A lot of people with poorly developed social skills like to pretend that poorly developed social skills don’t make them a bad coworker. I don’t think I agree with that. Your job isn’t just the stuff you like. Organization, prioritization, collaborating and interacting with your coworkers, attending meetings and making useful contributions, just generally not being a dick…all of those are your job. Interviews often take place after they’re already convinced that you have the required background, so they’re largely interested in discovering whether you’re a good chemistry match for the team.
Can’t really speak to grueling tech interviews though. That’s a whole different category of thing.
I get this, and being good at customer service helps a lot in interviews.
But on the other hand it’s really fucked up how we are all expected to go to work and always be pleasant when most of us don’t want to be there and are only there so they don’t become homeless. So I don’t care if my coworkers are pissy, it’s healthy to act how you feel.
At 18 years old US society puts a gun to our heads and says “work or die”, with no guarentee of being able to find work that pays for a life.
On the one hand the way corporations expect loyalty and devotion all the time in return for a very small percentage of their profits being paid out to us as salary sucks. On the other, having to work if you want to eat is just kind of…life? Not saying we couldn’t work on something better as a society, but there’s been very few people at any point in human history who didn’t have to work hard to survive. I’m glad that I get to at least do soulless work in an office which is mostly just boring instead of hard labor or something actively dangerous.
Nobody is saying work isn’t required, but if we only forced people to pay off the debt their existence incurred most people would probably retire before 40
I think for many people it has to do with nervousness. Also power dynamics. When you already have the job, and especially after being there for a couple months, getting on with your coworkers is easy and discussions aren’t awkward usually. A random stranger doing an interview that decides whether or not you become homeless puts pressure on people, and they dont know anything about their personality. Should I joke, what do they find funny, do they find that unprofessional, am I being to quiet, do I need to ask more questions, should I bother asking any.
A few weeks after working with Becky I know the exact number of questions to ask her and how we mesh/joke intertwine etc.
Power dynamics is definitely part of it, and I’ve found that I have much better luck in interviews when I treat them as a conversation rather than just being grilled. It’s easier to do in your 40s than in your 20s though.
Yeah, I’m 35 now and I find myself doing better if I just treat them as a casual gathering but I struggle sometimes with not acting extremely mature at all times. I’m not saying unprofessional things, but I will joke, or laugh to often for some people. Had one that someone called me out for having to stand up a bottle that had liquid in it with a screw on lid. Can’t remember what the product was but I had a bit of an ADHD moment or something where I just figured, that might leak at some point, and stood it up and one of the interviews asked “did you have to do that?”. I laughed it off but it seems a strange thing to ask me when looking back at it.
A lot of people with poorly developed social skills like to pretend that poorly developed social skills don’t make them a bad coworker. I don’t think I agree with that.
this is definitely true, but it’s a doubled edged sword, some of the best people in their fields are just complete assholes. Either through time, or ego, sometimes it’s just because they’re too good for the world. Usually, these people are few and far between.
It’s also worth considering how much of the job actually is being socially proficient. In most cases people are willing to put up with people being a little weird and goofy if they’re good at what they do. Sometimes those are the best people. Some of the people i have the most respect for in my life, are the weirdest people i’ve met. Unreasonably kind people, who are a little socially out there, i still really appreciate because they’re genuinely good people. Some of the more unruly people are some of the most interesting, and knowledge people i’ve ever met. They also guarantee a unique perspective on things, which is valuable sometimes.
Different people attract different company, and different people work differently, ultimately the simple rule of getting as many differing points of view on something as possible, still seems to be holding true.
than again, this all depends on the type of team you want. You may want a groundbreaking research team, you may want a greybeard maintenance team, depends on the environment.
The problem with that analysis is that the simple skill checklists used by HR workers who don’t even understand what the terms mean are woefully bad at assessing people’s job fitness. If you have ABC but not XYZ it doesn’t matter if you invented ABC, those glorified hall monitors won’t let you interview. But they will if you just lie on the form, knowing you can convince the actual manager that you know ABC inside out and can learn XYZ in five minutes.
