This is a really good list. Just yesterday I was chatting with a senior management person about character, and we were discussing a mutual colleague (Let's call him "Joe") who had failed quite spectacularly in the last year. We had three points of view on him - mine as one outside contractor who replaced the individual as an interim CTO, his as CEO of a vendor to the company, and the view of a PE investor who owned a big chunk of the company.
He said the first early warning sign he had that Joe was going to be a problem was when a group were out to dinner, and Joe spent quite a bit of time talking about the school his son was going to. The PE guy is meticulous and of course when he got home he looked it up. After some digging, PE guy found that Joe's son actually went to a less prestigious mid-level college. Why, everyone thought, would Joe go out of his way to lie about his son's school, when no one had even asked about it?
A lot of money and tears later Joe was finally let go for a host of reasons. But it really all came down to character.
The fact that PE guy spent time looking up the son means he already had a vibe something was off about "Joe".
So while I agree that if you lie about small things I'd think you'd also lie about large things - I'm not sure it'd be backed by data, like much of pop-psychology. So I think the lesson here is to listen to your gut for red flags rather than evaluate someone based on some list of features.
This is exactly right. There were clues he was “off”. I do still think the list from TFA was a good starting point, but I agree it is largely about your gut (and where experience can really help). I have had the same on interviews with some very senior people, emphasis seemed to be off and there were small inconsistencies in answers that lead to alarm bells in my head.
Had one guy interview who was supposedly a Google Cloud expert who rang every alarm in my head (I was a no), and he was let go in two weeks for his…shall we say fondness for elaborately untrue stories and total lack of knowledge about GCP in practice.
On the other hand, anecdotally, I had trouble getting companies to even invite me to an interview until I "amped up" my credentials on resume. It have landed me three jobs I was well suited for (in different industries). Otherwise my honest to god résumé left me not even with an opportunity.
While I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing in today's world of self-(over)-promotion, how do you know you didn't rob more suitable candidates from the opportunity?
Looks like Joe lived and worked in an environment which valued things like "where do you send your kid to school", hence why the PE guy felt the need to "look it up" (if said PE guy had not felt the same about "good" schools as joe did then he wouldn't have felt the need to search). I don't blame this on Joe, I blame it on the system.
If Joe lied, that’s on him. Credentialism is a topic worth to explore and I would argue that it’s beside the point but… yikes, who the hell actually verifies if somebody’s son attended some school. I mean if we are talking about a test of character, I believe that Joe should be glad to be out of that environment.
Depends, lying is a "strange" move, but society doesn't reward honesty nor silence very much. Appearances on the other hand... I'm a naive truthist and almost ended up jobless. Meanwhile lazy but assertive people get hired on the spot and spend half their day on reddit. Society can distort you to that point.
Fascinating how nowadays people are excusing clearly unethical (and sometimes criminal) behavior and instead decide to blame it on something nebulous such as the "system".
While it might be true that Joe felt pressure to lie due to the environment he was operating in, that doesn't absolve him from lying. Just like being really horny doesn't absolve someone from raping.
Without excusing Joe specifically, lying is not seen by nearly everyone as intrinsically wrong in the same way rape is. Lying in response to an unjust question can be seen as just, e.g. answering "What's the code to the door? Tell me or I'll shoot" with a duress code, or more controversially answering "Where did you go to school?" in such a way that you appear to be wealthier during a job interview where candidates from poorer backgrounds are discriminated against.
I don't think this absolves Joe because I don't think anyone would have discriminated against him on the basis of where his kids went to school, or that he could have reasonably expected them to.
I disagree strongly with "5. Identify what irritates people the most in others—because this is probably the trait they dislike most in themselves."
Often what irritates someone most is if others have a different engagement style. E.g. someone who likes to take a conflict head on will be most irritated by the avoidance or the silent treatment, someone who likes to let things settle will be most irritated by someone who always feel the need to force the point of conflict.
Not all resentment or irritation felt towards others comes from projection!
It also feels rather silencing, if applied at large. Can one not call others deceptive without being labeled deceptive oneself?
You raise good points, but I think your point is actually compatible with, rather than at odds with the article.
For example, someone that likes to take conflict head on will deeply dislike their own desire to be avoidant, and for example will likely deeply regret the few times they failed to take a conflict head on.
In any such scale, e.g. being deceptive vs truthful, everybody has a bit of both, and if they identify strongly with one end, they also dislike the part of themselves that is opposite of that (a la Carl Jung's shadow concept).
I think most people are actually pretty successful at suppressing parts of themselves they most dislike unless they are suffering from addiction or depression, etc.
This feels like it's assuming a certain causal direction. You say that I dislike the other person's character trait because it's a trait of mine I may dislike and suppress. What if it's the other way around? What if I suppress a trait of mine because I've been annoyed by other people exhibiting the trait and do not wish to exhibit it myself?
I know the latter is something I've taken conscience effort to do.
That's a really good point, but not 100% in contradiction with the main point.
It certainly is an issue regardless of causal direction when you feel strongly about something that most "healthy" people aren't that bothered with.
I had BPD(90% cured) and one lingering issue I have is called "Subjugation" where I have trouble setting healthy limits and seeing acts of bullying or others subjugating others (real or perceived) still triggers me.
I did tell HR I hated bullying, HR took it well, but one could certainly reach the correct conclusion I have a weakness when dealing with them, otherwise I wouldn't be as bothered with it, or list it as number one issue; I mean, it only happened once in the last 15 years.
I think the cause and effect here isn't linear, but circular. People dislike the same trait in others, and themselves, and seeing it in either of them causes them to further dislike and suppress it.
I came back to the comments to say this!
I'm quite tolerant (perhaps overly so) but I can't stand bullies, un-professional people or unpolite people in the workenvironment.
I'm 100% not on one of those.
What the author is ON to this statement is when people say "I can't stand X" it really means "I don't know how to deal with X", and that's 75% true for me.
While it might sometimes be true, since a practitioner has an easier time to identify a fellow sinner, it's terribly wrong at other times: most upright individuals strongly dislike corruption for instance.
I'm wondering what the author is generalizing from himself.
I have found that it is valuable seeing whether people gossip: if Mark starts gossiping about Steven, I know Mark will gossip about me with Steven as well. People (not even thinking about it) use revealing "secrets" or talking sh*t about others for bounding.
I try to stay away from these people, and while writing this post I realized that all of my closest friends rarely gossip.
I also noticed those kind of people in a work context are both a treasure and a peril. They are a treasure because they tend to give information for free, but they are also liabilities as these kind of people won't move far the social/corporate ladder.
People who give informations for free do not understand the value of information in the first place.
The second way I judge character is by checking how late they are at appointments, meetings, parties, video calls, whatever. People that are often late simply value their own time more than yours, they disrespect you.
> People that are often late simply value their own time more than yours, they disrespect you.
More likely, they have a time management issue, which can have a range of psychological roots. It can also be a sign of avoidant behavior — you don’t want to be there before the group is already assembled, because you’re anxious about the social situation.
> It can also be a sign of avoidant behavior — you don’t want to be there before the group is already assembled, because you’re anxious about the social situation.
Thank you for saying this here. I expect that for many people it might not seem like an obvious reason, but it can be certainly true.
For some people any social gatherings can be extremely serious and lead to a lot of overthinking, even if they seem fine when they’re already there.
