Employers Find ‘Soft Skills’ Like Critical Thinking in Short Supply • Hacker News Board

Re: Employers Find ‘Soft Skills’ Like Critical Thinking in Short Supply

#101

Post by mcshicks » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 8:31 PM UTC

JoshTko wrote: post #59

I work for a fortune 100 and critical thinking is highly valued on my team. One thing that I've observed is that expressing critical thinking without communication skill comes across as being argumentative. If you find yourself frequently arguing a point but no one is convinced, assuming you are actually correct on the issue, then you probably just have weak communication skills.

It's interesting the title of the article assumes that critical thinking is a "soft skill". However I don't that's necessarily a great assumption. I think of soft skills as more along the lines of people skills, like communication, integrity, work ethic, etc. If you look at wikipedia article it cites several definitions, none of which include critical thinking or "problem solving". They are all more long the lines of communication skills, cutesy, and work ethics.

There is also no breakdown of which industries were surveyed. It maybe the firms that hire lots of engineers or other professions that require solving new and different problem frequently were not well represented in the survey.

It just seems to me the premise of the article isn't that well thought out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_skills

Re: Employers Find ‘Soft Skills’ Like Critical Thinking in Short Supply

#102

Post by Yhippa » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 8:31 PM UTC

zigzigzag wrote: post #43

guitarbill wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disruptive behaviour in school is often caused by boredom. In a professional setting, I guess it could also be for ego/political reasons. But if somebody is thinking along and asks genuinely good questions, it isn't usually for ego reasons - they want to learn. I think it's worth pursuing: either a) you find somebody knows why it was done a certain way, and it's good to spread that knowledge (and get to know other pe…

Disruptive behaviour is caused by frustration, and frustration in school is often caused by boredom (it's not like there are many other sources compared to the workplace). The problem with workplace politics is that there are usually two kinds of critical thinking: thinking that boils down to "we are doing OK, but we could do better if we did X" which is the type of critical thinking everyone loves, and then there's…

When I was younger I played the game of fitting in. I remember one time at a company this guy wanted to improve our process (process improvement and Lean was a big buzzword at the company at the time) by introducing automated testing to augment our completely manual and inefficient way we were doing testing. He fought the good fight but was eventually labeled a black sheep and got "managed out". I learned a lot about what companies say they want and what they actually want from that experience.

Re: Employers Find ‘Soft Skills’ Like Critical Thinking in Short Supply

#103

Post by WalterBright » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 8:40 PM UTC

zigzigzag wrote: post #43

guitarbill wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disruptive behaviour in school is often caused by boredom. In a professional setting, I guess it could also be for ego/political reasons. But if somebody is thinking along and asks genuinely good questions, it isn't usually for ego reasons - they want to learn. I think it's worth pursuing: either a) you find somebody knows why it was done a certain way, and it's good to spread that knowledge (and get to know other pe…

Disruptive behaviour is caused by frustration, and frustration in school is often caused by boredom (it's not like there are many other sources compared to the workplace). The problem with workplace politics is that there are usually two kinds of critical thinking: thinking that boils down to "we are doing OK, but we could do better if we did X" which is the type of critical thinking everyone loves, and then there's…

Keep in mind that one thing every manager/owner hears day in, day out, all the time, is advice on how he's doing everything wrong and here's how to do it better. It isn't surprising that this eventually gets tuned out until there's good associated evidence that this particular person should be listened to.

Every one of us is sure we know how to do our manager's job better than he does. There are threads every day on HN (including this one) on this. Is it any surprise that managers tend to tune it out after a while?

Re: Employers Find ‘Soft Skills’ Like Critical Thinking in Short Supply

#104

Post by bsder » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 8:41 PM UTC

dingbat wrote: post #85

adekok wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In every place I've been, school, university, corporate jobs, the "critical thinkers" always got marginalised. Because while they get things done, they challenge the status quo. When I've worked for large companies, the #1, #2, and #3 products of the company were management politics. Actually shipping anything was #4, maybe #5. Critical thinkers looked at that and went "we could do better", and got punished for it.

in a large company, if the main products are management politics, as you say, a capable critical thinker ought to be able to dominate that game, instead of focusing on relatively unimportant priorities like "shipping". if someone tends to get marginalized, by definition that means they are ineffective at "getting things done".

> in a large company, if the main products are management politics, as you say, a capable critical thinker ought to be able to dominate that game, instead of focusing on relatively unimportant priorities like "shipping".

Um, they do exactly that? Upper managers are notorious for spending most of their time playing politics and very little time delivering product.

Re: Employers Find ‘Soft Skills’ Like Critical Thinking in Short Supply

#105

Post by dingbat » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 9:12 PM UTC

bsder wrote: post #104

dingbat wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in a large company, if the main products are management politics, as you say, a capable critical thinker ought to be able to dominate that game, instead of focusing on relatively unimportant priorities like "shipping". if someone tends to get marginalized, by definition that means they are ineffective at "getting things done".

