How Bullshitters Not Just Survive But Thrive (2016)
linkedin.comI mean, I feel like everyone hating on this article either:
1. has never had the misfortune of working with one of these people. "poser" devs who care more about "communicating up" and making a show of their (often quite trivial) contributions
2. has worked with people like this, but doesn't perceive the behavior described in the article, for whatever reason.
A couple times in my life, not just in software, I have worked with people who are _exactly_ like the article describes. The work they do is all perception-management stuff. Shuffling around work tickets, setting up/attending meetings, etc., when they are supposed to be individual contributors. Meanwhile, they contribute nothing. I've even had a coworker -- a peer -- come to me to ask me to do a task when they were assigned to do it. Because they were busy organizing work tickets.
Don't get me wrong. You have to toot your own horn when you do something that should be noticed. Your boss won't always recognize when you've made a meaningful contribution, so saying, "Hey I did this and it's pretty good, and it adds value to our org in these ways" is not inherently bad.
It's when that autotooting is to bring attention to stuff outside what they're _supposed_ to be contributing that it should raise red flags. Or when they start trying to delegate work to their peers. I'm really glad so many of you find this article so awful because it means you've never felt the frustration of watching someone like this get praised for and advance by essentially doing nothing.
edit: I don't know how to explain it to someone who hasn't ever noticed it. The behavior pattern in the article is not something a lot of people notice. But among people who do notice -- at least those I've talked to -- it's very obvious and really bothersome.
That said, most of the time coworkers -- even really smart, kind, hard-working coworkers -- either don't notice or don't care. So it's not surprising to me that commentators here think the article is BS. You've probably sat next to people like this but you didn't notice. Good on you.
I remember the first time in my career I encountered someone like this. I thought I was mistaken or crazy, or just naive since I was new to corporate work. This person MUST do something or he'd have been fired! But after watching for weeks, then months, as he literally accomplished nothing, instead spending all his time self-promoting, taking credit for other people's accomplishments, and "managing upward", I was convinced I wasn't crazy. His official job was to write code, but his real job was shaping the perceived reality of his boss and his boss's boss, and he was very very good at it. This person has, since, gone on to be rather successful (at least a successful sounding title at a well-known software company).
In my experience small companies, which can't afford to carry dead weight, are pretty intolerant of these kinds of people. But at a large company someone who does this well will be there as long as he wants. I work with one who's been at our company for at least fifteen years.
My favorite trick is the Strategic Vacation. Somehow he always has a long vacation planned months in advance that allows him to dump whatever he's been tasked with onto someone else (like me, for instance).
"It's basically done, but I haven't added Y or Z yet" is always the prelude to receiving something he's been "working on" for three months and actually put in, charitably, two or three days of actual work.
But he's a good looking, personable kind of guy. Everybody likes him, particularly the managers, as a person. So while nobody wants him on their team he's managed to avoid getting a reputation that would keep him from moving to other teams.
> "It's basically done, but I haven't added Y or Z yet" is always the prelude to receiving something he's been "working on" for three months and actually put in, charitably, two or three days of actual work.
I am familiar with this one as well.
> In my experience small companies, which can't afford to carry dead weight, are pretty intolerant of these kinds of people. But at a large company someone who does this well will be there as long as he wants.
I've worked for a small startup that got reasonably big. We started out with several really good and hard working people. The problems started when we started to get successful and got some investors on board. We were quite well known in the industry we were in and when word got around we got a bit of investment money and we were hiring it attracted a lot of management-types who mainly applied for the status we had. Lots of people with negative productivity. Took a few more years before the company went belly-up.
> "It's basically done, but I haven't added Y or Z yet" is always the prelude to receiving something he's been "working on" for three months and actually put in, charitably, two or three days of actual work.
Reminds me of the Typical Day interview (from Office Space): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iiOEQOtBlQ
I work with someone like that right now, and it still baffles my mind. There are several people that even openly acknowledge it, but nothing is ever done about it. There are times I feel like I am in Bizzaro world.
Well, it sounds like whatever that person is doing is 'working' just fine for them then!
> The work they do is all perception-management stuff. Shuffling around work tickets, setting up/attending meetings, etc., when they are supposed to be individual contributors. Meanwhile, they contribute nothing.