Such persons need to learn about Cognitive Distortions and learn how to turn off that irrational negative fortune teller who simply will not shut up in their head.
Hi, I’m one of those people. None of the stuff I’ve read and precious few techniques have helped. It’s kind of the hallmark of these cognitive distortions that they’re irrational and we know they’re irrational and yet they persist.
There is a book, but you don't need to read much past the first few chapters, named "Feeling Good", by Dr. David Burns. He and another (I don't remember the other doctor's name) developed the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy school of psychology.
The gist is there is a simple list of questions one can ask themselves that expose self deception in one's self conversation. Once the deceptive self conversation is identified, the deception naturally becomes nullified. These deceptions are things one tells themselves that are not known, not true, but the self accepts the statements and internalized them - causing imposter syndrome and a huge number of related negative emotional cycles. The simple act of identifying these deceptions causes one's own mind to re-evaluate, and if the new evaluation contains more deceptions that same Cognitive Distortion checklist can be reviewed and used to discard these new comforting lies or negative projections.
Note that this is not a casual pursuit. This a a "debugging and reprogramming your core beliefs". In cases where one has never performed such a self audit, I suggest doing so with the support of a licensed therapist; it is not a casual event, to reevaluate one's entire world view in light of realizing one's level of self deception.
I have seen amazing results, and experienced them myself.
Thanks for making a specific recommendation and going into what makes it work. I also appreciate the note of caution; people seldom talk about the negative affects of self inquiry.
Adults have busy lives, all of us do, if you don't understand that being consistently late impacts other lives you have no respect for others, I don't care what childhood trauma you had.
I know no serial "sorry for being late" that isn't deeply self-centered.
In addition, I think it's incorrect to conflate being on time with the effort put into being on time. I know people who do not even have a calendar because they can keep every single time commitment in their head, and show up on time to each one. I know other people who spend significant time, effort, and energy on keeping track of their appointments and still sometimes let some fall through the cracks.
Does the person who is nearly effortlessly on time respect people more than the person who puts significant effort into being on time but still ends up late?
I understand judging by outcomes because most effort is invisible, but the map is not the territory.
Some people have legitimate medical reasons - they exist. I’m not saying it’s the norm, but you are overgeneralizing. Few characterizations can be absolute.
Thanks for saying this. Posts and threads like this read like real life is some kind of war zone with tactics and plans, as opposed to a beautiful dance in which we find ourselves pleasantly surprised with how things can turn out if we keep an open heart.
I urge these people to read less Art of War, and more fiction. Go and enjoy life without thinking of how to "win" all the time.
Even if someone is being transactional, giving out some information for free to see if it'll be reciprocated or not can be a good strategy, or to see if someone goes "they know something about X - maybe I can make a deal with them to find out even more". It's really not that different from giving out free samples of your product.
I do not believe that is the type of information being referenced. most people love to share their education knowledge, it is practically showing off. The point of people not understanding the value of information refers to organizational knowledge about how this collection of persons actually accomplish goals, rather than the official story - that's the valuable information referenced, not what one was taught in their schooling.
> People that are often late simply value their own time more than yours, they disrespect you.
A post-modern perspective would acknowledge that folks with an executive functioning disorder are very well aware of the importance of your time, but suffer from the unfortunate effects of time agnosia.
This is one of the reasons that I go out of my way to compliment people to others. I try not to speak ill of others not matter the cost. I do this because that's how I want to be treated.
If I have (dead)beef with someone, I go to that person to sort it out. Otherwise I speak to their good qualities. A favorite scripture of mine is "love hopes all things", that is 'love sees the best in others, hoping for their best characteristics'.
Gossipers are often very immature deep inside. They'll react to social stress that way, and over time it gets very tiresome.
About the corporate information game, I'm still a bit curious how it works (like many Ive seen my share of videos about social skills, and manipulation even, but i still don't see how this would work in real life) but everytime I'm tempted to play games .. I just feel drained. My soul is really not wired for that. Honesty is a supreme value.
it's completely normal to take part in gossip. in fact, it's a social skill. if you are afraid of what people say about you, then you are probably the problem here. i'm not going to go into why gossip isn't the worst thing in the world, but there are different levels of bad mouthing.
being late is also very normal. again, maybe it is you who are not being clear about your expectations or, more likely, are reading too much into it.
I worked at a startup where 'staying late' was expected. The best analogy I can give for it is that the technical staff were asked to work on a transport truck's engine as it drove down the highway at 150km/h, no stopping allowed, while the sales team airdropped (from a helicopter?) more and more load on the back of the truck.
I used to get texts at all hours of the night and day and learned to start to ignore them, then I eventually left.
A coworker who stayed a few years after I left told me that I did the right thing. Until you implement 'flow control' the demand side will _never_ get the signal that their incident coverage is not sufficient.
This was a particularly abusive situation, but this kind of experience always makes me suspicious of people who look down on others for not staying late.
All this 'staying late' moralizing indicates management that wants seamless incident coverage but is unwilling to pay for it.
Having said this, I am usually willing to stay a little bit late on occasion, because no one's planning is perfect. But when it becomes habitual, I take it as warning sign to look for another project or job.
So, people with hard commitments, such as picking up a child or senior from daycare renders such a person suspect? I know people with medical conditions such that their meal times are forged in stone, and have to take meal breaks on set intervals or they suffer serious issues. Do you check to see if such subjects arrive earlier than others, skip lunch or perform other compensations? Realize that many, many people have rigid time commitments they cannot control.
That means they are smart enough to value their time and care for their family. The old people depending on the company's success to fund their pension can go starve.
I understand the point of this blog post but it's also kind of BS.
For example, the last one about how to handle unexpected situations. Some people have a tendency to panic or have high anxiety over the unknown. That doesn't mean they aren't of high character or you shouldn't do business with them. They could have built their entire lives to anticipate these types of situations and have other coping mechanisms to help deal with it. In a work environment, they could easily have those things in place.
To just spring something on someone without any context or knowing the person feels like a really, really poor "test" of anything.
Author said the test was for a senior executive who by definition is meant to be a leader. A leader is meant to be someone who can navigate others through the unknown. If you can't navigate the unknown by yourself, then you're a follower and not a leader. The higher up the totem pole you go, the more unknowns you have to be able to deal with as you get further away from being a specialist and more towards a generalist. You literally can't learn everything so you've got to be ok stepping out of your comfort zone and having faith in your abilities and principles to be able to make it through whatever obstacle is in your way.
There is absolutely no judgement in those sentences, as a species we need people with all kinds of different skillsets, and that includes both followers and leaders. And just because someone can't handle the unknown at a certain point in their life doesn't mean they can't evolve to be someone who can. In fact, we all play both roles constantly throughout our entire lives. The CEO is a leader in his company but when he's taking golf lessons he's a follower to the professional golf instructor.
I agree. Context is everything. A "test" in a work environment is one thing, but at a restaurant? My priorities are totally different at a restaurant. I just want to eat and have a good time. I don't need to be in control. That's not why I'm at a restaurant.
At a restaurant, short of something truly egregious like hair in my food or raw meat, I have tremendous patience for wait staff. Mistakes happen. Kitchens can be hectic, orders get mis-entered. Maybe I wasn't clear about what I wanted. But at the end of the day, what I'm eating is far less of a priority than the fact that I'm eating with someone.
