
Why firms don't want you to be brilliant at your job - dreamweapon
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29617115
======
mamurphy
TL;DR: -Top employees use top large corporations as springboards to their
careers rather than as 30-year destinations, a marked change from the past.

-Top large corporations reward interpersonal skills and getting along more than brilliance, causing top employees to seek employment elsewhere.

-The advent of the internet has heightened the communication gap between the generations, making it hard for "partners" and "new associates" to communicate.

The author didn't provide evidence for much of what she claimed, and did not
build towards a conclusion. More, the above themes did not seem like new news
to me. Also, the first two themes did not clearly related to the third. The
article felt like meandering observations -- which is fine insofar as it goes,
but, while I enjoyed the read, I wanted more to conclude it. Maybe I'll find
that here in the comments?

~~~
api
I've seen this phenomenon myself, though I have no hard data either.

Personally I think a big reason is that the promotion is dead. There's a
palpable sense in every large organization I've worked for is that working
hard simply won't get you rewarded and that there's a hard glass ceiling on
your ability to rise through merit.

I've found this to be true when I look at my own earnings as well. I have
_never_ experienced a significant jump in earnings or responsibility except by
switching jobs. _Never._ I've worked very hard in some jobs, but I have never
been rewarded for it except through an ability to cite my present work as a
springboard to somewhere else.

~~~
fuzzywalrus
That seems to be the case for most people I know, switching jobs is the new
promotion. I've had minor raises, entirely remittance, but the few major pay
increases and job title changes always have been entirely attributed from
leaving an organization for another.

I found it surprising when I worked for a company (more than number years ago)
that was primarily a retailer preferred to hire externally for new store
managers instead of hiring from its pool of mostly college educated sales
staff.

------
CapitalistCartr
I think she's missed the obvious. Employers want the McDonald's system, where
the brilliance is in the system, not the employees. If it's in the worker,
it's perishable; in the system, it's not. When I hire a machine operator,
brilliance isn't a useful asset, so I'm not paying for it. Some brains, yes,
sure, but not above a 120 IQ. That's all the job requires, and I keep it
structured that way.

~~~
dkarapetyan
Is this really the assumption you operate with? I'm not trying to sound
condescending because this is pretty much what I observed at a certain major
tech company. The whole thing wasn't very far from a giant meat factory and it
was exactly why there hadn't been any innovation in decades.

You can argue that if your business model is so good that you don't need to
innovate to stay in business then by all means milk it for what it's worth but
that doesn't feel like a long-term strategy. Microsoft and friends have R&D
departments that rival the best research institutions in the world and they
pay a premium for it. If some of that was a natural byproduct of their core
business operations then maybe they wouldn't need to pay a premium for it.

~~~
lotharbot
It's close to the assumption I operate with.

For a sufficiently large business, it's important to be stable/robust -- that
is, to be able to withstand change. A business that's heavily reliant on
individual brilliance across the board has the disadvantage of potentially
collapsing if enough brilliant people leave without training equally brilliant
replacements.

Yes, you want _some_ brilliant people specifically in R&D / innovation. You
want brilliant people overseeing the entire system. Brilliant people in key
positions might improve your overall efficiency by an order of magnitude on a
particular project -- but you don't want the whole project to fall apart just
because Joe moved out of state or Jane went on long-term maternity leave or
Jake was hit by a bus.

Microsoft does have a world-class R&D department, but they also have a lot of
average code monkeys and average janitors and average HR people.

------
7Figures2Commas
> Years of drudgery and late nights in the office have a way of taking the
> shine off any brilliance, and, in any case, there is no incentive to hang on
> to it as the corporate world doesn't rate it.

> Rather than reward brilliance, it prefers skills that graduates can't see -
> good judgment, a nice way with clients, and an instinct for when to bite
> your lip.

This is a curiously cynical perspective. "Brilliance" alone doesn't
necessarily create value or pay the bills. The combination of high IQ and low
EQ can be harmful to customer relationships and co-workers. The corporate
world values soft skills just as much if not more than raw intelligence
because soft skills can often make or break a business.

