How Bullshitters Not Just Survive But Thrive (2016)

I mean, I feel like everyone hating on this article either:<p>1. has never had the misfortune of working with one of these people. &quot;poser&quot; devs who care more about &quot;communicating up&quot; and making a show of their (often quite trivial) contributions<p>2. has worked with people like this, but doesn&#x27;t perceive the behavior described in the article, for whatever reason.<p>A couple times in my life, not just in software, I have worked with people who are _exactly_ like the article describes. The work they do is all perception-management stuff. Shuffling around work tickets, setting up&#x2F;attending meetings, etc., when they are supposed to be individual contributors. Meanwhile, they contribute nothing. I&#x27;ve even had a coworker -- a peer -- come to me to ask me to do a task when they were assigned to do it. Because they were busy organizing work tickets.<p>Don&#x27;t get me wrong. You have to toot your own horn when you do something that should be noticed. Your boss won&#x27;t always recognize when you&#x27;ve made a meaningful contribution, so saying, &quot;Hey I did this and it&#x27;s pretty good, and it adds value to our org in these ways&quot; is not inherently bad.<p>It&#x27;s when that autotooting is to bring attention to stuff outside what they&#x27;re _supposed_ to be contributing that it should raise red flags. Or when they start trying to delegate work to their peers. I&#x27;m really glad so many of you find this article so awful because it means you&#x27;ve never felt the frustration of watching someone like this get praised for and advance by essentially doing nothing.<p>edit: I don&#x27;t know how to explain it to someone who hasn&#x27;t ever noticed it. The behavior pattern in the article is not something a lot of people notice. But among people who do notice -- at least those I&#x27;ve talked to -- it&#x27;s very obvious and really bothersome.<p>That said, most of the time coworkers -- even really smart, kind, hard-working coworkers -- either don&#x27;t notice or don&#x27;t care. So it&#x27;s not surprising to me that commentators here think the article is BS. You&#x27;ve probably sat next to people like this but you didn&#x27;t notice. Good on you.

Ironically, this article also reeks of bullshit.<p>The massive characterization: the sloppy nerd (W-S), the consummate bullshitter (S-W), and the &quot;rare&quot; real talent (W+S). Which sets up the classic, &quot;you&#x27;re successful, so you must be a bullshitter&quot; (because those S+Ws are <i>sooo rare</i>).<p>The &quot;CB&#x27;s&quot; he&#x27;s describing are so incredibly transparent, they might as well be strawmen.

A better article if you&#x27;re interested in this type of analysis, done well: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ribbonfarm.com&#x2F;2009&#x2F;10&#x2F;07&#x2F;the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ribbonfarm.com&#x2F;2009&#x2F;10&#x2F;07&#x2F;the-gervais-principle-o...</a>

As an S-W character myself currently struggling to transform into the mythical W-S in academia, is there any simple ways to just focus and get work done? I find it almost impossible to focus on one thing for more than a few minutes.

I am the company owner. I had the bizarre experience of net productivity going UP by firing the warehouse manager. Apparently he had the habit of telling the same long-winded story to each of his 8 co-workers, individually.<p>Once he got done telling them all about the strawberries that were 50 cents a pound underpriced at Safeway, `15 minutes later they could get back to work. He not only wasted his time, but also his co-workers.<p>Productivity noticeably went up after his departure. Nobody had complained about his time wasting stories until AFTER he left. Somehow they assumed I knew everything but didn&#x27;t care (bizarre, since I am fairly frugal) .<p>So as the Boss in this scenario, sometimes it is hard to tell what the truth really is. My staff was trying to be nice, and not cause problems in the workplace. Thus causing a problem in the workplace.<p>Occasionally I do the Toyota &#x27;stand in a circle&#x27; exercise in the factory to get a real sense of how people move around, how they spend their time. It is always surprising how my assumptions are often wrong.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;theleanthinker.com&#x2F;2007&#x2F;07&#x2F;09&#x2F;the-chalk-circle&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;theleanthinker.com&#x2F;2007&#x2F;07&#x2F;09&#x2F;the-chalk-circle&#x2F;</a><p>I also watch for the &quot;delegate to peers&quot; routine. If I assigned it to you, I wanted YOU to do it. If I wanted your co-worker to do it, I would have assigned it to THEM.