A lot of people with poorly developed social skills like to pretend that poorly developed social skills don’t make them a bad coworker. I don’t think I agree with that. Your job isn’t just the stuff you like. Organization, prioritization, collaborating and interacting with your coworkers, attending meetings and making useful contributions, just generally not being a dick…all of those are your job. Interviews often take place after they’re already convinced that you have the required background, so they’re largely interested in discovering whether you’re a good chemistry match for the team.
Can’t really speak to grueling tech interviews though. That’s a whole different category of thing.
I get this, and being good at customer service helps a lot in interviews.
But on the other hand it’s really fucked up how we are all expected to go to work and always be pleasant when most of us don’t want to be there and are only there so they don’t become homeless. So I don’t care if my coworkers are pissy, it’s healthy to act how you feel.
At 18 years old US society puts a gun to our heads and says “work or die”, with no guarentee of being able to find work that pays for a life.
On the one hand the way corporations expect loyalty and devotion all the time in return for a very small percentage of their profits being paid out to us as salary sucks. On the other, having to work if you want to eat is just kind of…life? Not saying we couldn’t work on something better as a society, but there’s been very few people at any point in human history who didn’t have to work hard to survive. I’m glad that I get to at least do soulless work in an office which is mostly just boring instead of hard labor or something actively dangerous.
Nobody is saying work isn’t required, but if we only forced people to pay off the debt their existence incurred most people would probably retire before 40
I think for many people it has to do with nervousness. Also power dynamics. When you already have the job, and especially after being there for a couple months, getting on with your coworkers is easy and discussions aren’t awkward usually. A random stranger doing an interview that decides whether or not you become homeless puts pressure on people, and they dont know anything about their personality. Should I joke, what do they find funny, do they find that unprofessional, am I being to quiet, do I need to ask more questions, should I bother asking any.
A few weeks after working with Becky I know the exact number of questions to ask her and how we mesh/joke intertwine etc.
Power dynamics is definitely part of it, and I’ve found that I have much better luck in interviews when I treat them as a conversation rather than just being grilled. It’s easier to do in your 40s than in your 20s though.
Yeah, I’m 35 now and I find myself doing better if I just treat them as a casual gathering but I struggle sometimes with not acting extremely mature at all times. I’m not saying unprofessional things, but I will joke, or laugh to often for some people. Had one that someone called me out for having to stand up a bottle that had liquid in it with a screw on lid. Can’t remember what the product was but I had a bit of an ADHD moment or something where I just figured, that might leak at some point, and stood it up and one of the interviews asked “did you have to do that?”. I laughed it off but it seems a strange thing to ask me when looking back at it.
this is definitely true, but it’s a doubled edged sword, some of the best people in their fields are just complete assholes. Either through time, or ego, sometimes it’s just because they’re too good for the world. Usually, these people are few and far between.
It’s also worth considering how much of the job actually is being socially proficient. In most cases people are willing to put up with people being a little weird and goofy if they’re good at what they do. Sometimes those are the best people. Some of the people i have the most respect for in my life, are the weirdest people i’ve met. Unreasonably kind people, who are a little socially out there, i still really appreciate because they’re genuinely good people. Some of the more unruly people are some of the most interesting, and knowledge people i’ve ever met. They also guarantee a unique perspective on things, which is valuable sometimes.
Different people attract different company, and different people work differently, ultimately the simple rule of getting as many differing points of view on something as possible, still seems to be holding true.
than again, this all depends on the type of team you want. You may want a groundbreaking research team, you may want a greybeard maintenance team, depends on the environment.
The problem with that analysis is that the simple skill checklists used by HR workers who don’t even understand what the terms mean are woefully bad at assessing people’s job fitness. If you have ABC but not XYZ it doesn’t matter if you invented ABC, those glorified hall monitors won’t let you interview. But they will if you just lie on the form, knowing you can convince the actual manager that you know ABC inside out and can learn XYZ in five minutes.