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Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

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Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#111

Post by serverholic »

insightcheck wrote: post #109
serverholic wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a false equivalency. Most software engineers aren't working on weapons, but most sales and marketing people engage in deception and other amoral practices. Not to mention that software engineers literally build the products. Sales and marketing's job is to shove it down people's throats.

To the contrary, I think paulcole made a great point. It doesn’t need to be weapons. A programmer who makes a social media feed more addictive isn’t necessarily moral. But a salesperson/marketer can promote something generally seen as good, or at least far more good than the example programmer. Ad campaigns can remind people to vote, encourage people to quit smoking, or convince people to avoid drunken driving. A mar…

No it's not a great point. It's a point made to distract from the real issue. It's a debate tactic.

If you read the conversation carefully I'm trying to discuss the fundamental nature of the professions, not the specific products they are building or selling. That was something paulcole brought up.

The fundamental nature of sales and marketing is manipulating people for personal gain. You could be selling hugs or whatever warm and fuzzy product you can imagine, but at the end of the day the sales person's job is to be the best people manipulator they can be.

And I've seen it countless times through my career. I've met many sales people, I've sat in on sales calls, and I've heard them discussing their trade. It's honestly disgusting.

On the other hand, the fundamental nature of engineering is building things. It's bringing something new into the world. It couldn't be more different from sales and marketing.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#112

Post by rramadass »

oxfordmale wrote: post #16
genghisjahn wrote: post #8

These articles come out with some regularity, and yet no one ever says, "Yep! That's totally me! I'm a non contributing zero but I've made a living at making others think I add to the team!" Everyone knows people like this, but no one is one.

There is a fine line between being highly overrated or just being successful at selling your achievements. I suspect a lot of people start out successfully selling their genuine achievements, but over time realise they can just do the selling.

Well said!

They get caught up in the image they have created of themselves. I think there is a need for "Social Adaptation" but taken too far becomes counter-productive i.e. you lose authenticity.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#113

Post by jongjong »

This article makes an interesting point but IMO it highlights 2 phenomema, not 1.

The first phenomenon is that some people seem to be more talented and useful than they are while they are present within the organization.

The second phenomenon is that when people leave an organization, their talents may be immediately discarded; they often end up being used as a scapegoats for any problem which remaining employees may notice after the person has left (possibly completely unrelated to the person).

People tend to over-rate people who are present and over-demonize people who are absent. The demonization probably falls harder on people who were overrated (since it's backed by truth) but it can also fall on people who were genuinely talented and valuable - It depends on what kind of people remain in the company and what narrative serves the interest of those who remain.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#114

Post by rramadass »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #44
genghisjahn wrote: post #8

These articles come out with some regularity, and yet no one ever says, "Yep! That's totally me! I'm a non contributing zero but I've made a living at making others think I add to the team!" Everyone knows people like this, but no one is one.

The acceptance of others in our team called "society", who assume as a matter of human dignity that we each "add" something, is how we all get by and live. We're all nice people, terrified of growing old and alone, being left out out in the cold and hungry. We're all part of the same team, under the same shit system that makes us feel safer by devaluing others.

Damn; Don't rip apart the facade like that!

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#115

Post by eastbound »

ary wrote: post #80
LazyCroHacker wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yo. Ask me anything. Edit : I'm actually serious. I don't do most of the things in the article, or at least definitely not with the intent and detail - but I've been moved over time from being a pretty good and certainly respected hands on techie, to a middle to upper manager with massive imposter syndrome, and certainly feel I contribute less for more credit. Client loves me. My boss loves me. My team loves me. But…

> I definitely spend many hours each week fine tuning PowerPoint slides, reporting, over communicating, team building, teaching people to communicate differently, etc - which again, seems to make everybody happy and impressed This is why people love you. You're massively underestimating the amount of spoon-feeding people desire. The alternative to people like you is for individuals to do the work of understanding and…

In my first Agile company, it felt like we developers were inventing features! In fact, a PM was spoon feeding the backlog to us, organized by theme, letting us invent the interesting parts. I only realized it 10 years later.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#116

Post by rramadass »

mrtksn wrote: post #49
genghisjahn wrote: post #8

These articles come out with some regularity, and yet no one ever says, "Yep! That's totally me! I'm a non contributing zero but I've made a living at making others think I add to the team!" Everyone knows people like this, but no one is one.

I actually don't like that kind of articles at all precisely because I tend to find things from myself and the authors often do very bad job in analysing these behaviours because the articles are one sided "hit pieces" that essentially promote a narrative or a worldview. All the same behaviours can be written in a self improvement post on LinkedIn or something or a successful person might try to attribute the success…

Good nuanced view point!

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#118

Post by wwweston »

emptybits wrote: post #58
jpmoral wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is that people think that all office politics is necessarily bad.

I can't think of examples of positive activities in a workplace being best labelled office politics . Help me out? I understand politics , outside of government, to suggest deception or manipulation with hidden motives.

Understanding politics that way is common and understandable. It's also an unfortunate cultural construction of the term, because this understanding is deeply incorrect.

Politics is what happens when people disagree about what should be done, or how it should be done. That's it. That's what politics is.

There are principled and corrupt reasons for disagreement. There are forthright and deceptive/manipulative means of engaging disagreement. All of that is politics.

When someone is advocating for a better PTO policy either because they personally would like something more advantageous for themselves or because they think it'll boost morale and productivity, that's politics.

When someone manages their office relationships to increase their chances or being hired into a higher management position either because they personally would like to advance their career or because they think they can help the business run more effectively, that's politics.

When someone attempts to spoil management on tech stack X and talk up tech stack Y, that's politics whether it's because they know both well and are sure which will suit the business & problem domain better, or because their personal expertise is more with Y than X and it'll increase their value to the organization without further investment.

The problem with assuming "politics" refers to inherently underhanded activity is that it shirks the work of engaging disagreement productively and instead pathologizes disagreement in one way or another -- usually by either pathologizing an opposing position or class of people.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#119

Post by rramadass »

throw-self-away wrote: post #54

> Seriously. These things are a whole lot more transparent than the people who do them think they are Has anyone seen articles on how to effectively manage/coach people with these habits? Extrinsic motivation tactics tend not to work, and appeals to intrinsic motivators are often met hard with #6 and #7.

There are plenty of articles out there, see for example; HBR's 10 must read series, On Communication, On Managing People and On Managing Yourself (2-vols each). You might also find Edward Deci's Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation useful.

But ultimately everything comes down to Responsibilities and Accountabilities with Definite Rewards/Consequences.

Re: Habits of Highly Overrated People (2013)

#120

Post by darthrupert »

Sort of a toxic article, possibly written by a person who thinks they know how people work. However, the writer ignores complexities of humans, and ends up being a rather poor judge of character. (See what I did there)

Anyway, snark aside, most people who are changing jobs do so after a long period of deliberation, and when they have made a choice, they will stop taking new responsibilities. Because taking new responsibilities when you know you're leaving would be unprofessional.

If someone is good at what they do, they will seem like dead weight on the day they leave. But if you look a year to the past, there should be a different view of accomplishments.

Of course, this is not the only explanation for this situation, but a common one.

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