support than someone with little technical knowledge, but if there are many customers then there's most likely more bang for the buck solving technical problems that affect many people. Personally I've often felt visceral frustration with taking the time to provide quality support when I know full well that I'm sacrificing potential productivity to help one person when there are issues affecting hundreds or thousands that are still unresolved. I justify it by chalking it up to the (perhaps) intangible benefit of providing truly exceptional customer service.
> Taking one example of an engineer who may have had a bad day [...]
Look, if I get moody and pissed off and start cursing to myself at my desk, hey, just another Tuesday.
But if I then decide to terminate paid accounts and backups? Engage in a flamewar in a public forum with paying customers? Wow, that's beyond "may have had a bad day" and into "destroying shareholder value" and "employment terminated immediately."
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 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
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.
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.
Many, many people I'm certain have asked themselves "why, oh why can't Steve (or Jim) be nicer" (and still be the same in every other way). People just don't work like that.
Great post!
"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!
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.
Where I saw the most exercising of social skills, involved cheating.
Someone needs a socially inept engineer to fix their website.
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) :-)
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In order words, "tact" is something you need to learn. Especially in internet world where doing something stupid is just a click away.
And that's before you get a customer-facing role.
This seems like a whole lot of attention over what seems like one guy who is an asshole.
Can anyone post up a copy? Seems like a sensational title - would love to see the argument.
I do think the (stereo-)typical techs can be said to prefer focusing on interesting problems and on their computers rather than having to deal with people all day long - possibly angry or even downright abusive customers demanding support. I don't see the (stereo-)typical techs as slimy and very skilled at playing the political game and manipulating people and advancing the career ladder through it. (which is something I would see as very specific but definitely STRONG people skills, no matter how repulsive.)
But that doesn't mean all techs don't have any manners or empathy.