<story><title>Disagreeable personalities do not have an advantage in power at work (2020)</title><url>https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32868412/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>talentedcoin</author><text>Strong disagree. It is possible to disagree without being disagreeable, and I personally find it frustrating when people excuse their behaviour in the manner you are doing. Yes work sucks, but being unpleasant, cynical and snarky just makes it even worse. Roll up your sleeves and help or please get out of the way.</text></item><item><author>kyleyeats</author><text>We&amp;#x27;re not jerks. We&amp;#x27;re people who notice problems. You&amp;#x27;re shooting the messenger.&lt;p&gt;Every problem that tech has comes from treating disagreeable people as pariahs. Organizational bloat and tech debt are still issues even when we&amp;#x27;re not there. Avoid hiring disagreeable people and you&amp;#x27;ll arrive at the stereotypical tech org that can&amp;#x27;t get anything done. If you don&amp;#x27;t have disagreeable people to solve your issues, you have to use the other tool: Layoffs.&lt;p&gt;Discriminating against people because they&amp;#x27;re disagreeable is &lt;i&gt;insane&lt;/i&gt;. It&amp;#x27;s a Big Five personality trait. You hate &lt;i&gt;half of humanity&lt;/i&gt;. Evolution produced the best problem-solving thing ever, humanity, and you decided a lot of the work done there was just pointless.&lt;p&gt;The real reason disagreeable people are valuable and can attain power in the workplace is because you&amp;#x27;ve made it so with this completely unreasonable bias you have. They&amp;#x27;re not supposed to be extremely rare! That only happens in the tech workplace.&lt;p&gt;Would you similarly discriminate against anxious people? What about people who aren&amp;#x27;t open to new experiences? Do you shut them out too? How does your ideology square with black people being &lt;i&gt;way&lt;/i&gt; more disagreeable on average? Let me guess: You don&amp;#x27;t hire any and then mumble something about culture fit.&lt;p&gt;Working with disagreeable people doesn&amp;#x27;t suck. Working sucks. The disagreeable people just point it out. How do you ever improve without that? Working at an all-agreeable-people tech firm is a Kafkaesque nightmare of everything being perfect and nothing getting done. And you all deserve it because you decided that when people tend to be one way or the other, the ones who are like you are &lt;i&gt;just better&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item><item><author>derbOac</author><text>This is interesting because it counters the idea that someone has to be a jerk to get ahead. However I&amp;#x27;m also not sure the study really examined the idea too well, and ended up feeling like it&amp;#x27;s the sort of thing that could be misinterpreted and overleveraged.&lt;p&gt;In my personal experience (which is limited) there&amp;#x27;s a certain constellation of organizational characteristics that leads to disagreeable individuals attaining power, and organizational &amp;quot;combativeness&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t really it. I think &amp;quot;corruption&amp;quot; is closer, and good luck measuring that with a self report survey.&lt;p&gt;Then again, maybe the relevant issue isn&amp;#x27;t whether or not people who are jerks are more likely to attain power, it&amp;#x27;s than once they&amp;#x27;re there they&amp;#x27;re more likely to cause problems, and they&amp;#x27;re not &lt;i&gt;less likely&lt;/i&gt; to attain power. So then them being in power is salient.&lt;p&gt;But then I think you have to ask, why aren&amp;#x27;t they less likely to attain power? Is this a case where a zero correlation is actually masking some mixture of processes, one positive in direction and the other negative? If so you&amp;#x27;d think that certain settings would inhibit one or the other of those processes.&lt;p&gt;I guess I feel like this is a case where studying normative organizational dynamics in a cursory way could end up being really misleading.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Name_Chawps</author><text>This study, and the person you&amp;#x27;re replying to, are using the term disagreeable in the Big Five psychology sense. They don&amp;#x27;t mean unpleasant, cynical, or snarky. Sometimes disagreeable people are snarky, but they don&amp;#x27;t have to be.&lt;p&gt;You do, actually, have to be disagreeable to disagree. Agreeable people don&amp;#x27;t like to cause a fuss and just go along with stuff even if they disagree internally. Disagreeable people are the people who tend to disagree. That&amp;#x27;s all it means. Some of them are snarky assholes (you right now?), and others are just people who disagree.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Disagreeable&amp;quot; in common parlance means difficult, overly-critical, and aggressive, but that&amp;#x27;s not what &amp;#x27;s being said here.</text></comment>