> in a large company, if the main products are management politics, as you say, a capable critical thinker ought to be able to dominate that game, instead of focusing on relatively unimportant priorities like "shipping". Um, they do exactly that? Upper managers are notorious for spending most of their time playing politics and very little time delivering product.

person i was responding to was defining "critical thinkers" as the ones who get sidelined and punished for challenging the status quo and focusing on priorities that are secondary (in fact not even secondary, #4, #5) to the purported main product of large companies, which is political gamesmanship.

so, alleged "critical thinkers" in this context are just the frustrated losers who think they are the one who get things done (which everyone thinks of themselves), but who actually focus on the wrong things to get done, while also rendering themselves ineffective even in that effort.

Re: Employers Find ‘Soft Skills’ Like Critical Thinking in Short Supply

#106

Post by B1FF_PSUVM » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 9:25 PM UTC

ReallyAnonymous wrote: post #18

dgax wrote: post #8

The article, especially some of the examples, seems abusive to low-wage employees. How many of us would give a job description that said 'this is not a preparation for a slow motion contest' a second glance? The meat and potatoes of the article is mostly just complaints to be honest. A lack of candidates is always the go-to excuse for managers and executives when explaining poor productivity or vacancies. Job seekers…

I work for a >10,000 employee health care system as a physician. What I have seen is that the front line workers are considered disposable, and should be grateful for a job. The superstars ( always nice, compassionate, and excellent at their jobs) are not recognized by management and so when raises are given, everyone gets them, including the lazy ones. This disappoints the worker bees, and leads to incredible turnov…

> so the MBAs running my organization have no clue

There, you said it.

Re: Employers Find ‘Soft Skills’ Like Critical Thinking in Short Supply

#107

Post by caminante » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 9:33 PM UTC

smitherfield wrote: post #97

caminante wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure what the solution is, but it's just an observation. You're constrained (enabled) by the competitive strategy your HCS employs: cost leadership (e.g. Wal-Mart), differentiation (e.g. Apple), or focus (e.g. Southwest Airlines). [0] Strategic focus allows companies to better align their incentives with culture, and it seems to work better. If your HCS doesn't fall in one of these categories, compensation's ev…

What about Amazon? It seems like they're pursuing both the differentiation and cost leadership strategies. Of course, they're the world's largest retailer by market cap, so they can afford to do both. And usually I don't even look elsewhere for a product, because I figure that they have either the lowest price or close to the lowest, and will deliver it the fastest. So I guess more differentiation?

If I had to pick one, I'd say cost leadership. Amazon grew through cost leadership, and that's still the company at its core as it a) achieves high asset utilization b) keeps costs low, and c) controls most of its supply chain. What might seem like AMZN using a differentiation strategy is actually just focused cost leadership in mid-up market segments.

Re: Employers Find ‘Soft Skills’ Like Critical Thinking in Short Supply

#108

Post by zepto » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 9:41 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #100

dilemma wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creativity and critical thinking. In subordinate position it gets you labelled a dreamer, a weirdo, or an idiot. In executive position, visionary, maverick, multidisciplinary thinker, etc. You can only truly creative in a position with autonomy, so you either climb the ladder or start your own thing.

At some point, things need to get done or a company goes out of business.

How is that relevant to the comment you are replying to?

Re: Employers Find ‘Soft Skills’ Like Critical Thinking in Short Supply

#109

Post by naveen99 » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 9:41 PM UTC

angry_octet wrote: post #89

mannykannot wrote: post #12

There seems to be a trend in management towards an unwarranted belief in the effectiveness and importance of superficial quantitative analysis, and two complementary myths that go along with the trend: a) any number you can assign to something is significant; b) anything you cannot assign a number to is not significant. Anyone approaching recruiting with this mindset is neither using critical thinking, nor likely to…

There has been an uptick in user of discredited techniques to screen in recruitment, stuff like MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), lots of pseudo science without measuring validity. It seems like HR have been told to find people with soft skills and so they manufacture something that will give a rating and then rank candidates by that.

> mbti discredited

Do you have any good citations?

A majority of hacker news readers are INTJ and intp, 2 types that generally find mbti useful in understanding themselves and others.

I doubt hr puts much stock in mbti anyway, because it would be an easy test to game if it was officially considered.

Re: Employers Find ‘Soft Skills’ Like Critical Thinking in Short Supply

#110

Post by blablabla123 » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 9:41 PM UTC

guitarbill wrote: post #7

Thank god the Wall Street Journal is encouraging critical thinking, and more importantly fostering the discussion by putting articles like this out for everybody to read /s On a more serious note, I don't believe this is true. In every place I've been, school, university, corporate jobs, the "critical thinkers" always got marginalised. This was the case even if they were truly nice people who cared - i.e. not abrasiv…

I made a similar observation, critical thinking seems to be something undesired and it easily gets suppressed. However I truly believe it can work but it needs some sort of personal communication strategy. For example timing is critical. An obvious example is when shit hits the fan and coming up with reasons what could have been done better in the past. It's better to postpone that when things are fixed.

But when working with people that generally dislike critical input, one needs to combine this with other things. Like saying such criticism only 1:1 (never in meetings), staying cool and thinking out things before saying them. Sometimes it's better to not answer certain people instead of giving a half baked answer that can be used for attack ground.

Yeah, life isn't easy but there are ways.