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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: 1) by anubi on Monday September 25 2017, @08:34AM

    by anubi (2828) on Monday September 25 2017, @08:34AM (#572587) Journal

    I believe a lot of this assholery is inadvertantly fomented in the workplace.

    Remmber the Monkey, Cucumber, and Grape experiment? [youtube.com]

    Someone works their ass off, denies themselves many social opportunities, and fun, in order to become more knowledgeable and productive in his art. Then he gets to watch someone else get the reward?

    Ok, now we have angry monkey! Pissed off. Brilliant, and skilled, but unemployable.

    I have watched this very same thing happen in several companies, usually immediately after the hiring of some "leadership skills" type. He started doing the same things the experimenter did in the video.

    As we transitioned as a company from making things to how to kiss ass, things went downhill fast.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]