
Employers Find ‘Soft Skills’ Like Critical Thinking in Short Supply - prostoalex
http://www.wsj.com/articles/employers-find-soft-skills-like-critical-thinking-in-short-supply-1472549400?mod=e2fb
======
guitarbill
Thank god the Wall Street Journal is encouraging critical thinking, and more
importantly fostering the discussion by putting articles like this out for
everybody to read /s

On a more serious note, I don't believe this is true. In every place I've
been, school, university, corporate jobs, the "critical thinkers" always got
marginalised. This was the case even if they were truly nice people who cared
- i.e. not abrasive and argumentative, just different. This is often called
"difficult", because most managers and HR can't be bothered to actually engage
with that person. So isn't that people can't do it, just the lesson is "you're
better off if you don't say it". Political correctness also doesn't help IMO.

I feel like one of my favorite Mitchell and Webb sketches, "Kill the poor",
describes this quite well:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg)

~~~
dilemma
Creativity and critical thinking. In subordinate position it gets you labelled
a dreamer, a weirdo, or an idiot.

In executive position, visionary, maverick, multidisciplinary thinker, etc.

You can only truly creative in a position with autonomy, so you either climb
the ladder or start your own thing.

~~~
cryoshon
nailed it. corporations can't handle grassroots change, so the values which
promote grassroots change are denigrated even when those same values are
enshrined at higher positions.

~~~
kemiller2002
I think you're absolutely right. What I find really funny about this, at least
in software development, is the "adoption" of the "agile" process they want to
strive for which puts the majority of authority into the hands of the people
doing the work. In the meetings talking about how wonderful it is, they are
all on board, until they realize when they try to put it in place, and
suddenly they realize they aren't in control. Then, they blame the process for
failing them.

------
mannykannot
There seems to be a trend in management towards an unwarranted belief in the
effectiveness and importance of superficial quantitative analysis, and two
complementary myths that go along with the trend: a) any number you can assign
to something is significant; b) anything you cannot assign a number to is not
significant.

Anyone approaching recruiting with this mindset is neither using critical
thinking, nor likely to hire people who can.

~~~
dilemma
What gets measured gets managed.

~~~
keithpeter
And often there are titanic struggles to manage noise. I mean changes of 1%
with sample sizes of 200 or so (education). I especially cherish 'business
systems' that produce percentages accurate to two decimal places.

------
dgax
The article, especially some of the examples, seems abusive to low-wage
employees. How many of us would give a job description that said 'this is not
a preparation for a slow motion contest' a second glance?

The meat and potatoes of the article is mostly just complaints to be honest. A
lack of candidates is always the go-to excuse for managers and executives when
explaining poor productivity or vacancies. Job seekers will gladly tell you
that the pay stinks or that they just flat out don't want to work for a
company.

Dig deeper and ask the managers and executives to show how they reward and
retain employees with these skills.

~~~
ReallyAnonymous
I work for a >10,000 employee health care system as a physician. What I have
seen is that the front line workers are considered disposable, and should be
grateful for a job. The superstars ( always nice, compassionate, and excellent
at their jobs) are not recognized by management and so when raises are given,
everyone gets them, including the lazy ones. This disappoints the worker bees,
and leads to incredible turnover and more frustration for us physicians.
Unfortunately, a lot of the attributes of a great employee cannot be
quantified on a spreadsheet so the MBAs running my organization have no clue
how to compensate people. Instead, they just lump everyone in the same pile so
the workers get frustrated bc they work twice as hard as the lazies, but make
the same amount.

I've tried to talk to executives about this, but I think it's essentially to
deaf ears - bottom line is the most important, so they can get their bonuses.

It leads to disenchantment and then, over many years, inability to get
hardworking / intelligent people to enter front line professions.

Smart people will recognize that their hard work will never be acknowledged,
so they switch careers. Others, who cannot get jobs elsewhere, or pivot, are
stuck working there.

