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Comment by smeeth | Hacker News Reader

I like this, but I do think it misses the social stuff. Just a few neurotic/unethical people can completely ruin a team and make all the best people quit. I find this to be extra true on diverse teams (all types of diversity).

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Yes, I now call this "vibes".

This is an interesting area because there's a lot of room for debate about what a good "vibe" is. Is being really positive all the time the right vibe? In many/most office environments, it is considered to be the right vibe. In a small startup where you're trying to validate PMF, it's not necessarily the best vibe IMO.

"Vibe" isn't so easy defined as being positive; more like the way you interact feels "natural" and doesn't lead to negative emotions.

In a startup, lots of mistakes will be made. A team with the right vibe knows and acknowledges this, but focuses on fixing the problems rather than finger pointing.

In that sense, "vibe" is not inherent to the individual, but I like to think of it as "we're on the same wavelength" when it comes to key things. So it really means "does this person fit with this team and this mission?" -- "vibes" sums that up for me.

As nineplay@ remarked elsewhere, "there's a nauseating bias here against people who've had horrific childhoods".

Unethical is one thing, neuroticism should not be a disqualifier from decent employment.

neuroticism, no. asocial or antisocial behavior, yes.

Asocial? I guess autistic people are out!

I assume you’re young: there are many reasons people might be perfectly good at a job but not want to socialize with those people, or any other people.

This whole thread makes me sad as an unemployed autistic person. HN folks are horrible hiring managers!

Edit: and now downvoted for showing you losers that your personal model of the world and the people in it might be lacking; fuck vc tech bros.

I suspect you may be interpreting this a bit too broadly, and it's obviously personal for you. Part of work is, nearly invariably, social.

Not wanting to get Friday beers with the team shouldn't really be a factor.

Not being able to communicate smoothly and effectively with them in a work context absolutely is.

I suspect the poster you are responding to is focusing on the latter, and you on the former.

That’s a good insight there, thanks

Then there are some of us for whom this smooth communication is a huge challenge. We spend a lot of time and energy masking, trying to fake the perfect vibe (and failing of course, because the result is predictably unnatural), but this is a necessary survival tactic.

This is why all the talk of valuing neurodiversity is BS. The leaders want an autistic savant without the autistic part. Playing one is exhausting and can never be done perfectly.

The problem as I see it is that people tend to see communication issues as a character flaw. They don't think it's a handicap like poor vision or a broken leg, but must stem from laziness or worse.

Thanks for writing it in a clearer way than I could write it.

I sometimes long for a set of different drugs that people could take that would impair their brain/body for a short time in a similar way to how people experience the world as someone with autism or adhd or whatever else. I am sure that would be a somewhat "bad" idea, but I think it could also be a help in some cases. I'm autistic myself and it took me years of learning about autism and watching my autistic child before I really grokked how much of an impairment it has been for me in my life. That I am an old man with a relatively decent life and financial position for an American is a miracle, honestly, based on what I know now. I definitely had my Swiss cheese holes line up (in a good way this time) for me to be able to sail through the cheese of life this easily so far! I am not sure I can maintain that luck now, though.

I get that, really I do.

Depending on the team and project , those challenges balanced against the pluses may mean that it’s worth doing anyway , or equally they may mean that it is not. It can be exhausting for the other people involved also.

I agree that anyone treating it as a character flaw is problematic and unlikely to result in effective mitigations. There also aren’t always effective mitigations , this stuff is all pretty context dependent .

i'm mid-late 30s and neurodivergent myself.

i think you're not helping your case by this comment itself being antisocial.

my use of "asocial" was specifically the very common connotation attached to it of being hostile or inconsiderate which are the exact words used when you google its definition

It’s not about disqualification. We aren’t considering who we have to legally hire. We are thinking about what makes for great hires. Given the choice between neuroticism or no, why choose neuroticism?

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