1% or "hiring people smarter than I am"

[David Randolph]

In another thread, someone mentioned being turned off by the phrase "hiring people smarter than I am".

There are a couple of points to make about that statement.

First off, the unstated part of that statement. The full statement is "I hire people smarter than I am in a specific area." Most people do not hire people who are generally smarter than they are. They are hiring people with more knowledge and expertise in a specific area.

The second part is that it doesn't matter how smart a person is, when placed into a system, they can not perform any better than a less smart person. The system won't let them. We see this over and over again in hiring for sales people. The hiring person goes all out to try to find the "best and the brightest" and then forces them to work within a system that rewards average performance and restricts what they can do. The results are that the new hires perform to average.

The only way that hiring people "smarter than average" works is when they are given the freedom to break the system and build something new.

[The Gorn]

In general, the owner doesn't want smarter workers than him. He is picking solutions to his specific problems.

Most small biz owners I've worked around have been control freaks. They don't want renegades questioning their decisions or their system... or at least they won't tolerate them for very long once they have what they need out of them. And if you're smarter than the boss, eventually you will lock horns, it's inevitable.

[Carrie Cobol]

That's true in my experience also.  One of my early gigs was for a small company who claimed to only hire the best and brightest.  Yeah, right?  Anyway during the interview, the guy who was going to be my supervisor noticed that I listed C as a programming language I knew.  He commented that he'd tried to learn C but couldn't figure out how to do file handling with it.  This was on VMS (of course).  I'd learned in a previous job that in order to mimic the streaming file junk that C was designed for (the unix streaming file paradigm) on VMS, you had to build your own file structures and access them directly instead of allowing VMS' RMS utility to do it.  So you build structures for the "rab" (record access block) and the "fab" (file access block), and use system service calls to perform the IO.  I didn't explain this in the interview, but just said that I could do it.

This job was actually pure Cobol programming, so it wasn't really important that anybody knew C.  But the manager seemed impressed anyway, and I got hired.  A few months later, I asked him if he wanted me to show him how to do file io with C and got only a vague answer.  So I threw together a really quick demo program and made sure it ran correctly, and then emailed him to tell him where it was if he was interested.  Nope, he wasn't interested, in fact.  After that I got the feeling that he felt threatened by me.  That was intuitive, though, no specific examples of hostility, just kind of treating me like a child.  And about 6 months later, just out of curiosity I checked the file stats and noticed that he'd never even looked at the demo program. 

[The Gorn]

And about 6 months later, just out of curiosity I checked the file stats and noticed that he'd never even looked at the demo program.

Did you expect him to look at it?

It was "unclean." 

I've found I can't tell anyone anything. Not even when they ask.

[Carrie Cobol]

Yeah, I was young and not cynical yet.  Since he expressed interest in it, I thought he would be ... you know, interested in it. 

[codger]

GB wrote, "I've found I can't tell anyone anything. Not even when they ask. "

Great line! Can I use it?

[The Gorn]

GB wrote, "I've found I can't tell anyone anything. Not even when they ask. "

Great line! Can I use it?

Yes! Thanks. I gotta million of 'em.

I'm sure there's something you've said that I can scavenge and use, too...

[Richardk]

Being too smart makes you a threat for many people or they just don't 'hear' you. Doesn't need to be technical, just life in general.

My C coding experience was an interview where he wanted some sample code but later admitted that he would have no idea if the code was good or not since he couldn't read it and told me to just forget it.

[lorb]

My last project, I made a demo program in Swing and after that the guy I was working with didn't want to see it or even log on to the file-sharing program to hear about it, and I also emailed him - he never even looked at it, never logged in again, even though it was his choice of file-sharing program that I downloaded and installed to be able to communicate with him - he made a point I use his work computer for it - then he never logs on and months later I return the computer to his employer.  Emailed him months later, recently, after he sent me a job ad (for Australia), but when I responded about the program, no response.

It definitely killed my interest in programming, which I was successful accomplishing things in at the time.  You now how we put in an all-nighter, so thrilled, and the other person, it's like you shot their mother.  His excuse was that he wanted to be able to control everything himself, in Access, but he is a walking database of domain information as it is.  I think the "controlling" thing was the reason.

I hate when some people, their job is to motivate others for a living, and I mean that is their job, and their entire job, but they figure they need you to get what they want done and entice, but in the end they just want it how they want it and that's it.  And if they want you to believe that the sky is pink with purple-polka dots, then they want you to believe that, that is the point.  They don't want to hear reality from you, the newcomer.  They are usually brilliant at something, but then do this misplaced tranference thing where they thereby assume they must be commander of other things as well.

[Peter Gibbons]

Maybe I am not that smart or maybe I worked in an industries where there are a lot of smart people: I don't remember any coworkers or managers being intimidated by me. Or vice versa.