Not sure what the solution is, but it's just an observation.

~~~
astazangasta
I _really_ don't give a shit if I'm being paid more than my fellows, hard-
working or no. The only thing I care about in my pay level is: am I making
enough to support my family in a decent lifestyle? This means I'm comparing
against the cost of living, NOT what my coworkers make - I only care about my
relative wage insofar as it indicates how most people are getting by.

What I'm more interested in, as a smart person, is that my work is recognized
as valuable, given the resources it needs to succeed, encouraged, improved
upon, aided.

~~~
xfitm3
Merit raises are an effect of recognition. The fact everyone got the same
raise meant there was no recognition for hard work. It's the wrong job for
someone who wants to do better than bare minimum. I'll speculate and suggest
that the department is doing good enough and they're not paying attention to
performance metrics.

------
walterbell
See Isaac Asimov's classic science fiction story about education,
"Profession", featuring the "House for the Feeble Minded",
[http://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html](http://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html)

 _" For most of the first eighteen years of his life, George Platen had headed
firmly in one direction, that of Registered Computer Programmer. There were
those in his crowd who spoke wisely of Spationautics, Refrigeration
Technology, Transportation Control, and even Administration. But George held
firm. He argued relative merits as vigorously as any of them, and why not?
Education Day loomed ahead of them and was the great fact of their existence.
It approached steadily, as fixed and certain as the calendar – the first day
of November of the year following one’s eighteenth birthday. After that day,
there were other topics of conversation."_

~~~
imron
One of my favourite Asimov short stories.

------
ftio
I think this is a dangerous and fruitless line of reasoning. It halts the
conversation. It makes it harder for management to be introspective. If you
look at critical or creative thinking as an inherent skill [1] rather than as
a measurable outcome of the right kind of environment and incentives, how can
you create and improve a workplace in which your people think critically? [2]

I find that bad managers sometimes use the 'lacks critical thinking' criticism
as an out for their own ineffectiveness. It's certainly not wrong for managers
to delegate, to expect a high level of performance from their employees, to
ask for creativity and mental agility in the face of a respectful amount of
uncertainty. But when you combine vague goals and sparse planning with ego,
bad managers wrongly attribute an employee's failure to correctly 'guess their
will' to poor critical thinking skills.

It's natural for managers (myself included) to go into self-preservation mode
when they've failed to give their employees enough direction, but the reality
is that it's a relationship. There is, and there should be, push and pull.
Sometimes the manager doesn't give enough direction or doesn't plan well.
Sometimes the employee does some lazy thinking. Each needs to have enough
humility and honesty to say, "I screwed up. How do we solve this and what can
we do better in the future?"

If you want to make every decision from the top so that your employees never
have to divine your will, you better be a planning savant. If you're a mortal
like the rest of us, you need to figure out how to give your people just
enough guidance to do their best work, and sometimes that means admitting you
haven't given enough.

1\. It may be inherent, but that's kind of beside the point. Wouldn't you want
to keep the door open to improvement anyway?

2\. Actually, the only way to do it is addressed in the article: search for
'critical thinkers,' whatever that means to you, in your hiring process.

~~~
bdob4xcfH
> It's natural for managers (myself included) to go into self-preservation
> mode when they've failed to give their employees enough direction, but the
> reality is that it's a relationship.

It is for people who's #1 priority is themselves and not the team or the
company at large, and doing the right thing.

------
nmstoker
This is purely anecdotal, but I've seen a shift in behaviour where even people
with these soft skills appear less willing to take the risk of using them. Too
much focus of "must look like I'm working hard", so rush things through
without sense checking and that type of thing. Getting away with it often then
means it becomes a way of working so the skills don't develop and people (one
assumes) hope for the best in regards to getting caught!

------
programminggeek
Employers don't want critical thinking, they want compliance and results. They
might say they want more soft skills, but what they mean is they want someone
to solve their problems and make them look good.

Usually, that means a yes man. This kind of article is delusional naval
gazing.

~~~
KirinDave
Surprising talk on a forum dedicated to startup capitalism. Culturally, this
forum is aligned towards BEING the employers.

