Hacker News Reader

Comment by csense | Hacker News Reader

Thinking back to my own middle/high school experiences, group work just gives the poor students a free pass to slack off, because they know the good students in their group will pick up the slack.

I usually worked alone if the option was available, because if I worked in a group I'd almost always end up having to do / re-do everyone else's sub-par work anyway. It was the same workload either way, but working in a group would essentially be giving others "counterfeit" grades (based on my effort, not theirs), the existence of which necessarily devalues my "genuine" grade.

View on HN

Group work can work, but it needs a different setting. I studied at an university where half of the time was group work and it worked because:

The students had 100% authority over how groups are formed, i.e. number of groups and who are in which group. The teachers had nothing to say in this.

The result is that:

1) it quickly became common knowledge who the slackers were (and who were the opposite).

2) nobody wanted to have the slackers in their group, so they were kind of ostracized and had to make their own group. They often ended up with the bad marks they deserve.

3) everybody learned that you had to do your homework/groupwork if you wanted to be part of a good group. It became a lot more difficult to get away with lame excuses for not having done what you promised. People really worked hard.

3b) If a group member didn't do their work, the other members could exclude the person from the group, and that person then had to make a project on their own, which is really really difficult. Again, the teachers had nothing to say in this, they could not veto an exclusion.

4) you ended up with a notion that your reputation had important consequences, just like in real life. Introverted people who did great work were popular group members.

5) Bonus: you learned to value different skills in people. Instead of wanting to be around people exactly like yourself, you learned that people who are (and think) different are very valuable for good projects.

I had a similar experience once in high school. After a first round where the top four students were assigned to a group of the lower end ("You'll be a good role model", he said, which failed miserably) we then picked our own groups for the next project. He went down the class, in order of grades, and had us sit at a group table. So the student with the highest grade in the class sat as a table of their choosing, followed by the second, then third, etc.

My group had 3 of the top 5, and one who was somewhere just above the middle. The three of us had flagged her over to be the fourth member.

The reason for this? She didn't have the highest grade, but we knew she worked hard (it was a somewhat unfair consequence that we learned everyone's standing in this way; we assumed she'd have been higher)

It didn't matter. We divided tasks, made sure everything was covered, and all got As.

The lesson out of all of this was, in group work, having the smartest or best test scores didn't matter as between four of us, we could work it out together. But having people who could do the work did. And that is more valuable in a team.

These days, I work in a group of eight managing engineering and operations for a specific technology. We have some who are crazy smart but don't do much, and a few others who are pretty new to the tech but work pretty diligently. The former talks alot but has few deliverables, but the latter, while asking us a lot about the higher end stuff, has taken it upon himself to clean up little inconsistencies and chasing down the non-serious, but obscure errors in our system.

You have to be careful not to play favorites, but we try hard to make sure the latter guy knows his work is valuable and that he's appreciated.

Go team.

I had a similar situation when I was a manager, had one guy who couldn't code for shit, literally took this guy 2 or 3x longer to implement a feature from scratch, than anyone else on the team. He could trouble shoot, debug, and interact with support like no other. Got on a lot of goto meetings with customers that I didn't want to. I tried to steer him toward a support role, but when it came time to cut people, I needed coders, and had to let him go. That's my biggest regret, and part of why I never want to manage again.

Did the support roles pay as well as development? Usually they don't, and the chances of a meaningful promotion are less than in development. I wouldn't be surprised if he stayed in development because it paid better and had better career prospects.

I think this is a fairly dangerous setup. Having studied a hybrid of business administration and CS I think that people were labeled "slackers" way too quickly when it came to programming group work. It's genuinely hard to learn programming for some people which I didn't really appreciate before university. In fact some people are morbidly afraid of it (just like math) and just give up at some point. Since I was already interested in it way before I started university the curse of knowledge was in full effect for me.