<story><title>Disagreeable personalities do not have an advantage in power at work (2020)</title><url>https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32868412/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>talentedcoin</author><text>Strong disagree. It is possible to disagree without being disagreeable, and I personally find it frustrating when people excuse their behaviour in the manner you are doing. Yes work sucks, but being unpleasant, cynical and snarky just makes it even worse. Roll up your sleeves and help or please get out of the way.</text></item><item><author>kyleyeats</author><text>We&amp;#x27;re not jerks. We&amp;#x27;re people who notice problems. You&amp;#x27;re shooting the messenger.&lt;p&gt;Every problem that tech has comes from treating disagreeable people as pariahs. Organizational bloat and tech debt are still issues even when we&amp;#x27;re not there. Avoid hiring disagreeable people and you&amp;#x27;ll arrive at the stereotypical tech org that can&amp;#x27;t get anything done. If you don&amp;#x27;t have disagreeable people to solve your issues, you have to use the other tool: Layoffs.&lt;p&gt;Discriminating against people because they&amp;#x27;re disagreeable is &lt;i&gt;insane&lt;/i&gt;. It&amp;#x27;s a Big Five personality trait. You hate &lt;i&gt;half of humanity&lt;/i&gt;. Evolution produced the best problem-solving thing ever, humanity, and you decided a lot of the work done there was just pointless.&lt;p&gt;The real reason disagreeable people are valuable and can attain power in the workplace is because you&amp;#x27;ve made it so with this completely unreasonable bias you have. They&amp;#x27;re not supposed to be extremely rare! That only happens in the tech workplace.&lt;p&gt;Would you similarly discriminate against anxious people? What about people who aren&amp;#x27;t open to new experiences? Do you shut them out too? How does your ideology square with black people being &lt;i&gt;way&lt;/i&gt; more disagreeable on average? Let me guess: You don&amp;#x27;t hire any and then mumble something about culture fit.&lt;p&gt;Working with disagreeable people doesn&amp;#x27;t suck. Working sucks. The disagreeable people just point it out. How do you ever improve without that? Working at an all-agreeable-people tech firm is a Kafkaesque nightmare of everything being perfect and nothing getting done. And you all deserve it because you decided that when people tend to be one way or the other, the ones who are like you are &lt;i&gt;just better&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item><item><author>derbOac</author><text>This is interesting because it counters the idea that someone has to be a jerk to get ahead. However I&amp;#x27;m also not sure the study really examined the idea too well, and ended up feeling like it&amp;#x27;s the sort of thing that could be misinterpreted and overleveraged.&lt;p&gt;In my personal experience (which is limited) there&amp;#x27;s a certain constellation of organizational characteristics that leads to disagreeable individuals attaining power, and organizational &amp;quot;combativeness&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t really it. I think &amp;quot;corruption&amp;quot; is closer, and good luck measuring that with a self report survey.&lt;p&gt;Then again, maybe the relevant issue isn&amp;#x27;t whether or not people who are jerks are more likely to attain power, it&amp;#x27;s than once they&amp;#x27;re there they&amp;#x27;re more likely to cause problems, and they&amp;#x27;re not &lt;i&gt;less likely&lt;/i&gt; to attain power. So then them being in power is salient.&lt;p&gt;But then I think you have to ask, why aren&amp;#x27;t they less likely to attain power? Is this a case where a zero correlation is actually masking some mixture of processes, one positive in direction and the other negative? If so you&amp;#x27;d think that certain settings would inhibit one or the other of those processes.&lt;p&gt;I guess I feel like this is a case where studying normative organizational dynamics in a cursory way could end up being really misleading.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kyleyeats</author><text>No, it&amp;#x27;s not possible, if you&amp;#x27;re disagreeable. Being disagreeable is a matter of personality, not a matter of personal choice. It would be like me disagreeing while not being tall. I can&amp;#x27;t do it because I am tall all the time.&lt;p&gt;Obviously disagreeable can agree or disagree, and they can do either well or badly  (I happen to be very good at both, thanks). It doesn&amp;#x27;t change who they are while doing it. Just like someone who isn&amp;#x27;t open to new experiences doesn&amp;#x27;t experience a personality change while trying a new restaurant.&lt;p&gt;Disagreeable people do, as a group, have more unpleasant, cynical and snarky people. But that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that all people in that group are that way. It&amp;#x27;s not fair for you to assign me these qualities and then argue against them when I&amp;#x27;m talking about disagreeable people at large. Again, it&amp;#x27;s half the population so there&amp;#x27;s a wide spectrum of outcomes.</text></comment>