I've got a colleague who worked someplace where there was a lot of this going on by most of the tech team. He got chastised in a review because he wasn't closing as many tickets as others. What most others were doing were inflating ticket count - taking one ticket, making 3-5 smaller tasks, doing those, then closing all 5. Sometimes there was more work in making 5 tickets than just doing the original work, but their numbers were "way up". My friend was counseled to do the same so everyone's numbers were "up". As it was, he was the only 'low' number and it was bringing down other numbers, and no one was happy about that. Didn't matter that the same amount of work was being done (or... actually more 'make work' was being done vs real productive fixes)... the numbers mattered to the whole place. And... I think they were trying to get lots of positive metric numbers to beef up the sale that happened less than 18 months later.
There is a third possibility, or maybe an explanation for #2:
I've been in a situation many times where I couldn't figure out what value a CB was adding, but those who worked with him/her spoke glowingly of them or thought highly of them. So, since they were held in such high regard by others, I assumed that I must have been mistaken in my initial assessment of the person -- all these people can't be wrong, can they?
What the CB is doing is taking advantage of the fact that people more distant from you in the org chart form their impression of you based on very small pieces of information. But, the perception of those distant (e.g. higher) than you can have a greater impact on your trajectory than the perception of those around you.
Bullshitters are responding rationally to a set of incentives which rewards pleasing people far removed from one's actual performance, versus pleasing those who directly depend on your performance.
> Bullshitters are responding rationally to a set of incentives which rewards pleasing people far removed from one's actual performance, versus pleasing those who directly depend on your performance.
This is a key point. It's not like these people get up in their morning, have coffee in their evil lair, twirl their mustache menacingly, and decide "I'm going to cheat again today, muahahahaha!" They're not cartoon villains, they are rational actors, playing the same game as us with the same rules, but those rules reward BS and self-promotion, often to a greater degree than Real Work™.
I work with a person like this now. He actually doesn't delegate a great deal despite being a project lead. He snows people with jargon, is often late to meetings, rarely comes into the office, and has produced no usable contributions in years. If I had acted as he does at any of my previous jobs, I would have been fired.
I truly don't understand why he still has his position. The sad thing is that he'll probably get promoted.
I have worked with similar people. It can be fun to take them down, if you're so inclined. It takes patience and discipline but it's oh so satisfying.
You should explain how it is done. I expect most people who are suffering in this sort of situation don't think it is possible to take such a person down, much less know how.
I don't have any brilliant insights besides the obvious:
- documenting their BS claims (for your own usage, primarily)
- building trust and credibility with superiors and peers
- biding your time and eventually calling them out on BS in meetings, but only doing so when:
a) they go quite deep into the BS (as they inevitably do)
b) you have firm and credible facts/knowledge ready to use against the BS
c) you are able to pull it off in a calm manner, preferably something that could be perceived as you just asking for a clarification, but still leaves the meeting in a slightly uncomfortable state because the bullshitter's "explanation" seems so obviously fake to anyone with half a brain.
2-3 well-directed questions for "clarifications" like that can be quite lethal over time.
This sounds like a lot of "should works". I'm curious whether this is something you've successfully executed.
Anyone who is doing a good enough job of perception management is going to be better at managing perceptions from conversations better than you. They've had more practice!
You can end up looking like a person who overly cares about individual glory/not being a "team player"/trying to rain on someone else's parade.
Especially with C. People can spot disingenuous comments much easier than non-expert comments.
And easier way would be to implement something like stand-ups or demo days where each person has to own something.
Consistent underperformance should then be easily visible.
> biding your time
They will see you coming long before you see them. They will have previously set up their reward system with you so it's a Mutually Assured Destruction relationship.
c) you are able to pull it off in a calm manner, preferably something that could be perceived as you just asking for a clarification, but still leaves the meeting in a slightly uncomfortable state because the bullshitter's "explanation" seems so obviously fake to anyone with half a brain.
This seems like a great idea until you realise that these bullshitters thrive together and the meeting is full of them so they are going to hang on each others claims.
Point C being really important. Lose a lot of credibility if you lose your cool while doing that.
I have definitely worked with a variety of people who could be broadly defined as bullshitters and naturally I hated it.