But if they bring a dish that wasn't what I ordered, I might just shrug and accept it. Who cares if it's a burger instead salmon and veg? It's not the end of the world for me.
Does that make me a pushover? I don't think so. It just means I don't prioritize restaurant food over other things, like ensuring the table has a good time and is socializing.
Likewise, if someone interrupted us at the table to say hi, I'd generally understand. Maybe it's rude, but we're in public and it's a social situation, and the world doesn't end if someone interrupts to say hi to the person I'm eating with.
But when I'm in the workplace, in context, then I am much firmer. You don't get to interrupt my meetings. You don't get to deliver the wrong project. I don't get to yell at anyone or treat anyone with disrespect, but I also don't need to tolerate disruption and chaos.
If I notice a mixup as soon as the server brings it, I would absolutely say something because it is probably someone else's meal, and if I accept it that will delay them getting their food. If the server walks away before I notice, then it is too late as they can't serve it to anyone else anyway, so c'est la vie.
Yeah, I might say something to the effect of "I thought I ordered the salmon," and if they say "Oh no, I thought it was the burger," then I'll just shrug and be happy with the burger.
Yes. I am autistic, for example, and situations that are unpredictable are (guesstimate) about 5-10x more stressful for me than for the average person. Most of my "unavoidable" "weak points" are centered around those things and the extreme stress that can come from them.
It doesn't make me a bad person, just different, and more limited in some ways. My brain may be autistic, but my soul isn't.
That is true. I am a very good applied researcher, particularly in the area of machine learning/"AI". It's similar to a "glass cannon" build for certain video game characters. I'm uniquely talented in that the class of people like me can only do some things that people like me do, but the range of conditions that I succeed in is much much narrower.
I had a really hard time near the end of my last job, for example, as the startup changed from research to deploying the built up backlog of research, and I could not pivot to work with a software team. I did my best, but because of how paralyzing thrash is to me, with many tasks in an already unstable environment changing 3-4 times in flight (not outrageously, it was the pace of the project), I was too overwhelmed to work well, and we didn't have enough ML work left that was suited for me to work on.
Thankfully I learned that I was autistic during the year-long or so sabbatical I've taken afterwards to just clean things up a bit. Now I know, I can get accomodations and choose my jobs accordingly. Thankfully I'm good enough to be able to fit into those very specialist jobs, which is a plus.
Thanks for your comments, I appreciate your thoughts and think it was a good one. Thank you for making me think. :) <3
Also, congrats :confetti: on your fifteenth anniversary of joining hackernews. I first only started browsing around 2011-2012, the fact you are still active is amazing. Best of luck to you and yours in your future. :)
Someone who is starving and steals food (under pressure) is different than someone who isn't starving and steals food(not under pressure). The person under pressure is probably not a thief under normal circumstance - but he has to steal to survive.
It's amazing how anyone can go through life and think about it so black and white. This thread is rife with confirmation/survivor bias. We're talking about going to an office and creating some widget in 90% of circumstances. Most of the "pressure" is made up. This isn't war or the jungle.
If some percentage of panicky people have good coping mechanisms, but averaged over all panicky people, having a good coping mechanism is still less likely than for non-panicky people, then it's still efficient to filter out all the panicky people. Probabilities matter and it's better if you pick from a group that is more likely rather than one which is less likely, even if you miss some good people in the less likely group.
I’m a big fan of number 2 - people who think in hierarchies tend to think things are below them - but 7 is extremely underappreciated.
If you haven’t seen it, the Al Capone theory of Sexual Harassment (<https://hypatia.ca/2017/07/18/the-al-capone-theory-of-sexual...>) covers this pretty well: Someone who’ll do the wrong thing in one circumstance has already displayed the moral flexibility to convince themselves it’s OK to do the wrong thing in other circumstances. We’re none of us saints, but if you don’t have the fortitude to keep to your principles (or the principles to keep to) when the stakes are small, boy, it’s a whole lot harder to convince yourself to accept the cost of doing the right thing when the stakes are higher.
> often people who engage in sexually predatory behavior also faked expense reports, plagiarized writing, or stole credit for other people’s work.
> Mark Hurd, the former CEO of HP, was accused of sexual harassment by a contractor, but resigned for falsifying expense reports to cover up the contractor’s unnecessary presence on his business trips. Jacob Appelbaum, the former Tor evangelist, left the Tor Foundation after he was accused of both sexual misconduct and plagiarism. And Randy Komisar, a general partner at venture capital firm KPCB, gave a book of erotic poetry to another partner at the firm, and accepted a board seat (and the credit for a successful IPO) at RPX that would ordinarily have gone to her.
I get the feeling they are rediscovering white collar crime, and how CEO of powerful organizations engage in a variety of unethical behaviors that come out in troves if you start investigating them.
Sure some of them also engage in sexual harrasment. But drawing the conclusion from there is just backward.
> but resigned for falsifying expense reports to cover up the contractor’s unnecessary presence on his business trips.
I never got why people fib their expenses. First of all it's a form of stealing and not a morally defensible form of stealing (like stealing a loaf of bread, because you're hungry).
Moreover, it gives your employer ammunition in case it's needed. And all for a 20$ here or there.
That "everybody does it" seems like a really bad argument to me.
>And Randy Komisar, a general partner at venture capital firm KPCB, gave a book of erotic poetry to another partner at the firm, and accepted a board seat (and the credit for a successful IPO) at RPX that would ordinarily have gone to her.
For number 2 and some of the other points it's important to get a representative sample to make a determination on. I have once complained about food to a waitress when I was having an otherwise bad day. I have once held back anger when demanding a refund from a customer service rep - because the company pissed me off so much, not the rep, and it was really really hard to hold back the anger toward the company when talking to the rep, and I know that the anger bled through, I could hear it in my own voice.
But usually I tip very well (75% for a haircut, at least 20% for food) and try to be both polite and considerate.
People have bad days. For any given interaction a person loses very little by writing another person off because of that other person's bad day. But, of course, that reflects on you making the judgement to write them off based on a singular incident.
And I cheated once on a test by taking an extra few seconds because I just couldn't leave a test question unanswered (I've since matured).
Yeah, for what it's worth, none of this is absolutist. You're looking for patterns over time. Everyone has good days and bad days (and that's worth remembering on both sides of the exchange), but someone with a pattern of either treating people they consider subordinate badly or cheating those around them is telling you something about how they view the world outside themselves, which includes you.
Yes, possibly even (rare) illegitimate anger is excusable, people are emotional beings and can blow up.
What this is IMHO truly about is when people more or less intentionally abuse the power inequality in such situations. Like you could manage your anger, but why bother, it's just a service worker who can't fight back.
This only benefits the rich, and that's why it will lead you totally astray. It simply leads you to people who've never had to make difficult choices in their life and THAT is why they have never chosen "wrong". Without pressure, making the right choice is not just easy, it destroys your character.
If you think these people will react well in high stakes situations, or under prolonged pressure/stress ... well, go consult for a financial security department of any bank (they need data analysts and programmers, so no problem). Or get some stories from a police officer. There is no shortage of very reputable people who beat up or abandon their family, financially and for real (and while majority male, in reality it's like 60-40 male-female, not that big a difference).
If you think you as an employer will get better treatment ... that's delusional.