~~~
programminggeek
90% of the people on this forum will never start a startup or possibly even
work at a startup.

------
JoshTko
I work for a fortune 100 and critical thinking is highly valued on my team.
One thing that I've observed is that expressing critical thinking without
communication skill comes across as being argumentative. If you find yourself
frequently arguing a point but no one is convinced, assuming you are actually
correct on the issue, then you probably just have weak communication skills.

~~~
Glyptodon
Another thing I've noticed is that no matter how compelling the argument it's
also near impossible to get people to take action to change things that are
deeply entrenched even if they agree with you.

~~~
KirinDave
I have seen this too. I have a theory about it.

Most organizations only recognize negative intercessions as praiseworthy, and
categorize positive intercession as "business as usual" to be expected, even
if sometimes the positive intercession is much harder.

"No!" moments are much valued in corporate culture these days.

People think this promotes the propagation of critical thinking across an
organization. Perhaps ironically, the opposite is true. By tuning everyone to
say, "No!" and rewarding them as such, it actually limits the impact of the
actual important "No!" moments because everyone is competing for these
accolades.

Most corporate culture does not reward people for following orders or
improving upon someone else's idea. It's a legacy of the strict hierarchy all
our organizations descend from (or a consequence of the apathy that more
modern "matrixed" organizations breeds in its mid-grade baseline employees,
who are taught not to overly invest in a given project).

~~~
angry_octet
My experience is mostly in the other direction. While C-level executives out
of their depth (which seems to be most of the time when it comes to
technology) tend to have quite a few 'No!' moments, maybe because it gives
them a sense of control, they don't like hearing No from anyone else.

In fact, expressing doubts about the wisdom of pushing ahead with a project,
even one already failing, is seen as very poor behaviour, like you have just
farted in front of everyone. Likewise, identifying risks is often seen as
negativity, rather than a foundation principle of review.

People who subsequently roll out one of these failed ideas are often publicly
rewarded. In contrast, the people who develop the alternate system that is
actually used tend to be ignored.

~~~
KirinDave
My observation is not applicable to C-levels and other people in positions of
extreme power. It really only occurs when an org develops a middle-strata of
management and executors with finely-cut responsibilities. Truly big
companies.

------
Havoc
Strange - I usually associate "soft skills" more with leadership, people
skills etc.

And yeah they are in short supply because you can't teach them directly. The
employees sorta need to pick them up from experience.

~~~
totalcrepe
> And yeah they are in short supply because you can't teach them directly.

If you can think critically are you going to get past the HR filters and
convince them you are the recruit willing to take a deal that will descend
into just a little worse than unemployment? (So your empty shell of a life
after they spit you out is devoid of any unused benefits.)

If you want to openly think critically in corporate employment, step 1 is
becoming irreplaceable so they can't replace you when you become inconvenient
at step 2.

An easier tactic, (employed by the best corporate game theorists that I've
encountered) is following directions like a total Svejk, this leads employers
to think you lack critical thinking skills. Then more resources are allocated
and eventually you have a whole empire of minions.

~~~
angry_octet
> step 1 is becoming irreplaceable so they can't replace you when you become
> inconvenient

It is a hard lesson, but no-one is irreplaceable. Even if it means an entire
product/group fails, if you are inconvenient you are gone. Organisations are
not rational actors.

> following directions like a total Svejk

I love that book. It would be nice to seen a version in a corporate setting.
Instead of a war it could be some behemoth company doing a massive pivot to
the cloud, rewriting every bit of business logic in ruby, etc, and its lowly
minion who is forever avoiding work with mandatory training courses, and who
never pays for lunch because they appear at the smallest meeting which has
corporate catering.

------
neurotech1
One of the classic examples was Joe Sutter[0]. He was the Boeing 747 program
lead & engineer who sadly died a few days ago.

Boeing management was putting pressure to cut 1,000 engineers from the
program. He knew that would cause the program to fail, and he really needed
1,000 more engineers. He thought he was going to get fired that day, but still
said what he believed.