We tried to get "slackers" involved whenever possible and took it as a sign of failure on our part if we couldn't. This was equally true for true slackers (there's inevitably people that will be lazy and try to cruise). Confronting them and giving them well structured work packages kind of works (and was really hard for me). It's a very good preparation for the workplace. I'm most certainly an introvert and I think people who try to cruise and get by without doing much work are usually extroverts. This is observational evidence, I could be completely wrong but you have to be somewhat good at making up excuses on the spot and talking to people and overwhelming them if you are a "slacking pro".

I think the main point is that there's a difference between slackers and people who don't care. You can slack but still care about the group work, but you can also slack and not do anything at all. In the former, slackers may feel compelled to work harder when working in a group (like the ones you're talking about), but in the latter they just don't care enough (like the ones who ignore emails).

I think it's important to give group members some level of control over the group and not require a group to carry someone who isn't contributing. Some of my professors gave us the option to fire group members who weren't pulling their weight. Oddly enough, with those professors I never had a bad group. :)

We never had to do it, but knowing the option was there was always nice. I think it helps motivate some people, too; no one wants to be person fired from a group and have to complete the entire assignment on your own.

One of my roommates in a different group DID have to fire a group member. It's been a long time since my college days and I'm trying to remember, but as I recall he said the process went something like this:

1. The group as a whole had to go to the professor in unanimous agreement that an individual wasn't pulling their weight.

2. The professor confronted the individual in question privately to ascertain if there was a legitimate reason. In this case, I'm guessing there wasn't one. He was apparently given a warning to start showing up to group meetings and contributing.

3. Apparently it got better for a few weeks but the person in question started slacking off again. So the group went back to the professor again. This time the professor informed the slacker that he was no longer in the group and would have now complete the assignment on his own.

IIRC the person dropped the class shortly thereafter.

There are certain failure modes that that doesn't work for.

I had a group project once where none of the other three members really did much at all, not because they were lazy but just because they weren't very competent (seriously, I spent like five hours with a member who was a software engineering major trying to help her write a few lines of C that would run on a microcontroller on the board that I designed. In the end, I just wrote all the code... I wanted to help them learn, but the amount of background knowledge they didn't have just made it impossible in the time we had).

When it came to peer assessment, the way it was done was that the person being assessed would go outside, and the rest of the group assessed them and come up with a single rating. So you couldn't mark them down much really because everyone else knew that they had all done the same amount of work as that person... So we all got the highest grade in the end (not that I would have crucified them or anything though, since they were fairly willing to try).

In your case, I think you handled it as well as possible. At least your fellow group members were willing to try and be involved, even if they weren't technically proficient enough to complete the required work.

The whole firing group members, IIRC, was meant to handle people who weren't contributing and weren't even trying to contribute. Basically, those hoping to ride the coattails without expending any effort. It's an iterative improvement over the standard group model, but by no means was it perfect.

Honestly, I don't think it's possible to design a perfect group work system. There will always be human edge cases.

That sounds like it definitely works in the university setting you're describing, and sounds like the same type of thing that would have happened in the middle school setting I used to work in. The unfortunate thing in both settings is that the slackers always get bad marks.

This is especially bad for a 7th grader when poor school performance can have little to do with the student's actual skills and a lot to do with their home life and/or parental involvement.

I don't think you could possibly design a mixed-skill education model where slackers don't get bad marks. If slackers get good marks, marks are meaningless.

Completely agree.

I guess I was more commenting about the fact that is doesn't matter whether the groups are self-formed or teacher-formed, or university-level or middle school-level because the outcome will always be the same: slackers get bad marks.

One of my goals as a teacher was to identify "slacker" students who didn't like to read and then try to help them find enjoyment from reading. Usually the reason for not liking reading was that they hadn't found a subject or genre that they connected with or were allowed to explore in depth.

That is kind of off-topic, but I always felt like the marks were only one aspect of education and even if the student ended up with bad marks, they could still grow and be a different person by the time they were done with the school year.

> I guess I was more commenting about the fact that is doesn't matter whether the groups are self-formed or teacher-formed, or university-level or middle school-level because the outcome will always be the same: slackers get bad marks.

