> yet employers often find that people filling these roles with poor people skills are still employable. This needs to stop.
I’m of the opinion that every position is customer-facing.
Well fuck me, then. I'm sorry, it's already hard enough for me to find jobs as it is.
Frankly I'm glad we live in a society that has a place for us social retards. I really do believe that social "skills" can't be learned, at least not well. I'm glad there's a place for us, just like I'm glad there's a place for people who are short, black, or ugly. Yeah, there are fewer employment opportunities, and our salaries are handicapped consequentially (tech skills + people skills = high payed manager!) but telling us we should be out on our asses for something we can't help is cruel.
> "I really do believe that social "skills" can't be learned, at least not well."
As someone who, 5 years ago, couldn't stammer out 5 words in front of a crowd without shrinking so far back into his seat that he'd disappear... I strongly disagree.
I've gone from incredibly shy and socially clueless to being able to square off with management in meetings on important issues. I've gone from being unable to hold a conversation about anything non-tech to being a half-decent conversationalist that can hold non-techies' interests for more than 20 minutes.
I've also gone from dreading social events to looking forward to them. It's a great feeling, believe me.
It didn't come magically, it took a lot of extreme self-consciousness, a lot of deliberate self training, a whole lot of beating up oneself, and forcing myself to step well outside of my comfort zone for this to happen. But these things can very well be learned.
I never stuttered - it was more terrifying social anxiety. There was a time where my legs felt rubbery I literally quaked in anxiety when giving a talk.
While I'm no great orator, I'm a long way from that now.
Not trying to project on you - but one of the big realization I made throughout this is that the things that I despised and dreaded most were also the things I was bad at. I convinced myself that parties were stupid for a variety of reasons - but at the end of the day I hated them because I didn't know how to handle them. Once I learned some of the basics there I started enjoying myself, and hey, now I look forward to house parties.
It absolutely is something you can work on. It takes a lot of time and very close attention, but it can be done.
I was the kid that nobody liked in middle school. I got beat up on a regular basis, everybody made fun of me, I had only a couple of friends and sometimes it seemed more like they tolerated me more than they enjoyed me, and I was basically in social hell. I was probably vaguely Aspergian - I fit basically all the symptoms - though the disease really wasn't all that well known back then.
When I switched to a new school, I decided that my only goal was to not be hated. I didn't care about being smart, I didn't care about passing my classes (we didn't have grades anyway), I didn't care about being popular...I just wanted the pain to stop. And so I basically shut up and observed. I watched how the other kids interacted with each other. I took note of what they were interested in, what got them excited. I purposefully tried to hide my intelligence, though my teachers basically shot that plan to hell when they pulled me out of algebra and told my classmates that the reason was because I scored a perfect score on the placement test.
When I did start interacting again, it was with "little" social interactions. Words of encouragement when they were struggling with a math problems. Questions about their favorite bands. Accepting their offers to come and hang out. In middle school, I had this hyper-competitive desire to be cool, and it resulted in a fair bit of self-aggrandizement that didn't exactly make me cool. In high school - at least early high school - I talked a lot less and listened a lot more.
And over time, it worked. I remember, about a month into high school, a classmate started making fun of me on the bus. Immediately, one of my other classmates piped up and said "Don't pick on Jon, he's cool." Problem solved, and I never really faced teasing after that.
I could try to put together a cribsheet of various social interaction rules I've learned if you're interested, but it may end up being rather long, so I'm not going to do it unless you think it'll help. Ask me for it if you want.
> I really do believe that social "skills" can't be
> learned, at least not well.
Well, I believe they can, but that's not the point. Being a social butterfly or socially inept doesn't matter here.
I have a customer-facing development position. I'm not the front-line of communication, but I am expected to answer the phone if I have to (esp. if it's a client), be polite, and not drive business away. That's really the all of it. I'm not expected to sell, or to cold-call anyone, but essentially the duties are: don't be a jerk.
If you survived an interview you're probably socially aware enough to handle this.
Exactly, I don't think anybody expects everyone in the company to spend a ton of effort on being something they're not, but I do think it's reasonable to expect that employees to treat customers respectfully.
Customers and other employees. My employer (which doesn't expose customers to engineering, or vice versa) has a "no assholes" policy and it works fantastically. It seems very much that we'd honestly rather not hire someone than hire a social problem, and it's one of my favorite things about working here.
The other thing is that social skills can be learned... just like tech skills can be learned. No-one is born understanding Lisp, but you can learn to use it by applying effort. For techies, effort in learning a tech skill is "fun", so they forget that they had to work for it. But yes, all skills have to be learned.
