

Microsoft's ruthless executives against Google's cold engineers - suprgeek
http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/11/business_vs_engineering_auletta_on_microsoft_and_google.html

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tudorachim
Hurr, engineers don't have feelings, so they don't understand emotional blah
blah blah. I don't know how the author feels remotely qualified to write a
book about a company with a famed engineering culture, when it's so obvious he
hasn't come close to understanding trivial misconceptions, much less a culture
as a whole.

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biznerd
Why are you taking this personally?

I will go out on a limb and say:

* The typical engineering/CS students I met at college had a noticeable lower emotional and social intelligence than the average student. Obviously there are exceptions. The kid with the best social skills could have been an electrical engineer, while the worst maybe was a finance major. But there was definitely a distinction.

And the effect feeds off of each other. Many people are under-socialized in
high school but break out of their shell in college. I'd like to go out a limb
again and say the opportunity for this is less for CS/engineering students.

I went to a large state university. Engineers/programmers at my school really
tended to be exclusive. Like there was an engineering floor in my freshman
dorm and they all kept to themselves. The few engineers I'd run into at
parties would sometimes joke about not hanging out with his peers. I had a
pretty diverse group of friends in college but very rarely ran into them
outside of my math classes.

People learn their social and emotional intelligence from their peers. With
CS/engineering groups, there's aren't many tribal leaders to learn from.

* It's pretty evident that Google execs are having trouble understanding how others perceive them:

Eric Schmidt recently suggested to a group of reporters that Google's culture
was the strong hand that kept it from engaging in anticompetitive behavior:
"If somehow we went into a room with the evil light, and we announced an evil
strategy, we would be destroyed," he said. "There is a fundamental trust
relationship between Google and its users." He shared similar comments,
according to Wired, with Varney's predecessor at the Justice Department, who
apparently was floored that "trust" was Schmidt's legal justification for
pushing through the Yahoo/Google deal.

[http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/21/technology/obama_google.fort...](http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/21/technology/obama_google.fortune/)

BTW if you have a CS/engineer background and have good EQ/SQ, props to you! I
truly believe people with a diverse skill set have a tremendous advantage. The
people who rise to the top of Hollywood don't tend to be the pure artists but
business/artist (or artist/business).

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veemjeem
Congrats, so you figured out the difference between an intro/extrovert. Do you
think an extrovert engineer at google would somehow produce software that less
monopolistic than an introvert's software?

I don't think introverts have a less diverse skill set than extroverts either.
It's harder for extroverts to perceive an introvert's skill set so it's highly
likely that you're probably just unaware. I'd say the majority of business
leaders are actually introverts.

~~~
biznerd
The terms "introvert" and "extrovert" are very misused. It just measures how
much you like being around other people.

I know many introverts with very good social and emotional skills. Likewise, I
know many extroverts who are terrible in this regard.

~~~
pohl
That reminds me of a joke:

Q: How can you tell the difference between an introverted engineer and an
extroverted engineer?

A: The extroverted engineer looks at _your_ shoes when he's talking to you.

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mcantor
I feel like this needs a followup article on The Onion. "Google Engineer
Baffled That She's Not Returning His Calls; 'I just commented that her breasts
were of optimal volume relative to the dress she wore to dinner that night!
What does she mean, calling me a pig?!'"