Actually, that's not true in my experience. When a teacher assigns groups, then they often force slackers into groups with hard-working over achievers who pick up all the slack. So the slacker does get a good mark.

Not that I think that's a good thing for everyone. It pisses off the student who did all the hard work, makes marks meaningless, and allows the slacker to coast further without learning anything.

Yet it's disturbingly common.

Well, the teacher helped the "slacker" student improve their grades... must be a great teacher!

Goes the other way as well. My cousin had horrible marks on her SATs. 800s. Yet she was straight A's in classes. As a music major she was playing in two bands in addition to her AP course work.

The college didn't seem to mind. UNC gave her a full ride. Well deserved.

When you say 800s, it makes me think that she got multiple 800s (like on CR and M).

Honestly, getting a 1600 CR+M seems like one of the few guaranteed ways to get a Morehead Semifinalist Interview, from the few people I know at least.

You hit the nail on the head; these early marks are meaningless. These are barely mentally formed children. We do everything we can to avoid having them be responsible for their choices because honestly they aren't ready to make serious decisions. Except we begin the gauntlet of constant rating and judgement in school with aftereffects that carry over throughout their academic lives no matter their circumstances. Their success or failure is essentially a proxy for their parents success or failure, or a accident of circumstance more often than it's any genuine ability.

If any marking is to count or mean anything it needs to begin when they are adults capable of making real choices.

The slackers need a wake-up call. Most of the slackers slack precisely because they can get away with it.

You don't learn to stop slacking by always being able to get away with it, still getting good marks even though you didn't do any work.

I was a slacker in one subject in high school, didn't do homework at all. The first mark I got was an F-. It was the kick in the butt I needed for pulling myself together and do the work needed to raise the grade step by step to a B+.

The problem is in the complexity of the problems solved at a University and a k-12 level. I think this is brilliant but it assumes that there is varied work to be accomplished by all members. Most of my projects in HS where all easy enough that it was difficult to say that more then one person was needed. Slackers could survive off their friends and the people who would get everything done on their own and then let the rest of the group copy.

My high school LA teacher decided to adopt the same system. Popularity contest ensued. The interesting thing is that those who were one of the more intellectual types staunchly rejected the hierarchy, and formed a ragtag group with the leftover slackers.

This is the reason (at least, I think this is the reason) why I bombed my first serious job interview, with United Launch Alliance.

Things were going great until they asked me if I preferred working alone or in teams. From memory (it's been a long while) this is how the conversation went:

Interviewer: "Do you like working in teams?"

"If the people I'm working with are smart and motivated, I'm fine working in teams. Otherwise I'd like to mostly work alone."

Interviewer: "You mean you don't like working with other people?"

"No, that's not what I said. What I mean is that my experiences in working with teams have been mostly negative because other people don't pull their weight. The few times I have been in a good team I've really enjoyed it."

Interviewer: "Okay, moving on..."

And a rejection email was waiting in my inbox before I even got off the plane that night.

I learned after that to just say, "I love working in teams, especially when I'm working with people more experienced and knowledgeable than me. I'm also a great self-starter and I'm self-motivated, so I'm also comfortable working solo if you need me to do that." Which is much the same sentiment, but phrased in a way that people seem to take better.

I absolutely hate that we have to play the game but I suppose that there's some benefit in weeding out the people who can't.

"Yes, I enjoy leveraging the different experience that each member brings to the team. When we combine a group of highly motivated and knowledgeable individuals, we can achieve a high degree of success...synergy...paradigm...core competencies"

Yeah. Reflecting back on that interview process was very informative for me. I am glad I went on that interview because this was a very valuable lesson.

You know the expression "if you meet jerks all day then you're the jerk?" That's what would go through my mind if someone complained about their previous team members in a job interview.

This rule assumes that the most popular behavior is not being a jerk. What if you're the only black in a city full of racists whites? Are you a jerk because other people treat you badly? A less extreme example - what if you're the only person who doesn't easily understand the complex social structures that exist in workplaces? People will treat you badly because you were too nice to the low-ranking guy and not sucking-up enough to the high-ranking guy. That doesn't mean you're a jerk either.

