>With all due respect, how do you define "makes my day worse"?
Does their job in such a way that it runs completely counter to the central mission of running a company/Department, contributes to higher employee attrition, creates more work that has to be undone, etc?
Run into it all the time. They can know their stuff, they can be able to apply it, but if they're a raging, uncontrollable unaccountable jerk, or have a physical odiousness or manner that disrupts the workplace for others, all the skills in the world cannot save you in the course of being hired by me.
We spend a full third minimum of our lives working. When you're responsible for a team, I see it as a serious responsibility to make sure everyone is accommodated for and welcome... Even that though is finite. I call it the "Filthy Breeder Jerk Chicken" exception.
This is a management problem. If the company has a healthy communication practices, the people will trust the procedure and someone who is not following the rules will be removed quickly.
From my experience you cannot select with certainty and from the start with subjective criteria, you can mitigate the problems with right management and proper procedures.
What if someone with high intelligence learns to "act" and implement some "persuasion" tricks?
I had similar experiences with people with "acceptable" skillset and over the top "persuasion" skills who did not bring quality to the company at all. They go along and create "comfort" for others in the name of their own survival and career advancements.
Luckily I am aware of this "phenomenon" and never will accept "friendliness" or other subjective criteria in my company.
From production stand point the problem is that this "friendliness trend" leads to team sentiments and lack of critical thinking.
All of this is mitigated trough clear company culture and requirements. Removing subjectivism and personal preferences is vital for production processes and requires management skills.
May be this is the core of the problem: A lot of tech entrepreneurs don't invest in acquiring management knowledge and go with a path of least resistance - comfort, friendliness and "culture fit".:)
>I had similar experiences with people with "acceptable" skillset and over the top "persuasion" skills who did not bring quality to the company at all. They go along and create "comfort" for others in the name of their own survival and career advancements.
True quality speaks for itself. The fast talkers can be tricky, but as long as you are not overextended that you can't close the loop and eval work product, you can negate that relatively quickly... I learned that the hard way. Also, once you build a solid amount of real, genuine trust with your people; the kind you can't buy with just money, it gets easier.
>Luckily I am aware of this "phenomenon" and never will accept "friendliness" or other subjective criteria in my company.
So you evaluate every hire of yes/no criteria, hmmm? I'm sure HR loves that. Makes their job easy. Good luck with that. I've not had good luck with it. People aren't nuts and bolts. If there is anything I've learned, it's that real force multiplication happens when you start treating people like people, not cogs, one, and two sometimes, the sub-optimal hires can be a net positive in the long run by at least being a shining example of what to look out and forcing you to do things in ways resilient to burning out high performers. Truly resilient and working business processes should be tolerant of candidates of all stripes. If you find yourself needing the cream of the crop all the time, you're running a department as a hot house flower, which means you're on borrowed time.
>All of this is mitigated trough clear company culture and requirements. Removing subjectivism and personal preferences is vital for production processes and requires management skills.
Man is the measure of all things, and woe into they that in hubris or denial forgets it. I applaud the dedication to process, but in my world examples of those others say have "management skills" are either someone willing to have someone else suffer for their decisions, someone with a strong Reality Distortion Field, or those who are just in too deep to be able to back out now. I'll take a candidate with leadership skills over a self-styled manager anyday.
My laser focus is on process. Process is made by humans and quality management requires all of the things you mention.
My reaction comes from reality of today.
Today big portion of tech industry is suffering from bad HR practices and procedures. Combine this with tendency for "cultural fit" preference and you have a crisis.
There are countless qualified individuals who are exiting the workforce because of this.
Ageism. Tribalism. Lack of proper communication and "interviews from hell".
Removing this is not hard. The argument for "friendliness" over professional qualities and experience is weak. Professional qualities include ability for adequate behavior but are not the driving force of "cultural fit" criteria.
Cultural fit is actually a narrow qualifier created by HR to serve corporations and startups and hide the ugly true of discriminatory nature of the employee selection processes.
Does their job in such a way that it runs completely counter to the central mission of running a company/Department, contributes to higher employee attrition, creates more work that has to be undone, etc?
Run into it all the time. They can know their stuff, they can be able to apply it, but if they're a raging, uncontrollable unaccountable jerk, or have a physical odiousness or manner that disrupts the workplace for others, all the skills in the world cannot save you in the course of being hired by me.
We spend a full third minimum of our lives working. When you're responsible for a team, I see it as a serious responsibility to make sure everyone is accommodated for and welcome... Even that though is finite. I call it the "Filthy Breeder Jerk Chicken" exception.