The thing that's annoying about the article to me is:
1) I've worked with people who were highly competent, more competent than me but who still engaged in variety of infuriating mind-games, appearance management and so-forth, egos so big they needed to make other look small just for kicks, even if it made the work harder. Even if they deserved recognition for their actual abilities, they needed more. And this kind of bullshitter is at least as corrosive as the incompetent bullshitter.
2) It seems to express the view of a particular sort of "small chunk" thinker who imagines that people who are competent at a workers job should be the managers. That's not how any organization can or should work. Managers are competent (or not) at managing. Managers need to control appearances in various fashions. Some of that managing looks like bullshit, some of it is bullshit and some of it is "necessary shit" but the measure of the manager isn't their ability to understand your job. People aren't divided into "competent" and "incompetent" but rather people have different competencies as well as having situationally dependent competencies (and naturally, it's hard to be competent if your manager is always bullshitting you).
Maybe a majority of HN readers these days are fakers?
> Maybe a majority of HN readers these days are fakers?
It has to be possible, right? After all, they are reading and replying instead of working.
It's past working hours in Europe. :)
I have the misfortune of knowing someone like this. Otherwise very competent in certain areas, but overestimates and overprojects his 'expertise' in others. Everyone seems to eat it up, and I feel like I'm in bizarro world
I think there are a lot of factors that come into play when you're discussing things like this that the scope of this article doesn't cover. I've never enjoyed the idea of sorting people into little boxes because it takes away from the idea of individual experiences.
For instance with the first example W-S in the article someone could very well be a W + S but you'd never know it because at their last job or through life experiences they've been beaten down constantly for their ideas even if they were great simply because of who they are or other such factors. That lead them to the self-confidence issues described in the W-S category in the article. I find people who do excellent work are rarely stupid and with guidance can even grow and excel to become great. Maybe not enough to become leaders but not everybody should be.
I get that the point is to raise awareness on the 2nd group described so the behavior is eventually adjusted or pointed out in other settings and I'm thankful for that because I've experienced it at work myself. Many people have probably experienced the same on group projects in school or otherwise. The ones who don't pull their weight but always seem to have an idea. The people here that think the article is BS might just not agree with the tone adopted for the subject at hand which is understandable as it comes off a bit condescending while getting its point across.
> I mean, I feel like everyone hating on this article either:
You're ignoring the third possibility: S-W and CB types are more likely to say negative things about this article, and upvote criticizing comments (like one by basseq).
Personally, I largely agree with the article (I relate to the W-S type). However I didn't really understand the difference between S-W and CB (highly distilled version? author didn't expand on that). To me, all S-W types look like bullshitters.
I am an S-W, 100%. This article basically describes exactly how I act. I know what I am and I hate it and desperately want to change.
He's absolutely bang on that when a bullshitter hits a performance-based situation they're screwed (I'm an early career academic in exactly this situation, it sucks).
S-Ws who don't want to change may well be criticising the article, but there are hopefully some other self-aware ones too!
Most S-W types in programming jobs act that way because they don't have the aptitude for programming but for whatever reason ended up somehow in a programming job. They are mentally incapable of doing programming work, so act as S-W because that's the only choice available to them, short of quitting to do another type of job.
3. is that person the article described and is too ashamed to admit it to themselves.
Ironically, this article also reeks of bullshit.
The massive characterization: the sloppy nerd (W-S), the consummate bullshitter (S-W), and the "rare" real talent (W+S). Which sets up the classic, "you're successful, so you must be a bullshitter" (because those S+Ws are sooo rare).
The "CB's" he's describing are so incredibly transparent, they might as well be strawmen.
You're fortunate. My colleague and I almost spat out our drinks laughing, because we were literally sitting in a discussion with all three archetypes locked in a similar struggle.
In many scenarios, it's easy for a person to be in the "S-W" role and get a great deal of success. I've watched the career of one in a large organization. At first they stumbled a few times and were "outed" as idiots. Then this person found the right role, and is now a senior leader. The true master bullshitters are insecure & smart and surround themselves with pliable people who will work like donkeys.
