<story><title>People prefer friendliness, trustworthiness in teammates over skill competency</title><url>https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/3318/research-people-prefer-friendliness-trustworthiness-in-teammates-over-skill-competency</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>supernova87a</author><text>I am confused why people are so outraged at the idea that some part of selecting people to work with may be based on whether you get along with them.&lt;p&gt;People are social beings.   Part of working together comes from feeling like you want to cooperate.   You could have someone who is incredibly smart and clever as your business partner, but will you really feel like you want to go the extra mile for him&amp;#x2F;her?  Do you have to watch your back constantly?  Do you have the same goals in life?  Does every interaction drain energy from you?&lt;p&gt;We come from families, social structures.  We have people in our families who are incompetent but we love them.   It&amp;#x27;s not unreasonable to think that some of this behavior would continue in our work worlds.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Diversity&amp;quot; in the trendy usage today, for most people still doesn&amp;#x27;t trump whether you want to work with someone, and that hopefully doesn&amp;#x27;t have much to do with race&amp;#x2F;background&amp;#x2F;gender&amp;#x2F;etc.   I say hopefully of course, and helping people overcome or not be prejudiced that some characteristic correlates with ability&amp;#x2F;desire to work with them, is an important thing to do.&lt;p&gt;But forcing people to believe that someone&amp;#x27;s &amp;lt;x&amp;gt; characteristic is more important than whether you want to work with them is a recipe for dissatisfaction and backlash against people who insist that it should be so.</text></item><item><author>cletus</author><text>Roger Sterling of Mad Men said it best [1]:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I don&amp;#x27;t know if anyone&amp;#x27;s ever told you that half the time this business comes down to &amp;#x27;I don&amp;#x27;t like that guy.&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;In all my years of working, this is probably the most important thing you can learn. Except for marginal cases, it&amp;#x27;s not about how good you are at your job. You just have to be liked while being sufficiently good.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also why the perennial &amp;quot;hiring is broken&amp;quot; posts and threads miss the point completely: really they&amp;#x27;re just trying to find someone they like. It&amp;#x27;s what &amp;quot;culture fit&amp;quot; really means. And people like people like themselves. This is part of what can lead to unlawful discrimination.&lt;p&gt;Trustworthiness is an interesting one as it seems to be hard to define but some people just have it and some don&amp;#x27;t. This has been studied and can have a profound effect on, say, criminal sentencing [2].&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;madmenqts&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;783648743690231808?lang=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;madmenqts&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;783648743690231808?lang...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;sections&amp;#x2F;health-shots&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;17&amp;#x2F;423600926&amp;#x2F;in-court-your-face-could-determine-your-fate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;sections&amp;#x2F;health-shots&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;17&amp;#x2F;4236009...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>twoheadedboy</author><text>Because you&amp;#x27;re on a site where a significant portion of the population probably have poor social skills &amp;#x2F; are unlikable but have high degrees of technical skill.&lt;p&gt;If you had this conversation in the real world instead of the internet, everyone would just say &amp;quot;yeah, duh&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>People prefer friendliness, trustworthiness in teammates over skill competency</title><url>https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/3318/research-people-prefer-friendliness-trustworthiness-in-teammates-over-skill-competency</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>supernova87a</author><text>I am confused why people are so outraged at the idea that some part of selecting people to work with may be based on whether you get along with them.&lt;p&gt;People are social beings.   Part of working together comes from feeling like you want to cooperate.   You could have someone who is incredibly smart and clever as your business partner, but will you really feel like you want to go the extra mile for him&amp;#x2F;her?  Do you have to watch your back constantly?  Do you have the same goals in life?  Does every interaction drain energy from you?&lt;p&gt;We come from families, social structures.  We have people in our families who are incompetent but we love them.   It&amp;#x27;s not unreasonable to think that some of this behavior would continue in our work worlds.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Diversity&amp;quot; in the trendy usage today, for most people still doesn&amp;#x27;t trump whether you want to work with someone, and that hopefully doesn&amp;#x27;t have much to do with race&amp;#x2F;background&amp;#x2F;gender&amp;#x2F;etc.   I say hopefully of course, and helping people overcome or not be prejudiced that some characteristic correlates with ability&amp;#x2F;desire to work with them, is an important thing to do.&lt;p&gt;But forcing people to believe that someone&amp;#x27;s &amp;lt;x&amp;gt; characteristic is more important than whether you want to work with them is a recipe for dissatisfaction and backlash against people who insist that it should be so.</text></item><item><author>cletus</author><text>Roger Sterling of Mad Men said it best [1]:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I don&amp;#x27;t know if anyone&amp;#x27;s ever told you that half the time this business comes down to &amp;#x27;I don&amp;#x27;t like that guy.&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;In all my years of working, this is probably the most important thing you can learn. Except for marginal cases, it&amp;#x27;s not about how good you are at your job. You just have to be liked while being sufficiently good.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also why the perennial &amp;quot;hiring is broken&amp;quot; posts and threads miss the point completely: really they&amp;#x27;re just trying to find someone they like. It&amp;#x27;s what &amp;quot;culture fit&amp;quot; really means. And people like people like themselves. This is part of what can lead to unlawful discrimination.&lt;p&gt;Trustworthiness is an interesting one as it seems to be hard to define but some people just have it and some don&amp;#x27;t. This has been studied and can have a profound effect on, say, criminal sentencing [2].&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;madmenqts&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;783648743690231808?lang=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;madmenqts&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;783648743690231808?lang...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;sections&amp;#x2F;health-shots&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;17&amp;#x2F;423600926&amp;#x2F;in-court-your-face-could-determine-your-fate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;sections&amp;#x2F;health-shots&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;17&amp;#x2F;4236009...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bennysomething</author><text>Yeah I got kick back on HN for expressing this opinion. There&amp;#x27;s a lot of unexplained reasons why people like each other, dating sites haven&amp;#x27;t cracked this either. But anything unexplained in this realm now seems to immediately explained with &amp;quot;unconscious bias&amp;quot;. I can&amp;#x27;t explain why I like certain people but can&amp;#x27;t stand others.</text></comment>