There are four reactions to this article that I can see right now:<p>1. It is incorrect, and the author misunderstands the nature of management<p>2. It is neither correct, not incorrect, but is vapid and superficial<p>3. It is basically correct, but poorly written and reasoned<p>4. It is correct<p>Let me respond to category #1 and #3, and try to unpack the claim made in the article.<p>I assume that there is no debate that some people do not add value.<p>Most people may also agree that there are some people who do not add value <i>on purpose</i>. That is, they are not interested in adding value. What might be more controversial is that there are many such people, and they are successful.<p>If you believe that there are people who purposefully don&#x27;t add value but exist and thrive, then who are they, how do they thrive and why aren&#x27;t they caught?<p>I think you will end up with some version of the argument presented here.

In my experience the S-W&#x2F;CB are very rare, rarer than the W+S type. I&#x27;ve worked with one or two over the course of ten years, but they tend to gravitate into project management or BA positions in a short amount of time.<p>The most common type of developer is the fourth category, missing from the article: the -S-W type. Not really all that good, and with little to no political acumen. They fill most roles at medium-to-large IT companies.<p>And having known many (a lot of them are nice people otherwise), I can tell you that each and everyone of them thinks they personally are a W-S type. They think their uninspiring, slow, painful expertise (if its hard for them its because it must be a hard problem, right?) makes them top of their field, and that when other developers are the &#x27;superstars&#x27; its just because they are better at politics.<p>The biggest truth, the most important truth that the article seems biased against, is that unless you live in a cave working on software with two other like-minded hardcore devs, 50% of your job is communication! Not being good at communication makes you a bad developer, regardless of your technical abilities.

The lens the author is looking through is missing the other side of the coin.<p>Communication:<p>Regardless of how smart you are, if you can&#x27;t communicate it to others, then then value of your intelligence is limited to an individual role. People who can&#x27;t&#x2F;won&#x27;t communicate make terrible managers. The people above them have no idea what&#x27;s going on in their team. Poor coordination with other teams creates issues outside of their team. Their own team members will fail to understand what role they are playing in a larger effort. The non-communicating manger will know (because he&#x27;s in the meetings), but will fail to pass that information to their team. As you move up the chain of command, communication becomes more important than what you as an individual can produce.<p>Confidence:<p>Your car breaks down. It&#x27;s critical you have it working tomorrow. Two mechanics show up.<p>- The first mechanic says: &quot;This is really tricky. I don&#x27;t know if we can get this fixed tomorrow. It may take a week. I&#x27;m not sure&quot;<p>- The second mechanic says: &quot;This is no problem. I&#x27;ll have it fixed by tomorrow&quot;.<p>Which one are you going to hire?<p>Perception:<p>The hardest pill to swallow is that upper management is very aware of what&#x27;s going on in a team, especially when the manager is a problem.<p><pre><code> - upper management has usually seen it all before. So any behavioral issues are easily spotted. - Team members complain to people on other teams, and word gets around. - Team members will request re-assignement or discuss quitting. </code></pre> There are a lot of ways to handle a bad manager, some good, many bad. The more professional you are, the easier they are to handle (i.e. be honest, don&#x27;t participate in rumors, don&#x27;t complain about others, own your responsibilities, be transparent, and communicate with facts)<p>Performance over Perception:<p>Performance is always more important than perception. The issue is a lot of employees don&#x27;t understand what the priorities are for their organization.<p>The priority is almost always. How efficiently and predictably does the job get done. Efficiency also includes how much hand holding someone higher up has to do.