It does not speak against someone if they've, say, stolen as a teenager and regret it. If they've gotten into a serious fight and accepted responsibility that should speak to their character. Of course this means that there are circumstances, limits where they will ignore the law. These people simply know what their limits are, and won't snap without warning, lashing out.
Unfortunately these sort of absolutist morals seem to be on the rise. You're merely selecting for people who were born rich, who will behave "perfect", until, suddenly and without warning, without even seeing it coming themselves, do something completely reprehensible, then hide it. A good number of them see themselves as inherently better than people who had and dealt with actual problems in their lives. Of course, the opposite is true: they're much worse.
Absolutist morals like this attitude means one has to behave like those rich "never did anything wrong" people (despite getting arrested for beating up their girlfriend drunk). That behavior is, of course, to lie about it.
Techniques like this will also give a massive advantage to people with psychological problems like narcissism or antisocial disorders. They lie, but they have decades of experience lying about themselves. You cannot seriously hope to see through that without applying pressure. Perhaps the "how they treat serving staff" thing, but only if they're idiots.
Of course management is famous for admitting loads of people with such disorders. Perhaps this is why ...
I forget that every single time I comment on this site I need to include the caveat that if you were born a blind diabetic in Monrovia in the middle of a gunfight in which both your parents died and left you with a debt to the mafia, I don't begrudge you your choices, moral or otherwise.
However, if what you got from either my or the author's take is that we believe rich people are inherently more virtuous by dint of having not been tested, I'm not sure the problem is in either my writing or that in the article.
I think you are looking too much into it. The point about cheating wasn't 'look for someone who never does anything wrong', but more like, if they think they can get away with something that benefits them in way that exposes a lack of integrity (cheating at a game for no stakes and not telling you about it) then you they probably are either:
1. Ego-driven (losses makes them mad) and/or
2. Cannot evaluate risk/reward properly (getting caught cheating significantly
hurts your reputation and you gain nothing from doing it in a friendly game) and/or
3. Are basically dishonest as a rule (untrustworthy)
The way I would handle that situation is not to mark down 'bad person' in my ledger, but to confront them 'hey, I saw you cheating back there, what was that about?' and see how they deal with it.
I don't see these as 'let's all judge everyone', because everyone would fail all of these bullet points. It is more like 'here are some things that can help you evaluate people'. Just like any hokey self-help guide, it is pretty much blatantly obvious stuff that we do anyway without thinking about it, but it can be helpful to be self-aware so that you can alter your own mechanisms.
Have you considered that being dishonest can be a cause of one's poverty? For example, if one develops a reputation for dishonesty, who is going to trust the person for something lucrative? Being dishonest burns down the ladders to success?
One may never even realize this is happening, the doors of opportunity will just remain closed.
I once hired a handyman to do some repairs around the house. I mentioned his name to a neighbor, who said watch out for him, things disappear when he's around. I told the handyman I changed my mind and didn't need him.
I once hired a roofing contractor, who did a good job. But I never got a bill. After some time had passed, I called him up and asked him if he'd sent a bill and I'd lost it or something. He laughed, and said he was going through a divorce and hadn't been able to do the billing. I said I wanted to be sure I didn't stiff him, because then all the local contractors would know that I tried to not pay. He laughed again, and said you bet us contractors pass the word on who avoids payment. We tell them we can't fit them into our schedule.
The prof who taught me accounting used to work as a car salesman. I asked him how to tell a good dealer from a bad one. He said the good ones have been in business for more than 5 years. That means they are living on repeat business. The bad ones get no repeat business, and go bust.
You see how being dishonest burns down ladders to success, and you'll never know it.
I know a professor that routinely steals, and if he gets caught he gets violent. There is a factor of the effect you say, but he's really, really smart. For over 15 years now, he creates new connections faster than he burns through them. Plus, let's not pretend other professors don't burn through connections ... but they cause burnouts in other people. This guy is very smart and can be incredibly helpful, he has much less burned out students than many others. He just also steals and has gotten violent at work. He really understood earlier than his colleagues that making tools for citations works pretty well, he's not getting fired any time soon. Credit to the article: he's no longer married, so I guess that is an indicator.
I know a CEO that has caused traffic accident and did a hit-and-run, was caught, and used company resources for his personal defense, and succeeded at it (he got it down to having his driver's license revoked for a year. So obviously the company "had to" pay for a driver for him). He's still CEO.
I know a senior engineer that crashed his company car ON PURPOSE, because he was refused to have it traded out. Management decided to forgive and forget, and trade out the car.
I know a director of a hospital that has falsified other people's grades (out of jealousy), and gotten caught doing that. She's not getting fired any time soon either. Her dad, by the way, is rich. He got rich through corruption. Like literally, you can google his name and you will find it.
And, I've done business with a senior management figure, someone you know, that got kicked from the company for getting convicted having some of his friends rape his secretary. It was probably not the first time he did that, just the first time he got caught.
So ... no, I don't think dishonesty causes poverty. Frankly, I must say, about most people in higher positions I know I have my suspicions. It's much worse in sales than engineering, but it's not absent.
Also, what is honesty? I'm an expat. Yes I'm honest in the sense that I don't steal for example, or that I take responsibility for an accident in traffic if it's my fault. I'm not like these people above here (that said, I started out dirt poor and, frankly, I have stolen twice. Didn't get caught. I just couldn't deal with not having access to ... I feel incredibly bad because the store I stole something (valued at maybe 150 euro) from went bankrupt 2 years later). That said I lie. First about me & my wife's background (we do not come from the same place, don't share religion, yet we have kids, which is not at all a problem between us, but IS a problem for some people we know). I lie about my kids education (I downplay it A LOT, because you just won't believe the animosity it generates, and, yes, I used money to fix problems they encountered)
This one really irks me for a couple of reasons. My wife and I have a friend whose partner is pretty despicable person. He didn't used to be before they got kids and kind of evolved into what he is now.
First, with couples in long relationships who they are now tells you little about who they were when they met and why they are still together.
Second, you have no idea what their relationship is like. You can't tell at a dinner party if they value the things you value in their partner or are bothered by same things. Nobody gets a perfect specimen matching their desires and needs including my wife.
In Larry's case he treats the subject's wife as unidimensional --as if she could not possibly have other characteristics that endear her to the subject. In the Moneyball, it's over the top attention to a single aspect. They're both preposterous.
Seems there is some level of wisdom here. Of course you can't see inside a man's head by doing this, but some things are gonna be obvious. Besides, when it comes to judging, only God can see the heart - the rest of us mortals have to rely on what is exposed to us.
>Identify what irritates people the most in others—because this is probably the trait they dislike most in themselves. ... Cheaters always gripe that others are dishonest. The liar always accuses other people of lying.
I think the answer is more complicated. Why do security companies hire convicted black hat hackers to do security? Why does the government employ convicted scammers and fraudsters to investigate scams and fraud? Because the qualities that let you see something clearly are also the qualities that can make you vulnerable to it. Which is why integrity is so important.
I'm irritated (lol) by the implication that the person with no irritations is the one with no vulnerabilities. As if being tolerant and permissive of all things is the correct way to exist. That there is nothing worth feeling strongly against because it implies to others that you are guilty of it, and so if you don't want to "out" yourself, you must not feel strongly about anything.