Working towards a positive outcome doesn't always mean changing oneself. It can mean recognizing potential situations and avoiding them. For example, if you get really cranky when you haven't eaten in a while, you can always make sure to have some food with you (food bar, energy bars) or realize that skipping meals is a bad idea, etc.
Not if it's a fault that can't be changed, or at least not easily.
I'm short, too, and I've learned to accept that, just as I've learned to accept the fact that some of my friends have more people posting "happy birthday" on their wall than I do.
Can't be changed? Are you sure you aren't making up excuses for yourself? If you didn't believe people skills were innate and unlearnable, would you have to face the fact that you may be simply lazy in that regard, or that you're clinging to an unfriendly personality because you feel it makes you more of a techy hacker archetype?
> I'm glad there's a place for us, just like I'm glad there's a place for people who are short, black, or ugly
Am I reading this correctly? Do you believe you have as little control over your behavior towards other people as a person has over their race, height, or facial structure? Even then, your analogy fails because short, black, or ugly people do not harm those around them merely by having those attributes, whereas if you behave like an asshole . . . ahem, a social retard . . . you do. I'm afraid that most people around you will feel differently about this issue than you do.
Actually, people skills can and are learned, but a lot occurs at an early age when you are not exactly in control of your education. Dealing with other children at <5 years is kind of important.
I had a friend in college who grew up on a farm. He was an only child, and I got the feeling his parents didn't really pay him much mind beyond rules and schedule. He did not play team sports or do team activities of any kind and really didn't mix after school with his peers. You could see his lack of comprehension he exhibited behavior and said words that caused offense. He did become a high school teacher.
I too believe not everyone needs to deal with customers. I blame the company for putting someone with that personality type in a job that has customer implications. Their response is also inadequate and should have been much more inline with "all our fault".
That being said, like you, I think he should be gone or put on leave for a while. Deleting backup data is a super no-no. That's a trust violation and has nothing to do with social skills.
> "social "skills" can't be learned, at least not well"
Yes they can. I grew up missing a bunch of key social skills (something akin to Asperger Syndrome). After I was married, my wife taught me to make eye contact when I spoke to her. I was a teaching assistant in grad school, and later an educator with a museum, and developed several skills through that. By the time I left to pursue full-time parenting, teachers would regularly compliment me on my people skills.
If somebody like me (who didn't even learn eye contact as a child) can learn decent "people skills", there's no excuse for any but the most extreme cases (and some of them even manage to make serious progress with the right training.)
This all involves someone that's willing to put up with you enough to teach you how to be a social person. Some people just don't like being around others, some fear others, and some are simply shunned by society and never had a chance. Few people can have a wife plop down on their lap and those that lack social skills fear getting a job that involves talking to people, and for good reason.
There'll always be exceptions that go on to become president and whatever, but it's a lot of work and a lot of luck.
It had a lot to do with my choosing to put myself in an uncomfortable position, and choosing to learn the necessary skills. It wasn't all "someone willing to teach me"; a lot of it was me being willing to figure stuff out.
If you do need someone to teach you, that suggests you have a significant condition -- in which case you very likely qualify for help from a specialist. For example, if you have an Autism spectrum disorder, you can find resources in the US via http://www.autismspeaks.org/community/fsdb/search.php .
It's easy to make excuses, but it's better to make progress.
Seriously. Companies retain these people because they provide value despite their poor social skills. Why shouldn't they keep them, if that's the case? If only those with good social skills were employable, the workforce would be cut in half.
Overall value of one person to a company is hard to measure. Yes, they might write great code, but if their abrasive and asshole personality bring down the productivity of the other five developers on the team, is it worth it?
Probably not in that scenario, but plenty of anti-social types manage not to bring down the productivity of everyone around them.
If someone's social problems are destroying their value to the company then by all means they should not be employed there. I simply strenuously object to the blanket statement that all anti-social people should be completely unemployable regardless of circumstance or value.
Well fuck me, then. I'm sorry, it's already hard enough for me to find jobs as it is.
Frankly I'm glad we live in a society that has a place for us social retards. I really do believe that social "skills" can't be learned, at least not well. I'm glad there's a place for us, just like I'm glad there's a place for people who are short, black, or ugly. Yeah, there are fewer employment opportunities, and our salaries are handicapped consequentially (tech skills + people skills = high payed manager!) but telling us we should be out on our asses for something we can't help is cruel.
Obviously the guy should have been fired though.