The tell for these people is vanity. They seek self validation by advertising credentials, announce any promotion and are forceful about projecting whatever title or responsibility they possess. Usually they are attracted to "hot", high growth areas. (easy to hide sins in growth) Infosec is a breeding ground for these people.
> The true master bullshitters are insecure & smart and surround themselves with pliable people who will work like donkeys.
If the pay was good it might be worth teaming up with them. I can handle the work if they can handle all the other shit.
That's a good point. A bullshitter in a middle management role can serve to shield developers from all the bullshit that comes from above. That's a very useful contribution—so the productive devs can focus on working rather than attend endless meetings. It's like a sacrificial lamb offered to the business side so they can use him/her in their rituals (meetings, client calls, etc).
Isn't it a bit like the Jobs + Woz combination?
Kind of, but Jobs was a "product guy," not just a manager type.
It is hosted on LinkedIn, which is a bad sign from the start.
I think in organizations you have people who craft their messages to different degrees. I imagine almost all of our manager's have said "Oh we can't say that in that meeting" or "how do we put a better spin on that". And I totally believe people who do this more, and better tend to rise to the top.
Competence as perceived by your boss and boss's boss are driven by your results and perception management. And this problem gets worse because they higher you go the less control you have over your actual results. i.e. A developer has a lot more control in delivering a solid piece of performant maintainable code than a V.P. does in delivering revenue growth. And eventually you end up with CEOs who sit around and play roulette while explaining to the board how the losses were unavoidable, and the wins solely driven by his leadership.
> The "CB's" he's describing are so incredibly transparent, they might as well be strawmen.
Strawmen or not, I've worked for two. Those aren't fond memories.
Yup. It takes a while to see the abstract pattern underlying their behaviour. Once you see it, its very clear. But for a long time you're distracted by the details of day-to-day events and you think they're just another co-worker with some annoying habits.
I'm confused why so many commenters are quick to shout "B.S" on this article (are they BSers in hiding?) but maybe he is oversimplifying too much. True S-W types are pretty rare and are probably evidence of some extreme psychological disorder. (E.g., malignant narcissism or sociopathy. Robert Hare is a researcher in criminal psychology and wrote a book on such people: https://www.amazon.com/Snakes-Suits-When-Psychopaths-Work/dp...).
I think that's it. Even distilled down to two variables ("smart" and "work"), you're talking about three "extremes": [1.0S,1.0W], [1.0S,0.0W], and [0.0S,1.0W]. Most people are probably in the 0.25-0.75 range on both variables.maybe he is oversimplifying too muchThere are almost certainly more variables, and "smart" and "work" are terribly named.
I agree, and add that sometimes people who have a tendency to BS can surround themselves with more grounded people, so that the whole package works. Their confidence and superficial knowledge can even make them seem more relatable to customers than a deeply knowledgable specialist would.
In other words, an individual's value is context-dependent. It's really hard to make such crisp distinctions as in the article.
I feel the article is written in a way that's crystal clear for those who know what it's talking about, but looks like a strawman for those who don't. I understand instinctively the kind of people he means, but the wide brush he paints with makes it seem like he's going off stereotypes.
The "CB's" he's describing are so incredibly transparent, they might as well be strawmen.
The characterization is a bit overdrawn, but not by much. In my experience the more common scenario is not that of the S-W who does "no work" -- but rather the kind who basically does seem to "deliver" a lot, but, and here's the catch, with very significant hidden costs: in the form of (outrageous amounts of) technical debt, people around him burning out and/or quitting, etc. Which management usually does, ultimately, catch onto -- but not until the damage has been done, business opportunities have been lost, and his coworkers health, relationships and/or professional reputations have been damaged -- in some cases quite severely.
I think that many good, effective managers would end up in the "bullshitter" basket by the definitions of this article: they delegate work (they better!), they do not work themselves if you define work as writing code or spending time in the lab, etc.
IMO effective managers should be doing exactly that -- surround themselves with smart people, delegate and make working conditions fulfilling and enjoyable for their teams.
The things done by people described in the article is not the same as what the work of managers is. These are not managers, and as the article says, these can be more junior people who will "boss around" senior developers too. And besides that their self-promotion can be seen as unfair, i have seen some actual damages materialize as consequences:
As they are focusing on perception, effective real work done becomes less. If the client once chooses to evaluate real progress and the paper-pushing becomes evident, the project might be cancelled.
