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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, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 25 2017, @12:47PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday September 25 2017, @12:47PM (#572633) Journal

    women who, for reasons I cannot comprehend, have decided to make themselves into full-time baby machines.

    Maybe that's what makes them feel fulfilled. Who are you to say they're not? If most women want to have kids, it's probably because it's a biological imperative, the same way it is for men.

    So, you're not that way. You don't have oxytocin coursing through your veins. That's fine. Having children is not a biological imperative for you. But using that as a lens to cast the biological reality for most humans as a "caste system" is gratuitous.

    If you're living in a 1950's social reality that makes you feel oppressed, then change your venue to a place where nobody cares. You know the usual places: New York, San Francisco, Portland, OR, Seattle, etc. Avoid the Midwest and the South. Find others like you and form community with them. If the larger culture makes you feel oppressed, stop watching TV and reading magazines and generally participating in it. With the online universe you can hide in the long tail and switch off everything else.

    I don't like spectator sports, so I don't watch them. I hate commercial culture so I cut the cord on cable years ago. I stopped giving all those things and all those people my life energy by hating them. Now life is calmer and better.

    You can do the same. You put so much energy into hating a reality that you're not gonna change, ever. No matter what you do, no matter how many pejorative terms you lace your speech with, the vast, vast majority of men and women are going to continue to refer to themselves as men and women and have babies with each other. So instead of tearing yourself to pieces over it, find a way to live happily by surrounding yourself with neighbors, friends, and loved ones who accept you for who you are. You've got a lot more to offer the world than a seething cup of resentment.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
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