That assumption depends on how many teams the person has been in. When I was in Uni we literally had just one project in 5 years where we were working in a team with more than two people.

This is why I stopped phrasing things in the way I did in that interview.

EDIT: realized my phrasing wasn't great

Well by that logic ... if you meet short people all day, then you're short?

Reasonable people end up acting like jerks toward real jerks because they have no reason to be kind. Therefore if you notice that everyone is being a jerk to you, it's likely because you're giving them a reason to be.

Tall people don't go around being short around short people, namely because they can't.

Well, clearly, when the interviewer heard "smart and motivated" it was immediately clear you weren't going to fit in there. So probably worked out best for everyone involved.

Rocket science really doesn't have a lot of room for primadonnas. It's all process and accountability.

You can be a creative and independent individual in such an environment. A prima-donna? No. But self-directing? Absolutely.

Saying that it is all "process and accountability" glosses over a lot of the reality of how the work is actually done on a day-to-day basis.

I think your answer is worded in a way that shows distrust and lack of enthusiasm. Everyone has experienced dysfunctional teams, but by saying things like "mostly negative," you're showing them a bias against teamwork. You can express the same thing by saying, "it's great working with teams of smart, motivated people, although it does depend on the people involved." Of course any interviewer worth their salt will follow up on that, because any kind of negativity is a yellow flag, and needs clarification.

Your second answer could be better phrased as, "well, we've all had the experience of working with people who don't pull their own weight, which can be a challenge to say the least, but that said, that kind of thing should be more the exception."

The conventional wisdom is that if you have five good group projects and one bad project, the problem is the group. If you have five bad projects and one good one, the problem is you. You don't want to tell them that you're the problem.

The 'conventional wisdom' you quote sounds valid in a professional environment. If your only experience of teamwork is with group projects in university then worrying that 'teamwork' equates to 'being saddled with a bunch of slackers' is entirely reasonable.

I think their answer was a very honest answer, which was a classic rookie mistake (although totally excusable since it was their first 'real' job interview). After being round the block a couple of times, we learn to add some spin to the answer, the way you did, and the interviewer sees that we can play the game, and we get hired.

Yup, classic rookie mistake. My revised answer is still honest. I do enjoy working with other people. Also, I need to work with other people to improve my skills. But I am also comfortable going off on my own for a while and working on something. My current job (flight test instrumentation) is an even mixture of both solo work and team work. The older, more experienced me knows now that I need both types of work.

You're absolutely right on all of this. Your comment summarizes what I learned after this experience. I was much younger then, and didn't understand that last point in particular. Was I stuck in groups where we had outright slugs? Of course I was, and that happens in a non-professional environment like school. There were some things I could have done then that I understand now. I did everything I knew to do at the time.

Yeah. In retrospect, I said much worse things in my interviews after college. Part of it is lack of experience like you say, but I think a lot of it is also the amount of stress you're going through at that time of your life. I find all my negative traits come out front and center when I'm under lots of stress, which ironically means the worse things are going at my current job, the harder it is to get a better one.

I can't believe companies are still asking questions like this. The clever slacker will know exactly how to answer the Psyc. 101 questions? Maybe that's why we have so many people who shouldn't have got that middle/upper management on their unseen talents?

I really don't understand this problem in hiring. Yea--go off that, usually padded resume, padded Likedin, etc., but just test the candidate. You can test them on the job, or a supervised written/computer test? You can then keep them, or fire them? Of course tell the employee this position is provisional.

Hiring shouldn't be a popularity contest? And some of the best minds I have been around, really didn't like working in big groups. I've never seen an organization that didn't split into small groups of people after all the big promises of team playing. These small groups are sometimes a popularity contest though--So, what do I know?

As to HR personnel, why are they seemly always irritating/hubristic people? I can't figure out if it's the job that turns them into people I don't want to be around, or certain personality types are drawn to that position?