The bullshitter can transform the project itself. Instead of pursuing the original goal of delivering, they will invent new goals, and unnecessary work items. They will shape what the project does, so that they can deliver. If the project were to go in its original direction, they could not contribute anything useful. So now they invent administrative tasks or superfluous technical tasks, where they can deliver.
Their toxic behavior can become accepted even by the management. This is when the real project manager accepts that its more profitable to bullshit, than to actually deliver. The project will fail at some point, but its easier for the whole team to bullshit until that time, than to deliver.
Effective managers don't steal the credit that their team members have done. Quite the opposite in fact, they make a point of highlighting exemplary work and rewarding those that have made important contributions.
Management is also much more than _just_ delegating (of course), and I think I'd be pretty clear the difference between a good manager and a bullshitting manager, unless the higher ups are easily fooled in the ways the article describes.
Personally, I've seen a lot of this kind of behaviour, and I thought the article pretty much nailed it. Tangentially related to the highly cynical Gervais Principle: http://www.makingitanywhere.com/escape-your-job/
Maybe my comment was not written clearly enough. I am not saying that what is described in the article as BS managers are good, effective managers. They are not -- two things: required long hours and not taking responsibilities are killer signs.
My point was that the classification into S-W, etc. is simplistic and does not distinguish between good managers and poor ones. Good managers exhibit some of the same traits (delegating, surrounding themselves with smart people, etc.).
On stealing credit: can you elaborate what you mean by that. In my book, a good manager should advertise his best contributors to his management in exceptional cases. But most of the time, the manager himself should receive credit from his superiors on his team progress and request goodies (raises, bonuses, etc.) for his team in return.
A better article if you're interested in this type of analysis, done well: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...
I went to a meetup and ran into the author of that piece. I asked him a question (I forgot what) about it, and he groaned, because it's pretty much the thing everyone always asks him about.
I then spoke to him about this piece - http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/03/19/the-art-of-gig/- which I think is hilarious.
As an S-W character myself currently struggling to transform into the mythical W-S in academia, is there any simple ways to just focus and get work done? I find it almost impossible to focus on one thing for more than a few minutes.
Adderral and/or Modafinil plus a sense of shame.
The pomodoro technique is quite popular. Also, goals, systems, etc. There are a few subreddits that focus on things like this.
I've tried the pomodoro technique. It's very good for deadlines. Academia doesn't tend to have genuine deadlines at the junior researcher level so it's basically just a matter of finishing the work whenever you can.
What would be nice, is if there was a way to somehow gain intrinsic motivation to do stuff that interests you? I get extremely excited about projects at first and then tail off.
I'm not a "finisher", and I would give a large chunk of my salary to someone who enabled me to become one.
I had this problem when i was a PhD student. Towards the end of my time, i started doing something which fixed it, and which i could have been doing all along: make a list of the figures for my paper, and do whatever bit of work moves the next most important one towards being finished.
I should mention that i was working in cell biology; in cell biology, you earn career points by publishing papers telling a new story, where papers comprise a series of figures, each one showing results which demonstrate some point of your story. Papers also have an introduction, description of the results, and discussion, but those are pretty much filler. The smart scientists i know read the title, the figures, and the materials and methods section. Perhaps not every field is like this.
So, to make a good paper, you have to come up with a series of good figures, which means (a) finding a story you want to tell, (b) working out what points you want to make, and (c) getting results which make those points. Having done that, there's the technical work of making up the figures (learn to love Illustrator), and some writing, and you're done.
Finding the story is usually the easy bit. Your supervisor usually has some untold ideas for stories floating about, or there will be some variation on an existing story that people will enjoy hearing. Or you might just need to spend a year or two trying stuff, which can be fun until it suddenly isn't.
Working out what points you need to make takes time, but once you know the story, is usually not too hard. Crucially, you don't need to know up front that these points are all true. As you work towards them, if you find any that aren't true, you just throw them away, and either replace them, do without them, or change the story a bit.
It's getting the results which is hard. That is the actual work in scientific research. Designing, performing, interpreting, and refining experiments. Finding, preparing, and characterising materials. Learning or inventing techniques. Spotting weaknesses and plugging them with control experiments. Endless, seemingly incessant, tea breaks.