&gt; <i>Can you see a cow?</i><p>Looks like a blurred Japanese painting. I see 2 samurai, one standing on the left, one dead on the right (face down, you can see his hair). I can&#x27;t explain the horn helmet the standing samurai is wearing, though.<p>&gt; <i>If you still can&#x27;t see the cow, please search &quot;visual intelligence cow&quot; in Google images</i><p>Oh. A cow indeed. (It&#x27;s head, facing the camera.)

I am happy to work at a tech company where your BS can be easily surfaced using pure logic. If you can&#x27;t code and don&#x27;t do good coding or designing then it does not give you enough leeway to BS.

I comfortably and certainly fall into the first category. I&#x27;m not ever more than 90% confident...if you ask me directly what my confidence level is. I tend to be one who is labeled as not &quot;smart&quot;.

Not a link to an article, just the linkedin signup page.<p>Too bad linkedin has declined in usefulness, it was almost getting good.<p>Anyway, pure political posers are nothing new.<p>Not everybody has it in them to actually make worthwhile efforts, or make efforts worthwhile to anyone but themselves.<p>Plus most BS proponents are not in the pure category, with significant to considerable raw ability but who still draw from the BS deck when threatened or with opportunities that might fall to truly higher quality operators instead.<p>Often motivated most strongly by greed, and without real value-creating talent or productive performance to fall back on, there&#x27;s not much else they can do to survive.<p>A great many have been this way for life, and know it well, therefore have a lifetime honing their survival skill. Some get especially good at inserting themselves into the background BS of particulary vulnerable or susceptible bureaucracies, where they can often thrive (exclusively to their own advantage). They sometimes accomplish this without becoming a destructive enough parasite to be well recognized by those who should care. And sometimes those who should care, actually don&#x27;t care to begin with, or have had their doubts diverted by carefully crafted BS fields.<p>For technical or scientific concepts to thrive instead, there must be none of these BS operators between the technical creators and the resources the creators rely on (such as funding resources from capitalists, income from clients, or customers).

I think people should stop trying to put others into categories to feel superior about themselves. People have a range of talents and shortcomings. No one is perfect.

The sad reality is that all too often these people end-up in management position. I&#x27;ve worked for at least a couple of such folks. They were technically incompetent yet could say enough in meetings to appear like geniuses to upper management and non-technical folks. Master manipulators at all levels. It is interesting to note this is the very thing politics is about.

To say this article misses a bit of nuance is a major understatement. The descriptions (w+s, s-w, etc.) are limited, and where people fall on the spectrum (even on this limited black&#x2F;white list of personality types), ebb and flow on a daily&#x2F;weekly basis.

I kept waiting for a resolution to his anecdote about waiting for his boss. It sounds like his boss was doing work. How was that an example of a bullshitter?

I know a EVP who is #2. He is worthless as they come, knows far less than he claims, and soaks up mad resources. He&#x27;s hated by everyone below that level, but very popular with his peers because he hires very competent people and rides on their accomplishments. And he has a great managerial presentation and personality. Ugh.

Fake it &#x27;til you make it!<p>The problem becomes more pronounced the further we abstract away from Assembly and memory management.

Ayn Rand wrote about the W+S crowd leaving this world behind because they couldn&#x27;t tolerate the evil bullshitters.<p>I guess that&#x27;s a more interesting story than W-Ss that &#x27;disappear&#x27; after they get burned by the corporate environment.

<i>Not only that, we also sometimes worked on public holidays when everyone else was enjoying with their families</i><p>This part is illegal as hell and pretty much sums up why a union is absolutely needed in some workplaces; to curb this kind of crap.

How come Elon Musk never says the names of any of the engineers working on products when he makes announcements on stage? The answer is because he doesn&#x27;t want to share credit.

I wonder why the higher-up managers aren&#x27;t able to spot bullshitters, and if they could be trained to do so. It would certainly benefit their organizations.

This is all just delightfully postmodern.

sheer bullshit.. this article..

How is the Gervais Principle from Ribbonfarm any less BS than this article?

Is this backed by research or is it just anecdotal evidence?