
Ask HN: Is resourcefulness undervalued? - pinkrooftop
Places I have worked appreciate resourcefulness but do not reward, encourage, or hire for it. Anyone else experience this? Perhaps I&#x27;m just confusing complacency with lack of ability
======
kat
I've usually worked with people who encourage and support resourcefulness.
Especially on smaller teams when developers have a wide range of
responsibilities, you're frequently working in areas you have little
experience in. Everyone on the team team understands that the ability to cope
with unusal problems should be rewarded. How are you relating complacency and
lack of ability to resourcefulness? I think resourcefulness is more of a
mindset (or a soft skill), I don't think it is related to lack of technical
abilities.

~~~
pinkrooftop
I like the idea of it being a mindset

I guess by complacency/ability I mean instead of working to create a solution
to a problem, offloading the problem to someone else or just suffering with
it.

~~~
kat
Yup, I understand when someone just suffers with the problem instead of fixing
it, its a bit frustrating to watch them work inefficiently. I always find
someone else's reasoning interesting. Sometimes it is no desire to learn but
other times its lack of free time to fix a non-critical issue, no apparent
business value (fun task vs fast but ugly task), or they are afraid of how
their solution is going to be judged.

------
gadders
YCombinator values it:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/relres.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/relres.html)

</obligatory PG essay>

------
paulcole
"Yes" \- People who consider themselves resourceful.

"No" \- People who aren't resourceful and take advantage of those who are--
making them, in a way, resourceful.

