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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: 4, Insightful) by unauthorized on Sunday September 24 2017, @07:44PM (2 children)

    by unauthorized (3776) on Sunday September 24 2017, @07:44PM (#572426)

    Social sensitivity of group members is critical to group cohesiveness. In order for NASA's crews both in space and on the ground to be successful, they needed to be able to completely trust each other. For an example of how critical that is, when Neil Armstrong was landing the Eagle, he did something absolutely nuts, which was turning off the computer - had Buzz Aldrin not had the kind of relationship with Neil to trust him with his life, he might have tried to stop Neil from doing that.

    No, it's not. Many animal species can work like clockwork together, despite having a lot less "social sensitivity" than primates. Likewise, some of the most efficient social groups in the world are military organizations where social sensitivity is intentionally beaten out of the grunts.

    As for women, they did a bunch of the critical work for NASA back in the day, in particular doing most of the mathematical computations.

    Yes, but those women were actually good at what they were doing. Pointing out people of great expertise as a proof that you should prefer "social cohesion" over expertise is, to use the technical term, fucking stupid.

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Sunday September 24 2017, @09:44PM (1 child)

    by Thexalon (636) on Sunday September 24 2017, @09:44PM (#572463)

    Many animal species can work like clockwork together, despite having a lot less "social sensitivity" than primates.

    We're humans, not ants. We don't behave like ants. If we're going to do something, we need to figure out how humans can do it, and how the ants manage to pull off the same thing is immaterial. And that means paying attention to experts who might know a thing or two about how people respond to each other when stuck in a confined space with 5 other people for months on end.

    Likewise, some of the most efficient social groups in the world are military organizations where social sensitivity is intentionally beaten out of the grunts.

    I'm guessing you've never been in a military, because according to everyone I know who has they are decidedly not efficient at just about every activity except killing the enemy. This is in part because any mistake is magnified by a bunch of grunts who've been taught not to question orders. That said, militaries work extremely hard at trying to instill what they call "unit cohesion". And any detailed understanding of military history will actually show the touchy-feely stuff can make a real difference - e.g. the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade was ordered in part because the guy ordering the Light Brigade to charge hated the commander of the Light Brigade and was probably hoping he'd get killed.

    Yes, but those women were actually good at what they were doing.

    And I never said "hire women who don't know what they're doing". Which I believe they should continue to do. I was responding to the claim that NASA succeeded because they were a sausage-fest, when in fact they have relied on talented women throughout their entire history.

    Obviously, the ideal to strive for is people who are extremely capable and work well with others. I can tell you that whenever I've been involved in hiring people, once I knew the person across the table was capable of doing the job, I prized "not a jerk" over "extremely capable". A moderately capable non-jerk might not get as much done as an extremely capable jerk individually, but the extremely capable jerk will screw up the work of everybody else on the team and cause the overall results to get worse.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @05:01PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @05:01PM (#572715)

      And any detailed understanding of military history will actually show the touchy-feely stuff can make a real difference - e.g. the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade was ordered in part because the guy ordering the Light Brigade to charge hated the commander of the Light Brigade and was probably hoping he'd get killed.

      Uhh... no. It may be that "touchy-feely" stuff makes a difference (and intuitively it must). However, you have failed to demonstrate it, let alone prove it, with your example.

      The Charge of the Light Brigade [wikipedia.org] disaster happened due to a "miscommunication in the chain of command, [and as a result] the Light Brigade was instead sent on a frontal assault against a different artillery battery..."

      Can more "touchy-feely" stuff stop all miscommunications? I doubt it.