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Comment by neonfreon | Hacker News Reader

I think that's a false dichotomy. It's not simple to separate "personality" from "technical". A person's personality is what drives them to acquire technical skills. Candidates with a curious, open minded personality will spend more time acquiring technical skills than more passive or close minded candidates will. In my experience it's rare to see someone with solid technical skills that doesn't have passable interpersonal skills too. Learning is just too social.

This plays out at a larger scale too - some cultures are more open to borrowing from other cultures, and some are more closed. The more open ones utilize better technology than the closed ones.

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There are many facets to personality, some of which (like curiosity) will relate to technical skills (acquired by finding interesting things to learn). But you will also see technical skills acquired by non-personality reasons (like plain old work and academic experience), and you will also see personality traits (like arrogance) that will have very little to do with the technical skills you are exploring. If you rely too much in linking the two in your interview, you will probably reach incomplete and biased conclusions about the candidate.

However, you are correct in that there are correlations between them that you can use to guide the interview:

- breadth of technical knowledge -> curiosity

- depth of knowledge on a topic -> focus

- length of experience on a topic -> patience

- sources of knowledge -> self-guidance

- etc.

In my experience it's rare to see someone with solid technical skills that doesn't have passable interpersonal skills too.

I've worked with some developers who are brilliant technically, but are not people you would hang out with outside of work. You don't want to duck out or pretend you have a doctor's appointment just to avoid going to lunch with a coworker. You also don't want an arrogant know-it-all on your team, even if he is a genius with code. I remember interviewing a guy and asking him how he would accomplish something in PHP, and he said "PHP sucks, I would write it in a real language." That's the kind of person you don't want to hire to work on a PHP app.

I don't think "would hang out with them outside of work" or "would make a good lunch mate" is the right way to think about personality fit when hiring. I've had many effective coworkers and employees that I didn't spend any time with outside of work. If you can't work with someone that doesn't click perfectly with you, shame on you, not them.

'That's the kind of person you don't want to hire to work on a PHP app.' Definitely. I would also be surprised if they were even technically capable of giving a good answer, given that attitude.

'You also don't want an arrogant know-it-all on your team, even if he is a genius with code.' Agreed. And since nobody else wants to work with someone like this, this type has a tendency either tone down their attitude or to get weeded out before they can really grow technical expertise. I've interviewed hundreds of people and can only think of a couple of examples that were close to that, and those were either for internships or people fresh out of college. Do you often run into people that are technically a great fit but are too arrogant to hire?

Thank you for the thoughtful response!

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