EDIT>> I think I'm saying that "integrity" and "capability" are two dimensions of this idea, and that they are orthogonal. Low capability, high/low integrity = mostly harmless. Low integrity, high capability = hurts others. High integrity, high capability = helps others.
While I appreciated some of the thoughts in the essay, this is the one that jumped out at me as problematic as well.
I thought long and hard about this, and my biggest frustration is when people around me refuse to change their minds despite all evidence. This goes hand-in-hand with people who refuse to engage in a good-faith debate.
While I am certainly not perfect and need to keep improving, I've worked hard to cultivate these qualities in myself, and I think that hard work is partially why I am frustrated when I encounter the opposite in others.
For sake of argument, I'll assume the author is right, and one's frustrations are also one's own weaknesses. The author's test does not account for the people who have learned the most by recognizing these negative qualities in themselves and working to change them.
I found it to me more along the lines of 'thou dost protest too much', because otherwise it makes little sense. Why can we not be irritated by people who treat service workers poorly, for example? I used to be one, and I know what it is like. I am also a person so I know what that is like, and I don't like people who treat others poorly. That isn't because I am projecting, it is because I am empathetic.
However, if I think that everyone is out to cheat me, or that other people always value money over loyalty, and I express that to you and it seems kind of out of proportion to things that have actually happened to me, then you should look at me suspiciously because most likely those are traits I have.
Irritations can also be past weaknesses. Like you said, you’ve put in the work why don’t others? That’s irritating/frustrating in itself because it implies that they don’t think it’s worth the work which by implication invalidates your effort and that feels bad.
Wikipedia's[0]description of CG Jung's Shadow:
"an unconscious aspect of the personality that does not correspond with the ego ideal, leading the ego to resist and project the shadow. In short, the shadow is the self's emotional blind spot..."
My wife worked at a 7-Eleven, when we got married.
7-11 is where the people that get abused at other jobs, go to abuse someone else.
Some of the stories she told me, at the end of the day, made me want to go back to the place, wait for the customers, and do some mayhem.
I know many, many folks in lower-echelon, and service jobs. I've learned to treat servers well.
My mother, on the other hand, was a "Hyacinth Bucket" type of English woman. An amazing person, but also incredibly class-conscious. She could be downright abusive with servers, and I always wanted to slide under the table, when she would start.
Agree that this is poorly worded, and objectifying. But it's trying to get at something real.
Here's another version of the same idea that isn't entirely wrong, and is also reductive and objectifiying, and meant towards assessing men: look at their shoes, their car, and (if they have one) their watch.
Two-door Civic and New Balance joggers? Subaru and hiking boots? Minivan and sandals? Tesla and exotic hi-tops? There's information there.
> Two-door Civic and New Balance joggers? Subaru and hiking boots? Minivan and sandals? Tesla and exotic hi-tops?
There’s information there for sure but not for you to extrapolate on my character. If anything instantly judging someone based on material possessions, signals a pretty weak character to me.
There’s just so many possibilities. You make me curious of what kind of association you derive from that. Especially when shuffling the person’s gender, age, profession, ethnicity, fitness etc.
There was a television game based on that (looking at people randomly chosen on the street and guessing things about them). All the fun was on the baseless biases of the contestants.
I don't disagree, it could be construed as an invitation to a superficial assessment.
The point of the algorithm mentioned in my comment is not that it gives correct results, it's that it's one possible entree into a guessing game, "who is this person?". It's the specificity of the particular items, which provide a definite set of branches for further questions, falsifications, etc.
Many people play the same game, in effect, with "what do you do" (your job), or "where do you live", or "where did you go to high school [college]". I kind of prefer the materialist formulation for a change of pace.
richest person I ever met, an ex's dad who quietly owned a ton of automotive stuff, was fond of crocs and hawaiian shirts.
he collected jaguars (the cars) and restored them in his basement basement garage, which had 5 bays.
there is, of course, an argument for counter-signaling here, but I am in agreement with the parent post -- hard to make a judgement based on shoes or cars.
Here's my "30 second assessment" criteria, pretty much gets me the right people every time:
* Are they interested, or only interesting? Interested people rock. Interesting people are sad. You are really more interesting when you take an interest. If everyone is paying attention to you, you're soaking the life out of the room. Find out something new from the people whose attention you demand, by showing an earnest and honest interest.
* Do they let you finish your sentence? Interrupters have self-esteem issues. Patient listeners have the confidence needed to make social groups stronger. People are made stronger when they are listened to - they are made weaker when their sentences are interrupted. No matter how important you think you are: listen until the end of the sentence.
* Can they let you be wrong about something, until you are right about it? Know-best kills the fun, always. Encouragement and enlightenment, however, feeds the fun. If I'm incorrect, and you correct me in a way that I feel improved for the experience, then we are both correct and you are awesome. But if I'm incorrect and you tout some hierarchical advantage over being right as a priority over assistance, then you are right and I will try not to work too much more for/with you.
* Can they help? Can they be helped? You have to be able to accept help, as well as offer it, in equal balance with the universe. That balance is key.
* Do they control everything, or nothing? Control is a substance best applied judiciously. Does the person have the temerity to judge when good control is needed, or bad control needs to be refactored? This one is not as easy as it seems .. but when you find someone who can handle control, and use it in a good way - rather than be averse to it generally as a subject - that person is grounded.
Test 3 is really unfair. People get very different starts in life, and asking about formative experiences is massively biased towards those people who got off the blocks quickly and easily. The interviewer should be thinking about who you are now, not who you once were: your past shouldn't entirely dictate your future.
I think he is correct in this. I am someone who know one expected to be a high paid engineer at a top computer company, working in California. I did not expect it myself.
But my Kansas roots, single mother, being poorer than all my school peers, working minimum wage jobs to pay rent and put myself through a junior college.... It's still who I am, at the core.
You're presupposing a whole lot of stuff here, but most of all the idea that these formative stories have to be good ones to indicate a good character.
Coming from a "slow start" background does inform a person's character, and it can go either way, but finding out about how it informs their character is what the article is trying to say.
Maybe reread that one, I think you are putting stuff in there that wasnt present in the article. I dont think the point is to measure how successful you were but to get a sense of the kind of person you are. In my experience with questions like this a rocky start is not held against you, tends to make you stand out in a good way if anything.
Caveat; yeah gut reasoning doesnt lead to unbiased hiring practices, no argument.
well, to be fair, the article didn't say how you should interpret early life experiences. You state that looking at early experiences are "biased towards those people who got off the blocks quickly and easily" but when I ready #3, my first thought (as a manager that interviews and hires frequently) was looking for people who had to solve problems when young, as opposed to people who got everything handed to them. Now that shows my biases which may be negative biases towards sons of wealthy parents who are talented and motivated, but the point is that your comment assumes a specific type of bias. I suspect that whether you're hiring or just meeting people socially, having a sense of how someone got to the point they're at tells you more about that person than just knowing where they're at now.
it's so vague it's useless. Bill Gates technically had "everything handed to him" before the age of 20, Larry Ellison otoh I would imagine had to struggle harder. But both are great at what they do, so what background do you look for?
Or you could be specifically looking for someone who over came a lot of adversity, not some one who achieved stereotypical markers of success due to parents with wealth and status.
> 7. If they cheat at small things, they will cheat at big things.
This is old adage bullshit. It’s simple enough to make sense intuitively, there are similar sayings in almost every culture, so it must be true, right ?