While I'm at it, enough with requiring a picture? I understand if the job requires a security clearance, but even then I think it's an invasion of privacy, and used for the wrong reasons.

The better jobs I had required a test as 1/2 of the hiring process. The other 1/2 was the oral interview. The interview had at Least five people overhearing my answers. I really thought this was a fair way to hire.

(On another note, I had a detective put a note on my table, in my yard, with a number to call. Yea, some slimy PI was in my yard? I think I have a neighbor who's applying to some government security position?

I didn't call the number, but I think I know the neighbor. He just moved in, and I don't know where he got his money, nor care to. He has a lot of disposable income, and doesn't something doesn't add up. He, and his friends smoke a lot of weed, and he seems paranoid. Personally, I thought he was a drug dealer, and I don't care, as long as he stays away from me.

Would I hire this guy--no, but I don't know him. It's all speculation on my part? I would never call that number, unless I saw him building a "you know what". I have a bunch of nosey neighbors, who seem to live to point out neighborhood infractions, or eye sores. I hate that eye sore phrase. I always want to tell the person spewing that observation; look in the mirror? Well, I imagine most of my neighbors gleefully called this number and gave their 2 cents to this PI, and I imagine everything was speculated?

If this is how security clearances are performed --it's sad.

The main reason I like where I live is because I don't want to know my neighbors? They all seem to have too much money, and complain about stuff I don't think is important. I have nothing in common with them, and don't want to know them. Is that wrong?)

Again off track, but I would like to see a simplified/fair way of hiring.

If that person is being investigated for a clearance, they won't have some slimy PI. They'll have someone from a known government agency (in my experience, either FBI or the Federal Investigative Service (FIS)) asking questions, and the questions are usually like, "Do you know of any reasons why the subject should not be considered for a position of trust/position of national security importance?"

I'm sorry but... what's with all those questions?

This seems like such a universal experience, and looking back on it, teachers obviously know it's going on.

I wonder how much their plans to train kids for the "real world" are shaped by working in such unusual environments themselves.

I've never had a job where my performance is judged based on how a random group of teenagers I've been assigned to does on a project, but teachers certainly have.

Many professionals in the real world work in team environments where they depend on each other, and you can't just ignore your teammates bad work. This is certainly true in all but the smallest software shops.

Right but the usually accepted answer is not: I just give them bullshit to do or otherwise plan on having time to do their work if/when they don't do it sufficiently. That's the right answer. We just don't like it because it condemns people. We really need basic income so we can start being more ruthless about this. Honestly I think it could save some of these people from a downward spiral of bullshitting. They're just scared and we all know they have good reason to be so we give them a pass.

In my experience it's even more important in small software shops because you're going to be good at different things and there's no room for ego.

Of course, another way to look at this is that the assignment is not really about the work product but about developing co-working skills, as well as giving weaker students an opportunity to learn from their peers rather than an adult, which is often more effective. At least, it could be....but in the hands of a less-thoughtful teacher, it could easily turn into trickle-down education as you describe.

A colleague of mine described a method for assigning groups that I'd never considered, but that she says worked surprisingly well.

On the first day of class, she gave out a survey, and one question was "How many hours do you expect to spend working on this class each week?" She assigned students to groups who gave similar answers. The self-described hard workers were delighted to be together, and the folks who were hoping to coast pretty quickly realized that nobody else in their group was going to just take over and do it all, so they reluctantly buckled down, too.

I went through phases in school, partially driven I believe by the fact I was suffering from dyslexia but didn't know it (given I made it to graduation with good enough grades from a very decent uni, I wasn't diagnosed until 25. Sadly late diagnoses is a bit more common then you think) However as some people may appreciate, particularly during exam times, I became extremely introverted. Friends noticed a difference in my attitude and some felt I had issues with them so stopped talking to me. This is was not the case from my side and I tried to explain. Teachers thought I was "slacking" in class as I wouldn't participate as much given we were asked to do quite a bit of reading and it meant that in group work, whilst I was vocal, my work was slow. From these experiences I learnt something. The way I look at the world and interpret situations and experiences when I went through months and sometimes a good year of being like this was extremely different to when I was confident and out going. Fair enough mine personality drift was triggered by my dyslexia, different people can have different triggers. The outcome is similar.