Having a concrete list of the figures you need helps you keep going at getting results, and helps you do the right ones. Before i had a list of figures, i did all sorts of experiments because they seemed interesting, and connected to what i was doing, but which could never have contributed to my paper.
This is such a wonderful reply. Thank you so, so much for this. It's so clearly actionable in my day-to-day life, too.
Hopefully you've saved my career before it implodes!
You could also try the Getting Things Done approach to todo lists, particularly project-specific lists and only writing items that are the next actionable items.
With both Pomodoro and GTD, ideally you'd learn to switch more quickly between the planning brain and the doing brain. This allows you to decide what to focus on, acquire full confidence that it's the right thing to do now, and act on it. This helps you tie the immediate need to your larger goals, channeling your motivation for big rewards into the task at hand.
Just bought the GTD book. That's the planning brain part accomplished, right?
Here's hoping I can actually find the motivation to read it and then apply the lessons!
Audiobooks are great for when I'm lacking motivation to read.
Also, in today's world, learning how to control my attention is one of the most powerful tools I've picked up. I've done it through mindfulness practices, and boosted it through the use of high CBD:THC pot. If you don't live in a state with legal weed, CBD oil is available online and can be legally shipped.
I can't tell you how nice it was the first time I noticed I was able to sit still for 45 mins without fidgeting.
When I apply my attention to distracting beliefs getting in my way, I recognize I have the choice to believe the thoughts and choose to believe their opposite instead. Choosing to believe a thought isn't a skill many people practice, so most people change their beliefs through the use of affirmations. I do that, as well, and write them on my bathroom mirror with dry erase markers. When I'm brushing my teeth, I read them in my head. When doing anything else in front of the mirror, I read them aloud. If writing your own affirmations, make sure they start with "I," are in present tense, use positive language ("I am ____," as opposed to "I am not _____"), and are emotionally powerful (look for a physical reaction when you say it, like warmth in your chest).
I am the company owner. I had the bizarre experience of net productivity going UP by firing the warehouse manager. Apparently he had the habit of telling the same long-winded story to each of his 8 co-workers, individually.
Once he got done telling them all about the strawberries that were 50 cents a pound underpriced at Safeway, `15 minutes later they could get back to work. He not only wasted his time, but also his co-workers.
Productivity noticeably went up after his departure. Nobody had complained about his time wasting stories until AFTER he left. Somehow they assumed I knew everything but didn't care (bizarre, since I am fairly frugal) .
So as the Boss in this scenario, sometimes it is hard to tell what the truth really is. My staff was trying to be nice, and not cause problems in the workplace. Thus causing a problem in the workplace.
Occasionally I do the Toyota 'stand in a circle' exercise in the factory to get a real sense of how people move around, how they spend their time. It is always surprising how my assumptions are often wrong.
http://theleanthinker.com/2007/07/09/the-chalk-circle/
I also watch for the "delegate to peers" routine. If I assigned it to you, I wanted YOU to do it. If I wanted your co-worker to do it, I would have assigned it to THEM.
There are four reactions to this article that I can see right now:
1. It is incorrect, and the author misunderstands the nature of management
2. It is neither correct, not incorrect, but is vapid and superficial
3. It is basically correct, but poorly written and reasoned
4. It is correct
Let me respond to category #1 and #3, and try to unpack the claim made in the article.
I assume that there is no debate that some people do not add value.
Most people may also agree that there are some people who do not add value on purpose. That is, they are not interested in adding value. What might be more controversial is that there are many such people, and they are successful.
If you believe that there are people who purposefully don't add value but exist and thrive, then who are they, how do they thrive and why aren't they caught?
I think you will end up with some version of the argument presented here.
In my experience the S-W/CB are very rare, rarer than the W+S type. I've worked with one or two over the course of ten years, but they tend to gravitate into project management or BA positions in a short amount of time.
The most common type of developer is the fourth category, missing from the article: the -S-W type. Not really all that good, and with little to no political acumen. They fill most roles at medium-to-large IT companies.