Except in practice people don’t work that way. Some might cheat at small and big big things, but most of us still apply different principle to different things.
Try to apply it to yourself: if a coworker left their desk unintended you could enjoy yourself messing with their system settings. If on top of that they left their bank account unintended you wouldn’t shuffle their savings options and hide their money in obscure accounts.
In a way, people deeply believing this are super scary to me. Do they work see their own little lies as an effect of an internal broken moral system ?
Not a great analogy. It’s more like if you steal their lunch you are more likely to steal money out of their wallet if you run short. Or, if you’ll lie on an expense report, you are more likely to falsely shift the blame to them when the chips are down.
It’s not a foregone conclusion, but there is a correlation.
But if you ever had your lunch stolen at work, did you also end up with your money stolen ?
We hear about petty “I put my name on that drink in the fridge and someone drank it” stories relatively frequently. Hell, I’ve witnessed people taking a beer from the fridge with someone’s sticker on it, and shrug it off with “I’ll bring some replacement later” (an no, they don’t)
But these people aren’t stealing from their coworker’s wallets, at least I never heard that happening at any of my workplaces.
PS: we want there to be a correlation, because it would be really convenient. As in the article, it would help avoid heavy loses by looking at simple signs. I see the impulse, but the world isn’t just that simple.
> Hell, I’ve witnessed people taking a beer from the fridge with someone’s sticker on it, and shrug it off with “I’ll bring some replacement later” (an no, they don’t)
If I saw someone do that I would be livid. I would immediately stop what I was doing, say "I can't believe you just did that", and be extremely wary of that person afterwards.
The only exception would be if I knew that the two people were good friends; and then a minimum level of courtesy would be to tell your friend later that you took one of their beers.
> Except in practice people don’t work that way. Some might cheat at small and big big things, but most of us still apply different principle to different things.
This just came to mind: how would the same point work out for people that wouldn't mind buying an item that's obviously mispriced, or credit card rewards terms that weren't implemented properly? Or pirating when one's a software developer?
I personally wouldn't mind hitting a large public company for all I've got, but I wouldn't touch a small business that's just trying to feed themselves.
But cheating at golf also stays that, just cheating at golf.
My analogy was clunky, but the author doesn’t expand on anything that happens besides that golf story. The guy that moved the ball might as well be extremely ethical in his business deals, we have no idea.
> 4. How do they invest their two most valuable resources?
Right! Now we just have to get ahold of all their receipts, so we know how they spend their money, and follow them around everywhere so that we know how they spend their time. It's almost too practical.
I wish it was this easy. I wish there were short cuts.
1. I had a business partner once who has a wife that I do think highly of, and who made me ignore a million red flags. But at the end of the day he turned out to be the exact sc*mbag that any neutral observer would have said he is from day one. We separated and he tried hard take down the company with him, purely out of spite. Complete POS. Unfortunately will have to file the spouse-test under useless metric.
2. Nobody who's not been living under a rock for the last 30 years is gonna make this mistake in 2023.
3. Bad characters lie about a lot of things, including their childhood.
4. The only true test on this list.
5. As said in another answer, this is '60s psychobabble.
6. Unfortunately I myself haven't seen any reliable correlation between this and the true character of people.
7. The dumb bad characters get caught cheating. The smart ones will make sure to appear extremely correct about all the small stuff, just so you'd never suspect them of anything bad when it comes to the more important things in life.
8. Maybe that's true in some cases but you know who completely thrives in unexpected social situations: psychopaths. This is because all the normal people show some amount of insecurity and vulnerability in these kinds of scenarios and a skilled psychopath will leverage that to manipulate people.
This man didn't mention parents or children. Conclude what you will about his character based on those two facts.
When evaluating these sorts of pieces, I've found it more fun to look for what they leave out, because the pieces people leave in, are almost by definition going to be self serving cliches.
This is what I started doing in my relationships in the past, to get a glimpse how things really look like in the beginning when (almost) all is rosy (and thus untrue). Conflicts arise often from simple misunderstandings, nobody messed up anything there were just different expectations on both sides for example.
Not creating a bad situation on purpose, they tend to come by themselves eventually. Its a normal reaction to go and fix things immediately but I advise to instead once just stay and watch the other, if he/she is a fixer or escalator of problems. If there is quiet talk, hugs, empathy or tantrums, yelling and various dramas. In the beginning of relationships, people who care about it tend to wear thick masks and tend to be more open/tolerant than they really are. Till there is a conflict, problem or similar stressor, then one is dealing with much more raw material.
If 2 greatly matching balanced people meet, this is not so useful, but for more psycho ladies I've met in the past this would have been a great initial litmus paper (and in fact was on one which is why I came up with this). Much better to stop unhealthy relationships in the beginning and just move on to something better, rather than trying hard to compensate for/fix other's childhood burdens (which is almost impossible anyway, there are professionals and decades of work for such things)
Pretty good list, but definitely led with the weakest. Lots of people marry an ideal instead of an actual person, or marry someone who changes (perhaps quite drastically) later. The divorce rate wouldn't be so high otherwise. Then there are (formally or informally) arranged marriages, and other confounders. This rule will spew both false negatives and false positives all over the place. The others are all much stronger.
Look at how they think other people behave. Most people assume other people's motivations are similar to their own. So someone who is paranoid about small time thieves might be assuming that other people will do what they would consider. (Of course, their paranoia could be due to personal experience, so some judgement is necessary!)
i think the final point about using these techniques on oneself is the most valuable of all. I can see point 5 applying to myself the most. But I am also glad I don't feel the need to "analyze" every person I meet with a rubric, that sounds tiring
> 1. Forget what they say—instead look at who they marry.
I'm confused by this. How does judging someone you just met and know zero about (the spouse or lack-thereof) tell you anything meaningful about the other person you know zero about (the person whose character you're primarily interested in judging)?
> So the next time you’re introduced to strangers at the party, and they start talking business, spend at least a little time sizing up their partners. If you don’t pay attention to this, you will have lost an important source of insights, and may pay a high price as a result.
What criteria for “sizing up” their partner?
This sound sociopath behavior. if me business partner do like this maybe they not right person to partner with.
if someone partner a business criminal or physically hurt someone good to know what you getting into up front. but otherwise trying to judge someones partner feel poor behavior.
seen havior like where one tries to judge your ability, motive, and success based on how you look..what car you drive..value of you house..based on what you father does and how much he earn. toxic traits.
always fools errand and people like this never get far long term.
All these rules are comically inaccurate rules of thumb. Better than a coin toss, sure but not that much better. IDK why the internet has such a fetish for this kind of advice. No amount of rules of thumb will ever make up for critical thinking, judgement skills and experience over time.
I have seen so many articles about evaluating people popping up recently. I expect someone to write an article soon about how you need to watch someone make love to a hooker for assessment purposes.
Apples of gold in settings of silver. Judging has value, but must be balanced - often by a virtue such as love. Source: Book of Proverbs (aka another source of techniques for judging character and other such secrets).
Not sure if this was intentional, but sections about treating people who cannot repay seemed to me to bundle love and judgement together well.
Am I the only one whose "linkedIn blogspam" alarm bells rung when they read this trite shite and convenient and disbelief suspending real life examples?
Plenty of people in this thread give detailed comments on why individual points are quite dubious so I will spare you my take.
