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pretty typical salesmanship: if you convince people a) there's something wrong with them and b) that thing can be changed, you can sell them a cure.
People often use "its just my personality" as an excuse for bad behavior. Intuitively I think most people know that you have control over your behavior at the very least as well as aspects of your personality. Just like any other activity, you can practice being a more considerate, or more respectful, or less neurotic personality. There is a weird meme that tech people aren't capable of being "team players" or workin…
Personally, I work in a environment where most of my colleagues are also engineering professionals, and most everyone is friendly and helpful. And while probably being the most stereotypical tech nerd in my department, I still get occasional commendations for my good team play.
BUT...
even I will not for long put a good face for lazy whiners who would have me do their job for them, and hold their hand through every trivial aspect of things they should either already know, or be able to figure out for themselves with a bare minimum of brains and effort. And, unfortunately, those people are not quite unheard of.
Don't get me wrong, I do believe that personality can change, just this article didn't seem to present a good basis for that thinking.
People often use "its just my personality" as an excuse for bad behavior. Intuitively I think most people know that you have control over your behavior at the very least as well as aspects of your personality. Just like any other activity, you can practice being a more considerate, or more respectful, or less neurotic personality. There is a weird meme that tech people aren't capable of being "team players" or workin…
This is purely anecdotal, but at one particularly memorable company, the head of HR would regularly make casual comments that cast the engineers as socially incapable and childish. Meanwhile, she was constantly offending people and her life was a chaotic mess.
At the same company, they always talked about team this and team that, but efforts to actually incorporate the team (e.g. clear communication, collaboration) were obviously seen as weak, and the "arrogant know it all" persona was rewarded.
I don't know how many of these things are simply cognitive dissonance, or poor communication, and which are deliberate efforts to gain power over others. Seems like a little of all three to me. I also think it's a convenient way for technically incompetent management to lord something over you. They may not understand your technical contributions, but they can finish the review by mentioning how you need to work on some undefined and arbitrary social aspect.
Did I just miss something or did the article offer no evidence for it's position that personality can changer other than presenting some writing exercises by high schoolers that asked them if personality can change. It didn't seem to elaborate about how these exercises affected or changed their personality or present any other evidence or examples of changing personality. Don't get me wrong, I do believe that persona…
"In an analysis of 207 studies, published this month in the journal Psychological Bulletin, a team of six researchers found that personality can and does change, and by a lot, and fairly quickly. But only with a therapist’s help. (Imagine that.)"
Edit: someone tracked down the original. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13452075
People often use "its just my personality" as an excuse for bad behavior. Intuitively I think most people know that you have control over your behavior at the very least as well as aspects of your personality. Just like any other activity, you can practice being a more considerate, or more respectful, or less neurotic personality. There is a weird meme that tech people aren't capable of being "team players" or workin…
People often use "its just my personality" as an excuse for bad behavior. Intuitively I think most people know that you have control over your behavior at the very least as well as aspects of your personality. Just like any other activity, you can practice being a more considerate, or more respectful, or less neurotic personality. There is a weird meme that tech people aren't capable of being "team players" or workin…
There is a weird meme that tech people aren't capable of being "team players" or working with other people. This is purely anecdotal, but at one particularly memorable company, the head of HR would regularly make casual comments that cast the engineers as socially incapable and childish. Meanwhile, she was constantly offending people and her life was a chaotic mess. At the same company, they always talked about team…
(A common cause of these complaints is people hearing "we can't do that" as "we won't do that", mistaking impossibility for insubordination)
pretty typical salesmanship: if you convince people a) there's something wrong with them and b) that thing can be changed, you can sell them a cure.
And unlike the Woodie Allen analyst cliche, it is not something that has no end; a short series of sessions can often be enough to help a patient make huge personal changes that improve the quality of their lives.
People often use "its just my personality" as an excuse for bad behavior. Intuitively I think most people know that you have control over your behavior at the very least as well as aspects of your personality. Just like any other activity, you can practice being a more considerate, or more respectful, or less neurotic personality. There is a weird meme that tech people aren't capable of being "team players" or workin…