And having known many (a lot of them are nice people otherwise), I can tell you that each and everyone of them thinks they personally are a W-S type. They think their uninspiring, slow, painful expertise (if its hard for them its because it must be a hard problem, right?) makes them top of their field, and that when other developers are the 'superstars' its just because they are better at politics.
The biggest truth, the most important truth that the article seems biased against, is that unless you live in a cave working on software with two other like-minded hardcore devs, 50% of your job is communication! Not being good at communication makes you a bad developer, regardless of your technical abilities.
The lens the author is looking through is missing the other side of the coin.
Communication:
Regardless of how smart you are, if you can't communicate it to others, then then value of your intelligence is limited to an individual role. People who can't/won't communicate make terrible managers. The people above them have no idea what's going on in their team. Poor coordination with other teams creates issues outside of their team. Their own team members will fail to understand what role they are playing in a larger effort. The non-communicating manger will know (because he's in the meetings), but will fail to pass that information to their team. As you move up the chain of command, communication becomes more important than what you as an individual can produce.
Confidence:
Your car breaks down. It's critical you have it working tomorrow. Two mechanics show up.
- The first mechanic says: "This is really tricky. I don't know if we can get this fixed tomorrow. It may take a week. I'm not sure"
- The second mechanic says: "This is no problem. I'll have it fixed by tomorrow".
Which one are you going to hire?
Perception:
The hardest pill to swallow is that upper management is very aware of what's going on in a team, especially when the manager is a problem.
- upper management has usually seen it all before. So any behavioral issues are easily spotted.
- Team members complain to people on other teams, and word gets around.
- Team members will request re-assignement or discuss quitting.
Performance over Perception:
Performance is always more important than perception. The issue is a lot of employees don't understand what the priorities are for their organization.
The priority is almost always. How efficiently and predictably does the job get done. Efficiency also includes how much hand holding someone higher up has to do.
> Can you see a cow?
Looks like a blurred Japanese painting. I see 2 samurai, one standing on the left, one dead on the right (face down, you can see his hair). I can't explain the horn helmet the standing samurai is wearing, though.
> If you still can't see the cow, please search "visual intelligence cow" in Google images
Oh. A cow indeed. (It's head, facing the camera.)
For anyone who, like me, still couldn't see the bloody cow:
https://boldquestions.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/cow-outlin...
Is this a notable photograph for visual elicitation? I saw a cow immediately so I thought the references were some weird sarcastic humor...
(Not bragging about recognition by any means. Grew up in dairy country so I probably see too many cows in things overall!)
Yes, it's famous. I remember seeing it as a child and taking ages to see the cow, and feeling a "hidden picture" sensation when it finally popped out. Now, decades later as an adult, it immediately and unambiguously looks like a cow. I wonder if that's due to 1) learning the picture, 2) learning more about cows, or 3) learning more about high-contrast images.
I do remember hearing that it's one of those things you can't ever "unsee".
i had the same initial reaction as you
I am happy to work at a tech company where your BS can be easily surfaced using pure logic. If you can't code and don't do good coding or designing then it does not give you enough leeway to BS.
Yes, perhaps more than some other fields. However don't underestimate the number of decisions which must be made with less than adequate information and sometimes multiple outcomes can be chosen which are supported by available data. Also there are times when someone's experience can help them understand how a stream of data will change over time and they can use that to get ahead of the change rather than being purely reactive.
I'm not disagreeing with you entirely, just proposing that it isn't usually so black and white in our industry.
This is precisely why there's a strong focus on deliverables in project management. You can have a meeting with 20+ people every day if you want, but if there's no deliverable that moves the project, it's a waste of cash and it hits the budget immediately.
Focus on deliverables and that outs the bullshitters very quickly.
I comfortably and certainly fall into the first category. I'm not ever more than 90% confident...if you ask me directly what my confidence level is. I tend to be one who is labeled as not "smart".
You're not alone.
To make it worse I tend to start stuttering when asked things on the spot, even though I know the answers or could easily look up whatever info was asked for. I'm painfully aware this makes me look like I don't know what I'm doing. People generally don't have the patience to let me gather my thoughts and give a coherent explanation/answer.