In any case, why and how does low quality content like this end up on the front page?
>1. Forget what they say—instead look at who they marry.
I'd appreciate the character assassination to stay between party A and party B, rather than creating more collateral damage with familial review, thanks.
Pretending to be able to gauge 'character', whatever that is, without knowing the exact situations to judge -- in the case of a new hire that'd be on-the-job situations, not "which pear did you choose at the grocer?" -- is nothing that's any more precise than the 'systems' that gamblers have at any casino.
Why not just have a pissing contest when the hire walks through the door? Set up some wall targets, first to knock all the toy-soldiers off the ledge gets a job.
aside : friends and family have told me that the scars and medical issues that I have acquired through injury and rough-living give me 'character' -- where's the subsection in this blog-post about comparing scars and battle-wounds... or is that too old-school?"
sigh... these "sound good" but in fact are probably hot garbage, and certainly lacking data.
- choice of spouse? people choose spouses (or don't choose: arranged marriages!) for all sorts of reasons that have NOTHING to do with how they'll interact with you. They may also be headed for divorce, and you wouldn't know.
- how they treat service workers? if you're a service worker then sure, but if you're a client you may have a completely different experience - in fact, it's classic for shitty clients to abuse good vendors, who then abuse shitty service workers, who kick their dogs and so on. I've been decent to people who get abused, and gotten decent results.
- early life? sure, I can buy this - but good luck if they don't share. Also, some people specifically fight against those early-life learnings while others embrace them. IMHO you gotta be careful with this one.
- how they invest time and money? sure I can buy this - assuming they have discretion and their time and money isn't pre-allocated... which it is for many people!!!
- "Identify what irritates people the most in others—because this is probably the trait they dislike most in themselves" - maybe ??? this feels like pop psychology, and I'd love to see real data.
- "Can they listen?" - ok, this is very good advice and easily "tested" in various ways. Of course, "good listener" may not result in good service - but bad listeners rarely give good service.
- "If they cheat at small things, they will cheat at big things." - assuming honesty is the default, then sure... but again, I'd really like to see data to back this up. In particular, I've met some sociopathic scoundrels who know this "game" and are scrupulously honest about small things, so they can run off with millions when it matters.
- "Watch how they handle unexpected problems" - this seems like good advice in general, and not just problems but unexpected and out-of-control situations. Some people freak out, others become control freaks, others get quiet and listen, others do research. Again, it depends on the relationship - some jobs it's fine to perform poorly under change, others it's part of the job!
> "- "Identify what irritates people the most in others—because this is probably the trait they dislike most in themselves" - maybe ??? this feels like pop psychology, and I'd love to see real data."
The things that irritate me the most are when I see people doing the kinds of things my father did (laissez faire, no support, expect me to be a replica).
Just a hunch–thousands have been laid off from their jobs recently, often through no fault of their own. Society tends to judge a person's character by things like "can they 'hold' a job". A person who has been unfairly judged would probably have a strong opinion on the validity of character tests.
Character is a tricky concept to me, as it's hard to make comparisons without context. It's easier to have good character, for example, if you're born into circumstances with less temptation to push those boundaries.
Some of the anecdotes seem completely fabricated to provide a convenient example (i.e. the guy’s wife was very observantly watching him play a round of golf with a colleague and caught him cheating?)
It's not unreasonable to think that the wife was playing with them, was waiting for the cheater (fictional or not) to swing, and happened to notice them move the ball.
We can agree that someone's character trait may irritate you because it goes against your values or beliefs.
But the irritation can reach maximum intensity if it comes to be a trait:
- you dislike about yourself AND have not accepted [0]
- you've had a "bad experience" with. For example, your abusive mother has said trait
__
[0] I think part of why the hate is so intense in this case is that you're forever with yourself; you can't escape; the trait is always there, in plain sight.
I enjoyed reading this a lot. I think there is a lot of wisdom here. You dont have to follow everything to the letter, but there is something deep to learn in each point.
I think that #5 is a bad point, as there are multiple reasons why someone might get irritated with a trait of another person, and "I see that trait in myself" is only one of them. I don't think that it's even a "probably"; it's at most a "perhaps".
#7 is way more complicated than it looks like, as it only works under the assumption that humans are morally consistent (we aren't).
This is fantastic - (note: confirmation bias on my part) - it's quite similar to the list I keep in my head and have been trying to gently teach my daughters as they are growing up. Who they are partners with is a good one, that (for me in the work world) hasn't come up in a timely fashion to make other decisions but would be quite handy in social situations.
Most of the article reads like the top list of YouTube shorts play list.
How someone treats service workers? Ok Henry Ford. And if you don’t get a chance to observe this?
> “I heard of a peculiar technique used by a company hiring a senior executive. In the final round of interviews, the candidates are taken to lunch, and during the meal something goes wrong—of course, this is all staged as a kind of test.”
This is what informs their thinking? YouTube /Reddit pranks of the c-suite? Bonkers!
Don’t waste your time with this article—it all will show up in your Facebook and YouTube feed anyway while you’re trying to follow your family and friends or watching Tom Rosenbauer videos.
Oh! Damn. I just revealed number 5–what I do with my extra time and money!
Let rip the judgement of my capacity to contribute meaningfully to your dev team!
A few important ones are missing or are unclear, but some of these techniques evolve getting closer to people. So trying to findout about it can be an exausting experience. Otherwise can take a year or two.
7. Using this can be pretty dangerous. What if a person is very fair and honest about everything with the intend to screw you over big time later? And on the other hand if a person does some silly cheating in a friendly game and get caught right away, how dangerous can they really be for big stuff? There will probably be a lot if signs before that happens.
Most of the advice can be easily spun around to "prove" the exact opposite.
Most of these might ring true, and some have been extensively explored (like 2.), but overall I can't help but feel like I'm reading astrology. I need something more solid than "one guy's opinion on the internet" to take this seriously.
I was hoping for this to be a eye-opening list, but don't know which ones apply even moderately to myself or which ones I can apply effectively.
On the whole I haven't had clashes with character very much and am quite self-sufficient so not so much impact there. Sure, I've trusted the wrong people and lost out but that's the cost of living and trusting people--sometimes you get it wrong.
1. who they marry: however the chemicals worked out some critically fateful days
2. treat service workers: this might be a good one (unless they're wise to it and faking it)
3. early life: hit-or-miss I suspect. What you really want is to know what drives them. I'm mostly driven by a desire for knowledge and craft but I can't point to where in my childhood that came from.
4. time & money: I tend to either waste both of them or have more than I can effectively use. knowledge & craft doesn't cost much to feed
5. what people irritate them: this one's probably more applicable when younger. Now when someone's getting on my nerve I might recognize my younger self. That gives me some compassion, more patience, and a slightly laughing sigh.
6. talk, listen, neither: Hmm. work-wise sometimes discussions can get to talking past each other because they both have valid points being expressed but can't communicate both simultaneously. Talking is sync, listening is sometimes async (delayed). Doesn't make bad people, just bad communicators like most.
7. cheating: I knew one guy who was super non-cheating on games, splitting bills, etc. He cheats on his girlfriend(s?). Knows how to game it.