Notwithstanding the fact that a lot of young employees overestimate just how
clever they are and stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that smart ideas won't
always be viable in the real world, instead of pretending that "brilliance" is
some sort of panacea that companies should cling to regardless of the cost,
the author should consider that pragmatic, well-rounded employees who can
perform consistently might be better contributors than the brilliant, intense
employees who become disillusioned whenever they don't get their way.

~~~
mpweiher
> The combination of high IQ and low EQ can be harmful to customer
> relationships and co-workers.

Citation?

The last I read about it[1], it turned out that EQ is vastly overrated,
accounting for only 1% of overall job performance, whereas IQ accounted for
14%. That's more than an order of magnitude.

[1]
[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140930125543-692440...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140930125543-69244073-emotional-
intelligence-is-overrated)

~~~
qubitcoder
That EQ takes primacy over IQ is pretty well-established in the consulting
industry. In fact, this is emphasized on day one for new hires. And you move
into more client-facing roles in large companies, this becomes even more
important.

Of course, you need the raw cognitive power to solve problems. But at the
high-end of consulting, clients already assume this to be this case (otherwise
they wouldn't be spending $200+/hour for people fresh out of college). What
clients are looking for is more akin to a 'trusted advisor'[1]. Someone they
can trust and rely on.

Yes, you can be socially awkward and still get the job done. But you probably
won't be considered when the next opportunity arises; what people value are
relationships. If you've got that (and you have the technical chops), clients
will tend to keep calling you back for years to come. Or perhaps mention you
to their peers.

For anyone considering working independently, I highly recommend David
Maister's books. He writes clearly on earning trust, the art of listening,
providing advice, establishing relationships, and so on.

This is really what separates the engineers who can command top dollar for
their skills in the marketplace--versus those who are viewed as just another
number on a spreadsheet to minimize (in the eyes of management at most large
companies).

[1]([http://www.amazon.com/The-Trusted-Advisor-David-
Maister/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Trusted-Advisor-David-
Maister/dp/0743212347))

------
xivzgrev
Sounds exactly like something a fresh college grad would say. All brilliant
people jump from company to company, all people who stay at one company are
dull.

I say, if you're enjoying yourself at one company, learning a lot, and moving
up, why not keep it up?

Not to mention once you have a family / kids, me thinks you are much less
likely to jump.

"The main thing that had struck him so far was that people seemed to get
dimmer the higher they went in the organisation. I asked if he had any
explanation for this and he said it was self-selection.

Really smart people don't stay at the institutions they have fought so hard to
get into. The best leave within two or three years - the slightly less good
stay a bit longer, and only the also-rans and the terminally unimaginative are
in for the long haul."

Also, I used to work in consulting firm, so by this definition, all of the
partners are also-rans and terminally unimaginative - I'd say some partners
fit this definition, but many others were bright-eyed, bushy tailed, and full
of interesting ideas / perspectives.

------
cgio
Working in such an organisation and being in the middle ranks (Manager), I may
have a reconciling view to offer. These huge organisations (I see partners
mentioned so I will assume big4) are not pioneering innovators (even if they
try to appear so) but powerhouses of mediocrity. You can be brilliant and it
will be appreciated to some degree, but most probably the passion that comes
with your brilliance will be subdued by the layers of mediocrity between you
and the mediocre leadership.

In partnerships, this is even more accentuated by the fact that there is
division of power by design, so even if a visionary leader appreciates a
vision you still have to convince the partnership which is mostly a matter of
PR rather than quality of idea. I can relate to the graduate, but the fact is
a brilliant graduate will be too anxious to demonstrate their skills which
does not help them see the reality. It is not a matter of personal skills,
there are brilliant people sprinkled in the organisation at different levels,
but a matter of organisational culture that builds on commoditising ideas.

In a big organisation the skills are averaged out and it is the greatest
common divisor that can be commoditised. There are more brilliant partners
than graduates but the aggregated soup is tasteless. And by the time you are a
partner you make enough money to not care about the spice you add to the soup
but about the measured KPIs that make up your contribution (sales.)

It reads more like a rant, but I am glad to give more details on specifics.
Just to address the title, it is not that firms don't want you to be brilliant
at your job, it is that they could not care less unless it is a client that
focuses on your brilliance. And the situation with clients is very similar but
I will not address it here.

------
highiquser
BUT (and this is big one) in many instances, such as Google and Facebook, you
do have to be brilliant to get in.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
That puzzles me. Why would one want to get into Facebook? Do they pay that
well?

~~~
penprog
They pay well and if you leave the HN/Reddit bubble, there are CS students out
there (that are pretty smart) that really would LOVE to have jobs at
Microsoft/Facebook/Yahoo/ (insert any company unpopular on HN here).