Introverts are extremely affective influencers in chaotic scenarios, they are known, particularly in Asia due to their more low key and effective nurturing techniques to be powerful leaders. They have been on the receiving end of criticism more than most people and have learnt in hindsight what could have made them tick and let's be honest, in this day and age of everyone being encouraged to speak their mind, people stand out from the crowd if they have a knack for building up others and are committed to listening instead of talking. This idea is a strength of an introvert. However, these strengths take a while to come into play as to be able to recognise them as strengths within yourself requires confidence and that takes a ridiculous amount of time to attain yourself for someone who is introverted. One is only really taught to appreciate and how to harness the strengths of different personalities at business school or the working environment through various negotiation/project management or graduate workshops. The school system lacks high quality teachers who can bring these strengths out of their introverted students at younger age. Fact is, there is no doubt a negative correlation between the more students who are built up and those who become depressed or bullied. Group work could be even more better with their input and a lot of the time so would group dynamic. Sharing my two pennies worth...

Well, it sounds like it prepares you for adult life where this is a norm.

On the other hand, I'm not saying you're like this, but a lot of kids who are brilliant are incapable of working in groups, and that's pretty much what you have to do in real life.

Also, growing up, I would not allow that in my group there could be a slacker... report him / her, be a snitch, I didn't care, actually, what I did was help them so they can become better and do the homework.

But I didn't grow up in America where the smart kids just do the dumb kids homework because they're afraid of getting bullied, in fact, I learned about the concept up until I moved in here.

100% agree. I think you're right. When it comes to anyone, from any background or person they need to be able to work in a social environment. My manager is super sharp/super smart, can teach me to save his life. But tough love I feel isn't always needed. Yeah the shock will stay with them but there are also more effective ways. I don't think stick on hand techniques are the way to go (metaphor here) and generally societies and communities are evolving passed that. Granted, sometimes there really is no other choice!

I think the focus of group works in education is not to get real work done but to learn about teamwork and leadership. In real live you can't choose your team and in my experience the motivation and knowledge of the participants may vary significantly. good management is when everybody motivated is assigned a productive work and really stubborn cases cut loose. the latter beeing very difficult from my experience...

Until the nerds learn that they don't need to ace in every assignment to get a passing grade. I confess having being delighted of get a failing grade on purpose, with the full knowledge that I but not my peers was able to take the hit.

Later I have met others who came to the same basic conclusion, though they were much more constructive and assertive when dealing with the situation.

On the one hand I agree but on the other hand I think group work is an important skill to learn. This will be almost always necessary in a work environment.

I think a good compromise is to require each team member to be responsible for an identified part of the group work so that the teacher can adequately grade each individual.

At that point you're not doing group work. You're doing individual work with differing assignments.

Group work is the reality of the world. You can be the best and your company can fail because of crappy peers. Speak up, lead them to greatness and give them the boot (ie, tell the teacher) if they're hopeless.

this competitive view of education is another unfortunate consequence of what i identify as a broken educational system

i think its worth while to ask who who incites this competition with grades?

what are your concerns with 'counterfeit' versus 'genuine' grades?

i am more upset that another generation can get through school with, hard won, perfect grades and still be unaware of what a transformer is and how it works

Everyone knows what transformers are. And that they're powered by the Allspark. I think you're just jaded.

I hated group work for the opposite reason: there was always some ass who thought their work and ideas were superior and they didn't let anyone else provide any input. They'd often just re-do the work I did because I didn't do it the way they demanded I do it. I eventually just stopped even bothering cause it seemed like they weren't so much interested in the quality as in having complete control over everything.

Man, I wish I would have come across such a person, I'd have let them have their way. Instead it was always a bunch of flakes clearly looking to do as little as possible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com