8. handle unexpected problems: doing nothing is actually pretty good. One time a shared network server got it's main documents volume wiped. I was working late and someone told me about it. I had admin access. We went for dinner, I can't think without food. Came back and found that there's a way to undelete from a Novell Fileserver. I enlisted whoever was there to manually undelete about 10k files, including ones meant to be gone as we couldn't tell.
I think this is better used as a list of how to fool people about your character.
So basically I don't think there's much point in judging people. If you get the sense they're untrustworthy, don't associate too much. I think it's better to find out how you can get along with them in a professional or social setting.
If I had to say there's one character flaw that I can't stand, it's people who assert their value system over others for no purpose--like telling a vegetarian there's no meat in there because they don't think it matters.
> 1. who they marry: however the chemicals worked out some critically fateful days
If you marry someone based on "however the chemicals worked out some critically fateful days", that in fact tells me something about your judgment, and it isn't something good.
I have to deal with People-as-a-Problem for a living.
On the whole, this isn't a bad litmus test, but it's obvious he associates with an older crowd. In recent years, some of these have started to be subverted.
> 3. Discover what experiences formed their character in early life
Glad his experience went well, but this is fishing for emotional intelligence. No stranger needs to be asking these sorts of questions-- you end up letting slip things like parent issues, lack of friends, low self-esteem, etc. and they end up exploiting that later. It's Grooming, and how you end up working for an abusive boss.
> 5. Identify what irritates people the most in others—because this is probably the trait they dislike most in themselves.
No. This is 1960s psychobabble (projection). You don't have to be a liar to hate liars, nor do you need to be a closet homosexual to be homophobic. Nobody would suggest that a guy who commits hate crimes against Chinese secretly wishes he were Asian.
Some people just have trust issues/take Integrity seriously, and other people just don't have tolerance for anything that challenges their world view. Be careful what you read into.
I think 5) has some merit, but wasn't worded as carefully as it could have been. I find many of the things I dislike most in others are the "failings" that I have a natural proclivity for, but have worked hard to overcome. I'm not sure how well it works as a test of character though, because it's hard to tell where the person is on their "overcoming" journey.
Though as you say, there are many exceptions. I have a strong tendency towards honesty and a strong aversion to dishonesty, for example.
Trying to untangle it all very likely too complex a problem for this to be used as a meaningful heuristic, but it probably shouldn't be completely ignored, either.
Yeah overall it is a good article, but #5 is nonsense that is spouted too often. It may be true that people often project the things they hate about themselves to others, but you can’t know whether or not that is the case when getting to know someone.
If you’re their therapist and you know that they are homophobic and also homosexual, you can get to the root of things. But otherwise, if you see that someone is homophobic, they may just be homophobic.
I would politely disagree, I think there's a fine road between both of what you are saying here. Oftentimes people do project outward their hate because they hate it in themselves -- we are creatures with much logical momentum unfortunately, and many conflicts can arise when people try to paper over their own biases and *isms. It's not psychobabble, it's a phenomenon that has been very well demonstrated and is commonly accepted today as a part of an evidence-based practice for trauma resolution. Some of the examples you brought up were fallacious, though I unfortunately don't have any good resources to point you to.
As far as the first point, I could see it going either way. I know where many people came from in their early years, and it is actually the fuel that helps me give them respect when they act in inappropriate manners considering the situation at hand -- I can recontextualize and see where they are coming from. It gives me empathy, an ability to connect to them, and an ability to fundamentally feel safe enough to better love them.
> It's not psychobabble, it's a phenomenon that has been very well demonstrated and is commonly accepted today as a part of an evidence-based practice for trauma resolution.
I came across more dismissive than intended. You are right.
The author mentions it in the context of interviewing, not therapy. If a psychologist wants to draw that conclusion based on intimate knowledge shared with them, so be it, but the layman does not have that context-- so rules-of-thumb like "it takes one to know one" leads to dangerously-misguided conclusions.
Bob doesn't like pedophiles, ergo Bob is a pedophile? It's wrong more often than right and should not be used as a metric of anything [by laymen].
> As far as the first point, I could see it going either way. I know where many people came from in their early years, and it is actually the fuel that helps me give them respect when they act in inappropriate manners considering the situation at hand -- I can recontextualize and see where they are coming from. It gives me empathy, an ability to connect to them, and an ability to fundamentally feel safe enough to better love them.
Absolutely! Talk to your friends, family, or therapist, but you'd be wise not to reveal too much of yourself to someone whose position betrays their own power-seeking behavior.
Yeah, #3 in particular - man, I wonder how many people the author struck out because they had a rough childhood or grew up in a bad area. People can change, they often do change, and judging them by how they dealt with the part of their life they had no real control over, as opposed to what they’ve done since, doesn’t strike me as any real kind of wisdom.
I think the author's point is exactly the opposite - he's more impressed by people who experienced adversity in their early years and (presumably) have overcome it to the point where they're interviewing with him.
There's no way to determine that in an interview, which was the author's example. Interviewers who ask these type of questions are low key manipulative, that prying attitude is incredibly off putting, so presumptuous. If I were getting the sense that I were being judged on my childhood, I'd no way want to work with you. It's a total boomer thing, that casual condescendion. Younger people are much much better attuned to people's boundaries. Honestly, it's kind of frightening, the maturity with which a lot young people already can communicate with.
Humbly, I don’t think it’s projection. For example, one who publicly hates liars probably dislikes any instance they have been dishonest or where oblique about the truth.
Someone who is homophobic, would hate any instance where they evaluated a man as attentive even if that’s in a purely objective way so they would claim to be above mens fashion and grooming.
I can’t speak about racists since I don’t know what motivates them. However someone who hates racism, would be troubled when they find they like protecting their in group more than others. It’s not that they are racists, but they can recognize that can be the seed of such if you aren’t thoughtful.
People naturally have facets of themselves they want to expunge but can’t because like all people they aren’t perfectly rationale. They simply are what they are.
His observation that people are infuriated when they see their own flaw in others is often true. But the converse is not : if a flaw is noticed, the observer must have that flaw.
E.g. ive noticed that I was disgusted by people wasting time at work... over time i've realized this was a judgement on myself that I was externalizing.
It says something about you that this is your perspective!
> People marry who they fall in love with and love is purely emotional.
These are two different assertions, both of which would require substantiation. I've known many people who married partners who they seemed not particularly to like, either out of habit, a sense of obligation, cultural pressure, poor self-image, etc. Of course, it's always easy to say "I saw the signs long ago" when a marriage goes south—but honestly, haven't you?
"Love" is a vague concept which could mean many things, any number of which could be components of a successful marriage. Discerning which of these attributes were important to the partners in a marriage is one of the things that makes it interesting to get to know other couples...and can certainly tell you something about their values.
Point #1 can be like the servers point, you can tell a lot about how they treat their spouse. Also, my wife tends to have a dominant personality (somewhat), and I tend to have a more submissive / little brother personality. I guarantee you meet us and how my wife acts says things about me. That is much less true over time though.
He said the first early warning sign he had that Joe was going to be a problem was when a group were out to dinner, and Joe spent quite a bit of time talking about the school his son was going to. The PE guy is meticulous and of course when he got home he looked it up. After some digging, PE guy found that Joe's son actually went to a less prestigious mid-level college. Why, everyone thought, would Joe go out of his way to lie about his son's school, when no one had even asked about it?
A lot of money and tears later Joe was finally let go for a host of reasons. But it really all came down to character.