~~~
Igglyboo
Graduating CS student here, Google is my dream job. I would also be
exceedingly happy to work at any of the following: Facebook, Microsoft, Apple,
IBM, Amazon, Intel, etc.

Starting my own startup sounds cool and all but it would be too much work for
me and I just because I don't agree 100% with a companies policies doesn't
make them an undesirable workplace.

~~~
thecage411
I'm curious, why is it your dream job and why would you be exceedingly happy
to work for any of those companies listed?

Is it the money? Prestige? You think you'll learn more at one of those places
than others? Stability?

~~~
Igglyboo
Mainly the prestige but all four of those are good points. There aren't many
places where you have an opportunity to do things for the sake of doing them,
most places either don't value technology or don't have to budget to
investigate new and interesting technology. I love the place I currently work
and love the people I work with, however I don't want to be doing line of
business crud apps forever. If I could get a good wage in academia I would but
it seems much less likely than getting a job at one of those companies I
listed.

------
Balgair
The article raises a good point about the 'diagonal' transfer technique.
Horizontal would be moving about in your own pay grade to a different job,
vertical would be up or down in pay in your own company. Diagonal is very much
something that occurs with frequency. You company may not have a position for
you to move up into but another fir does, so you jump up and over. Job hopping
is not that bad and I really dont see a stigma anymore as people just plain
are not retiring and companies are so fragile as is.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
So, in the new reality, how often would you have to change jobs to be
characterized as a "job hopper"?

~~~
Balgair
Every quarter I'd think. If you can't stick around for the quarterly numbers
to pop through and then get punishment or reward, then you'd be a job hopper.
If/when we change to a sub quarterly financial system, then the job hopper
meme would adjust to that as well.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
But there's no way you could do any big project in a quarter.

~~~
Balgair
Who says that you need a big project done to get a new job? It just has to
LOOK like you did a lot of work.

------
chavesn
This is an interesting point, but I think the source (the graduate now working
at one of the "most prestigious employers in the world") may be affected by a
healthy dose of the Dunning-Kruger effect[1].

First of all, as a 22-year-old it's easy to feel like 2-3 years is an
eternity. It's also easy to undervalue the attributes that the more senior
employees possess, as one simply can't see them.

"Brilliant" and "Best" are not necessary synonyms. The first seems to me to
mean standing out from the crowd, thinking differently, challenging the status
quo.

Those are valuable, possibly even essential traits. However, one can easily
waste a lot of energy spinning wheels trying to do those things at the wrong
times -- a mistake I am very personally familiar with.

My sense is this graduate will spend a few years disrupting things a bit with
mixed success. In 5-8 years, if they are as bright as they think they are,
they'll have a lot of insight on new skills that they weren't even aware of at
play in their seniors' interactions. I hope also that the graduate retains
most of their original brilliance, so that they can begin to make a serious
difference with a matured, balanced perspective on what their peers and
seniors have to offer.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

------
james1071
Americans don't get irony, do they?

Lucy Kellaway writes a humorous column for the FT, the main subject of which
is management nonsense.

The twist of this piece is that a new graduate considers her to be one of the
dumb management that she has been mocking since the early 1990s (when I
started reading her column), if not before.

~~~
mamurphy
It's impossible to appreciate the irony without that context. Thanks for
providing it!

------
Systemic33
I think while this point of view is indeed very true for the large majority,
larger companies combat this job hopping, by encouraging internal job
switching; ie. going from one area of business to another, which is closer to
getting a new job, than getting a promotion. This ensures that the company
doesn't waste time in getting a ext. employee to get accustomed to the
culture. But that's really the essence Human Capital Management (HCM). I am
however not so sure, how widespread this practice is, maybe you guys know?

------
Fando
The title of the article exploits our narcissism ever so well.

------
nilkn
I think this is too SV-centric (or even tech-centric). For instance, the major
oil companies still offer pensions (and 401k's) and many employees stick
around for decades. They also higher senior management internally. Marissa
Mayer figures are relatively rare in the industry.

------
craigsmitham
I work for a company that promotes on average every 14 mos with average raise
of over 14%. If you're a software developer looking for an unparalleled career
path, let me know.

~~~
Bahamut
That sounds pretty slow - by job hopping, it can be quite feasible to raise
your salary by 200+%, and learn more to boot due to progressively increasing
responsibilities. The market for software engineers is quite cutthroat.

~~~
nojvek
Again, this is only in SV. In canada, its pretty difficult to get a $100k+
job.

