I was chatting with a friend of mine who hires engineers who told me that in their company's hiring process they have an explicit focus on assessing the candidate's "grit" during the interview process.
Specifically, they try to determine
1) how willing the candidate is to do the thankless grunt work that is needed for team success
2) how likely are they to spend their time reducing the amount of gruntwork their teammates have to do
1) how willing the candidate is to do the thankless grunt work that is needed for team success
2) how likely are they to spend their time reducing the amount of gruntwork their teammates have to do
They consider it an explicit red flag if an engineer is only focused on doing "the hard/fun stuff" or high-visibility projects and expecting their peers to pick up the slack. Such engineers tend to be more interested in their own career progress than the team's success.
This mindset is often associated with a strong sense of entitlement or the zero-sum competitive mindset instilled at top schools. It is even to the point where this company now considers some top schools risky to hire from (sorry, @standford grads).
These people can be effective when deployed correctly, but as a member of a team they can end up encouraging dysfunctional dynamics. They can ultimately feel disillusioned due to do a lack of individual validation, and team members end up resenting their self-centered approach.
@angeladuckw's work shows that long-term success has more to do with perseverance in the face of failure, honing your craft, learning how to give and receive feedback (one of the best ways to improve individually and as a team!), than early advancement or social positioning.
After some early struggles with people hired before this lesson was learned, they have managed to build out a highly diverse, functional and successful team by keeping this trait in mind.
A follow-up point:
As a manager, it's important to keep your incentives aligned for team success. Sustained success happens not because a star engineer does something on their own, it comes when a team works together to unlock each other's best work. Reward grit over glam.
As a manager, it's important to keep your incentives aligned for team success. Sustained success happens not because a star engineer does something on their own, it comes when a team works together to unlock each other's best work. Reward grit over glam.
Another follow-up. One of the tweets in this thread seemed to imply that I personally have a negative impression of Stanford or its graduates. This does not represent my views. Some of my favorite people are Stanford grads!