Exactly. I think that is actually their own failure and not mine. About 50% of the time thinking fast just gets you a rushed answer which is likely not to be the correct answer. My manager literally said he can't trust me with on the spot questions. I'm like well duh. You shouldn't trust the off the cuff for certain types of questions. I try to actively limit the amount of company specific information that goes into semi/long-term memory.
Not a link to an article, just the linkedin signup page.
Too bad linkedin has declined in usefulness, it was almost getting good.
Anyway, pure political posers are nothing new.
Not everybody has it in them to actually make worthwhile efforts, or make efforts worthwhile to anyone but themselves.
Plus most BS proponents are not in the pure category, with significant to considerable raw ability but who still draw from the BS deck when threatened or with opportunities that might fall to truly higher quality operators instead.
Often motivated most strongly by greed, and without real value-creating talent or productive performance to fall back on, there's not much else they can do to survive.
A great many have been this way for life, and know it well, therefore have a lifetime honing their survival skill. Some get especially good at inserting themselves into the background BS of particulary vulnerable or susceptible bureaucracies, where they can often thrive (exclusively to their own advantage). They sometimes accomplish this without becoming a destructive enough parasite to be well recognized by those who should care. And sometimes those who should care, actually don't care to begin with, or have had their doubts diverted by carefully crafted BS fields.
For technical or scientific concepts to thrive instead, there must be none of these BS operators between the technical creators and the resources the creators rely on (such as funding resources from capitalists, income from clients, or customers).
I think people should stop trying to put others into categories to feel superior about themselves. People have a range of talents and shortcomings. No one is perfect.
So you are saying there are two sorts of people, those who put people in categories and those who don't, and you are the latter type. Ok.
I agree. I do think though that author does want to feel superior, but has been burned/exploited by a person with those negative traits, and is now frustrated or outraged.
IMO this is similar to the player/cheater categories. There are people who cheat in online games, and ecosystems suffer from it - anti-cheating precautions make games more expensive, and after playing against a cheater, you feel, well, cheated. It can ruin your experience.
The sad reality is that all too often these people end-up in management position. I've worked for at least a couple of such folks. They were technically incompetent yet could say enough in meetings to appear like geniuses to upper management and non-technical folks. Master manipulators at all levels. It is interesting to note this is the very thing politics is about.
To say this article misses a bit of nuance is a major understatement. The descriptions (w+s, s-w, etc.) are limited, and where people fall on the spectrum (even on this limited black/white list of personality types), ebb and flow on a daily/weekly basis.
I kept waiting for a resolution to his anecdote about waiting for his boss. It sounds like his boss was doing work. How was that an example of a bullshitter?
I know a EVP who is #2. He is worthless as they come, knows far less than he claims, and soaks up mad resources. He's hated by everyone below that level, but very popular with his peers because he hires very competent people and rides on their accomplishments. And he has a great managerial presentation and personality. Ugh.
Fake it 'til you make it!
The problem becomes more pronounced the further we abstract away from Assembly and memory management.
Ayn Rand wrote about the W+S crowd leaving this world behind because they couldn't tolerate the evil bullshitters.
I guess that's a more interesting story than W-Ss that 'disappear' after they get burned by the corporate environment.
Not only that, we also sometimes worked on public holidays when everyone else was enjoying with their families
This part is illegal as hell and pretty much sums up why a union is absolutely needed in some workplaces; to curb this kind of crap.
If it's in the US, it is by no means illegal to have employees work on public holidays.
How come Elon Musk never says the names of any of the engineers working on products when he makes announcements on stage? The answer is because he doesn't want to share credit.
I wonder why the higher-up managers aren't able to spot bullshitters, and if they could be trained to do so. It would certainly benefit their organizations.
IMO, they don't care enough to spot this. As long as deliverables are met, there is no incentive for them to dig around the roots. But I think once the "ponzi scheme" is exposed by having good talent refusing work in that toxic environment. shit gets really real, fast.
This is all just delightfully postmodern.
sheer bullshit.. this article..
I disagree with you.. the article is 100% relevant and it happens
I disagree, I feel its very relevant
How is the Gervais Principle from Ribbonfarm any less BS than this article?
Is this backed by research or is it just anecdotal evidence?
Management Theory\Organizational Behavior are taught in university but this is a terrible article.
Given the nature of the topic I believe its anecdotal.
It's entirely anecdotal.