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posted by martyb on Sunday September 24 2017, @03:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the just-need-a-thousand-monkeys dept.

[The] main problem here is that software development is not an individual sport. Assessing technical traits means that we are looking at candidates as individuals. At the same time, we will put them in a team context and the project's success will depend on their teamwork. A person's resume or LinkedIn profile says close to nothing about their team skills.

What's more, we know quite a lot about what makes teams effective. Anita Woolley's research on collective intelligence [DOI: 10.1126/science.1193147] [DX] provides extremely valuable insight on the topic. First of all, how do we define collective intelligence? It's basically the skill of a group to solve complex problems. Well, it sounds like the definition of everyday work for software development teams if you ask me.

Why is collective intelligence so important? Exploiting collective intelligence, as opposed to going with the opinion of the smartest person in a room, is a winning strategy. To put in Anita Woolley's words: "Collective intelligence was much more predictive in terms of succeeding in complex tasks than average individual intelligence or maximal individual intelligence."

The power is in the team.


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @05:49PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @05:49PM (#572388)

    Great. Stop taking it out on the rest of us.

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  • (Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday September 24 2017, @08:18PM

    by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Sunday September 24 2017, @08:18PM (#572442) Journal

    No.

    When feminism wants to get serious about gender equality, especially the part where you give up privileges you're used to being unaware you have, such as the privilege of being unaccountable for one's personal failures, then I will consider it.