Currently I am working for a manager that knows C++ better than me and is a very smart guy. This doesn't bother me at all. I know there are other areas where I have more knowledge and experience.

Most coworkers have been more or less technical peers. They were better in some areas and not as experienced as me in others.

Being a contractor also makes people more relaxed. They know I am not competing with them in terms of promotions.

As I think I mentioned in another thread: In an areas where there is very limited number of options in terms of employment - you will see the worst backstabbing, jealousy, ... etc. And if you happen to be very smart you will be despised even more.

[Richardk]

As I think I mentioned in another thread: In an areas where there is very limited number of options in terms of employment - you will see the worst backstabbing, jealousy, ... etc. And if you happen to be very smart you will be despised even more.

Maybe that's the key since I've worked in small and large companies but when the opportunities were limited, it got nasty even as a contractor. As a consultant it was often better.

And it's not always "intimidated" but sometimes mad because they wanted the "fun project" that you're on but they don't have the skills.

I seek out people that are "smarter than I am in a specific area" but it seems that some employees have difficulty with this. Also an insecure owner / boss / manager may not be comfortable if you out shine them but isn't that why you're there? Not necessarily to take the credit but to fill a void?

[John Masterson]

And about 6 months later, just out of curiosity I checked the file stats and noticed that he'd never even looked at the demo program.

I've found I can't tell anyone anything. Not even when they ask.

You tell people stuff here, though. And they listen.

[The Gorn]

Peter has it absolutely correct that a crappy local hiring scene makes "collegiality" rare.

But it's not rooted in survival. Usually, people just don't want to know that they don't know and it's based on face saving instincts.

My first experience with this was when I was an undergraduate student in electrical engineering. My dad had no college, but was self taught in repair of electronics like TVs and radios. He seemed to fix everything that friends at work would push off on him to look at. I am not sure that he received any pay for it or if it was a pure hobby and he just charged them for parts.

And I was never clear on whether he used real trouble shooting tools like signal injection to identify problems, or if he just swapped spare parts until he localized the problem.

So once I tried to show him transistor theory (he dropped out of repairing things when solid state became the main type of circuit out there) and he just turned it into a game where he laughed at what I was saying and mocked me. I got frustrated and dropped it. 

There were some other times that something similar happened. My mom developed a HUGE interest in computers when my folks bought one of the first TRS-80s and she taught herself how to write tiny "hello world" programs in BASIC and learned how to write calculations, simple loops, etc. My dad knew nothing about this stuff. But he asked about the computer and I sat down with him a few times to show him a few things. He acted the same way. Treated it like a big joke, like I was putting on airs, acting like a know it all, and he just laughed at how I was presenting it.

Again, I got disgusted and stopped showing my dad anything.

This taught me some things.

The usual way that a person with insecurity rejects facts that they don't want to hear is to be dismissive of you or the presentation or the subject matter, somehow:

You don't know anything. You're younger. You're too new. You are making things too complicated. Your code is just bad and I don't have to look at it to tell you that.  Your work is bad. Your knowledge is poor. What you did is just a big joke, and it's not important by definition.

The rejection due to insecurity is very hard to take because it's the very purest of ad hominem attack on the provider of information or work. You or your work is being torn down because it's you and your work. It's bad specifically because you are the source of it.

Rejection due to insecurity is difficult to deal with because it's often delivered in the form of a passive aggressive attack. It's kind of like plant or animal life defenses like spines or poisons. The message is "back off."

My own father considered something like this a huge matter of personal rivalry, even when he asked me for help. That was an interpersonal thing, not a survival/job thing.

[John Masterson]

G0ddard,

But how can you take someone at all seriously when it's clear that their response is merely from a frightened and immature insecurity?

Since it is from insecurity it loses all validity and should be ignored for what it is, right?

My experience has been that when people really need the answer, they listen because they are getting something they truly want.

[Carrie Cobol]

I've always had a customer-facing role in every FTE job I've had, and they all included training people.  Everything from industry specific topics to how to use a mouse.  The majority of feedback I get is that people like me and appreciated my training and found it very helpful.  However, there have been occasions where rather after the fact (like months or years later) someone told me that they felt I was condescending.  I'm always puzzled by that because it's the last thing I want.  I had an experience in junior college where the computer lab people were scathingly condescending to the "lab rats" like me so I swore I would never treat people like that.  I'm pretty sure that I am not condescending to trainees.  I think what is happening is they are insecure and lashing at me because I made the material sound too easy.  Like they think to themselves, "if it's THAT easy, why can't I understand this... argh". 

In a few cases I've also wondered if my use of metaphors to explain computer concepts made people feel that I was condescending.  If they were in a mouse skills class, they probably have no idea that terms like mouse, desktop, folder and file are used by everybody including techies.  This is a total guess, though.