Jeff Moden (9/29/2013)
bmcgirr (9/29/2013)
Nice to be challenged with an opinion I can't agree with 🙂I think you've put forward a bit of a straw man argument here. As a minimum, an interviewee must have the technical skills required to do the job. Nobody would hire a nice guy just because they are nice. The thing that gets people hired above that is whether or not they can apply those skills to produce what the customer wants. This requires the softer skills and a company would be silly to ignore them.
Amen to that.
I'll also tell you that I've had to work with some real jerks that some bosses put up with because the bosses thought the person was somehow smart enough to be indispensible. That's just wrong. Someone who can't get along with other people on the job is bad for moral and can drag a whole team down. There's no need for anyone to have to tolerate a jerk just because he's smart. There are enough smart people in the world that can work with others that you don't have to hire or keep a jerk.
I guess it depends on how you define jerk.
A person who is consistently causing issues is a problem, but a person who isn't social is not a problem unless you try to force them to be something they aren't.
Example 1 - a highly technical guy or gal that gets lost in their work, thinking deeply, researching, unwilling to be disturbed with inane talk about what clothese someone else is wearing, or what team won this weekend. This person is better described as focused and capable.
Example 2 - a person, technical or not, that spends their entire day talking about what team one this weekend, what clothes someone is wearing, and not producing anything. A social butterfly!
Example 3 - a person, technical or not, who seems to enjoy destroying others any way they can, fights to cause unrest and destroy teams, spends their entire life focused on how "we always did it this way", "we tried that before", et cetera.
Of those three people, example 1 is the person I want to work with because I know I am paid to do a job, not socialize. I see nothing wrong with someone else wanting to do their job. I think you are referring to example 3, which of course is someone that shouldn't be there. I submit, though, that example 2 is just as bad if not worse, because management tends to think these people are great, and the rest of us end up picking up the slack.
Dave