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Comment by galaxyLogic | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I got much of value out of this on a quick reading. Could someone summarize the lessons of this article?

I think it's too psyche-oriented. Trying to psycho-analyze the candidates? Trying to find a person from whom you can get the maximum benefit?

I've always had the feeling that people who are very interested in psychology are really trying to gain an edge over the others who they now "understand better" than the person him or herself.

Think of playing poker. If you understand your opponents it will give you a a benefit. And it's an interesting exercise. But on the other hand you could spend more time mastering the probabilities and counting cards, and gain an advantage by simply being a better player yourself.

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It needs to be psych oriented.

If you are in high pressure situations you need people who can handle pressure, stay focused etc i.e. not neurotics. Discovering that they cant, when shit hits the fan will have a big cost. On the other hand, if you are dealing with problems requiring curiosity, there is more tolerance for the neurotics and less tolerance for obedience trait holders who need to be told what to do.

Psychology gives team managers that mental framework of what to look for, a vocabulary to think about the types of chimps in the population, where they fit, what they can handle, when they need a break, the spectrum of rewards and punishments that work depending on the personality type, needs, values etc.

Without that knowledge, most good managers will spend a lot of time coming up with their own frameworks (usually to fit a very specific small problem domain) that will invariably resemble what already exists in psych text books.

Yes some managers will take advantage of the knowledge but that is a separate issue to whether the knowledge is required to build good teams. It is.

In my experience most psychology students are confused about themselves and trying to work out why they are the way they are and how they can deal with that. Less Machiavellian, more simple survival.

My friend studying psychology told me that at the beginnig of their studies one professor told them:

Some of you came here to help yourselves. It won't work.

From the article, this person has done over 4,000 interviews. Their primary job is to talk to people, find out as much reliable information as possible to allow them to decide whether they are the right fit for the role. When this is your job, you need some framework/toolchain to do it in a consistent manner.

The problem (as many people here would frame it at least) is that unlike engineering, the best practices are very soft and subjective to each person, since the perception of another person is through your own lens. So this author is trying to convey the importance of having multiple lenses to view people through, so you have a higher chance of seeing signal from that person, rather than reflected signal from yourself.

I found it very helpful (and I am prone to dismissing people that do this as scummy/manipulative when I encounter them), and made me a little more understanding.

> So this author is trying to convey the importance of having multiple lenses

That is important no doubt. I would have preferred seeing a short practical list of what those different lenses are.

As it is, a contemplative article like this makes me think there is not much understanding of the subject at hand, therefore let me convey to you the feeling that I don't know if my approach is correct here's some other "lenses" that might be more or less correct too ...

No doubt the topic is a difficult one so it is good that people are thinking about it and trying to verbalize some possible solutions.

I came here exactly to say similar thing after reading for 5 mins and things got repetitive. Then i read the "about" section and found the author is from financial sector. I don't think i am going to get much value reading further.

EDIT: Reasoning below. A commenter asked the mental model.

Novel Insights are found when deepwork is performed over analyzing huge's volumes of data from multiple sources and thinking about the interconnections. I doubt any one in financial sector or the business types ever perform deepwork at all. There is really no new ideas or key insights that's worthy of deepwork. I think the success is mostly luck and unique to the situation which is beyond human control. When a financial person says they have 3 decades of experience, its the same thing repeated over and over again with no progress build over the previous work simply because that is not possible. For these reasons i think its not worth the time.

You need to recalibrate your mental models estimating the value of an article.

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