There are a lot of personal attributes and social behaviors that unlock opportunities. In the US a positive attitude, gratitude, and genuine interest are among them. In general just being pleasant to be around and personable will get you far in the engineering world because those qualities are often times lacking. When people managers are making decisions about resourcing I think that they are not honest with themselves about how much them 'liking' a person goes into their decision making process. Same for hiring.
If you are a terse and dour person, it isn't that you will experience more rejection per-se, it is just that opportunities will not even be presented to you because the person with the opportunity doesn't want to spend time in your presence.
But always trying to maintain a "pleasant manner" under all circumstances can be exhausting. There has to be sincerity involved else the other person can easily pickup on the fakery. On the other hand i have observed that even when it is obvious that the person is faking it (eg. social etiquette), people seem to be accepting of it in general.
Perhaps the quote, The secret to Success is Sincerity; Once you learn to fake that, You have got it made is true after all. Humans are complex social creatures.
>even when it is obvious that the person is faking it (eg. social etiquette), people seem to be accepting of it in general.
I have found in my career to hold off judgment of "fake sincerity" for two reasons:
A. If the person cares enough to fake it, that's at least a step in the right direction.
B. Over the course of time if the other person continues to radiate "fake sincerity" and no other negative traits, I just assume that I'm too cynical and my judgement of real vs fake sincerity is flawed. apply feedback and adjust as necessary.
There's definitely a counter-culture of people in America who believe that being pleasant or warm is to lose some sort of dignity; that being nice is subordinate conformist behavior. Instead they proudly wear surliness and aloofness to show that they will not bend to norms or hierarchy.
The result is that they typically do not get chosen for more interesting projects, are passed over for promotions, and interview poorly. They largely are dead-ended in organizations far below their potential, but their potential fades as the years go on, and this personal sense of ongoing injustice ("why are these lower performers promoted before me, even when they are less intelligent, and have less experience") tends to settle into a sediment of bitterness that, after some time, is almost impossible to change.
Pick your poison, I suppose. There's no right or wrong path, but they do end in different places.
I strongly concur that this is a thing. Toxic and senior engineer - particularly in the SRE/sysadmin space - almost were synonymous. Also saw it in QA some.
As a general question did you ever wonder why people in those roles were cynical and pessimistic?
I think the reality is you can only be pleasant so many go arounds when you are giving up your weekend or sleep to rush a, "this has to be deployed", botched roll-out or application that is rushed out the door. It is rarely the individuals or groups that create the problem that are rolling their sleeves up and fixing the issues. The concept of "You build it you run it" SRE, DevOps, blah, blah is just fancy rebranding / marketing. This failed workflow exists all over the place, the cynical and pessimistic attitude comes from experience in reading what "people are saying their application will do" and what is actually going to happen.
Then seeing other people promoted because the deploy was a "success" why wouldn't you be cynical and pessimistic. You have entire groups of people who create useless problems and being creative only goes so far, but if you pointed out in your performance review about how you fixed these manufactured issues and how items from retrospectives are still out-standing its a "pessimistic" view point.
Lastly, you get the "empathetic" feedback from others in the industry of "it's what you get paid to do", "find another job if you don't like it", "just leave", etc. However, if you have to be the size of google or meta or amazon to even get ideas like "you build it, you run it" pushed out, how do you think 90% of other companies are operating?
Like all things there is a balance in fixing the problem, being a team player, and raising concerns. If you get good at this you build decision making weight which helps keep the cynicism and negativity at bay.
I think it would be a bit naive though to think that if this was a systemic observation by yourself in an operating space that simply saying "don't be toxic cause its so much better" is skipping over the root cause of why the attitude was so prevalent.
*Disclaimer: This is mostly anecdotal as I haven't seen any studies on "hey, what if we listened to the SRE/sysadmin this time for the deploy" verses not.
If I am pleasant to gain mobility or status, because, as you said, it provides opportunity, that’s being a kiss ass.
I am in no way suggesting walking around just being negative, instead, being negative, not unpleasant, but being negative, when appropriate is honest, and humble.
> being negative, when appropriate is honest, and humble.
It neither honest nor humble necessarily. It's a mindset, a perception, and a choice. You filter reality through your mindset. You choose to respond negatively or in some other way.
If you are a terse and dour person, it isn't that you will experience more rejection per-se, it is just that opportunities will not even be presented to you because the person with the opportunity doesn't want to spend time in your presence.