The 747 became one of the most successful airliners in history.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Sutter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Sutter)

------
Inthenameofmine
I'm an employer myself, buy frankly the same can be said about most other
employers. Critical thinking seems to be in short supply there as well.

------
thr0waway1239
I agree with the following commenter that critical thinking is not a soft
skill.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12426545](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12426545)

Definition from Wikipedia:

"The Collins English Dictionary defines the term "soft skills" as “desirable
qualities for certain forms of employment that do not depend on acquired
knowledge: they include common sense, the ability to deal with people, and a
positive flexible attitude.”"

from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_skills](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_skills)

I think economics is an important part of thinking critically. Does
philanthropy do more good than bad? Does affirmative action always get the
desired results? Does equality of opportunity lead to equality of outcome?
What should be the role of government and how to fund it?

My views on a lot of subjects changed after getting just a rudimentary
understanding of economics. While I cannot claim I am a very critical thinker,
I am probably a more critical thinker after I learnt economics. And in my
view, economics is more science than non-science, and you can grasp it better
with more acquired knowledge.

------
maehwasu
It turns out that enforcing political correctness has costs.

------
walshemj
Presentism in 99% of cases what employers say they want and what they actually
want are quite different.

~~~
jschwartzi
And when they say they want "critical thinkers" what they mean is that they
want people who can criticize their coworkers while thoughtfully praising
their managers' foresight.

------
davidf18
Generally a firm can get workers if they are willing to locate in an area that
the workers want to live, that they treat the workers well, and that they
offer above market rates in salary.

But, even wealthy firms such as Apple and Google which both have huge profits
have conspired to keep engineering and technical wage rates low. There was
recently a settlement for the collusion. It had nothing to do with the amount
of money the firms had or could spend for talent, just that they wanted to
keep the costs down.

So, generally be suspect of these kinds of articles.

------
rodgerd
For my entire I've been listening to organisations purporting to represent
employers slag of the education system for not being sufficiently
vocationally-focused - for not just eternally chasing a narrow range of
whatever skills will turn out good little technicians at no cost to employers
- while denigrating anything outside that narrow focus as basket-weaving. And
the political landscape in the English-speaking world has largely gone along
with that.

They have what they asked for. Whoops.

------
MichaelMoser123
I think it is great that this question is asked by the wsj. Unfortunately the
article is behind a paywall. Can someone with access please summarize the
article?

~~~
xpac
Google the headline, click link from Google results, see paywall disappear. At
least worked for me ;)

~~~
snarfy
It doesn't work for me on mobile. I'm not sure why pay walled links continue
to be posted to HN. They should be banned.

------
ThomPete
It is not my experience that we are lacking critical thinking, what we are
lacking is creative / constructive thinking.

There are plenty of great critical thinkers out there. The real challenge is
to figure out the next step.

Thats' what entrepreneurs do.

------
whybroke
If we're relying on all critical thinking skills to come as an unstated side
effect of teaching math and elementary science that is sometimes taught
alongside creationism then the results are obviously going to be watery.

If on the other hand students were taught just a few formal fallacies and led
to analyze just a few arguments and just touched on formal logic while in high
school, the nation would be transformed (but I imagine the flyover states
would yell bloody murder)

------
curiousgal
Do the personality tests most companies rely on during the hiring process even
account for critical thinking?

~~~
analog31
Intelligence testing is considered to be illegal. On the other hand, figuring
out how to game a personality test is, in a sense, a test of critical thinking

~~~
wolfgke
> On the other hand, figuring out how to game a personality test is, in a
> sense, a test of critical thinking

Rather not applying at companies that use scientifically-unfounded personality
tests is a test of critical thinking.

------
gens
Funny, i also find critical thinking in short supply.

------
nerdponx
Obviously we need more STEM funding. Music, humanities, and sports have never
improved anyone's critical thinking skills and personality traits.

~~~
homarp
Interesting to compare to the "Math Myth" (previous discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12418788](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12418788)
)

