Hacker News Reader

Comment by ternnoburn | Hacker News Reader

This author is deeply deeply misunderstanding other humans. They are applying a "it worked for me, therefore it works for all" mentality. And worse yet, coming to the wrong conclusions.

You do not need to be an extrovert at work to get ahead. Full stop.

Does it help in some ways? Sure, but you can be equally successful as an introvert as long as you are able to communicate clearly when needs demand it. Plenty of excellent engineers speak to almost no one, but write excellently.

I've been in this industry for decades, I'm extremely introverted (autistic), I make 750k+ a year and run large projects. I never once "went extroverted at work".

View on HN

This whole introvert/extrovert label drives me a little crazy, just like almost anything that attempts to put people into boxes.

Humanity really needs to get past this foolish notion that things are black and white instead of the real shades of grey.

I probably straddle the line of introvert/extrovert. People tire me out, and I recharge in solitude like an introvert, but I'm also quite gregarious, and need to be around people getting a regular fix. I could never work solo on anything. I couldn't cope in a role that doesn't involve at least a handful of meetings a week (though they have to be legitimate, because I hate wasting my time in meetings and get easily bored in them).

I'm probably close to what OP was talking about, and it has certainly been integral to my progression to staff engineer, but like you I disagree with the premise that you need to be particular ways to make progress in your career.

While all of the staff engineers I work with operate at the same kind of level, I'm surrounded by staff and staff+ engineers of every stripe. From extremely introverted specialists in particular fields, all the way to extreme extroverts focusing on cross org collaboration and consensus, and every possible combination of behavior in between. That diversity is essential to our effectiveness.

The introvert/extrovert concept was developed by Carl Jung and is both a continuum, and is logical and clearly defined. It also is just one dimension of limitless ones that can describe a persons personality. Yours and most other criticisms of the concept apply to popular misunderstandings of the idea, but not the original concept itself.

Like you I am an introvert that is very social and friendly, enjoys social interaction, and does not have much social anxiety… but too much social interaction is exhausting to me, and requires me to recharge. People tend to confuse introversion with social anxiety and antisocial attitudes which are both distinctly different.

Are you not generalising in the same way? Because you are introverted and successful, does that mean extroversion is bad advice for all?

He is providing a counter example, which is not the same as generalising.

I agree with you, but how do you know to use “he”?

Amusingly, "he" is incorrect! You are right to call this out.

Apart from the line "does it help in some ways, sure" the overall message of their post is that the author is wrong and that you can be equally successful without being sociable, which is a general statement.

It's not really supported by the anecdata that OP is a skilled, unsociable, successful person. That only tells us that this person, in their particular line of work, with their particular set of skills, can be successful. It also doesn't consider whether a version of them that was more sociable would be more successful.

That an introvert can be successful is a generally true statement if at least one introvert is successful.

Given parent is an introvert and succesful the statement is true.

Yeah but the statement in question is (quote) "you can be EQUALLY successful as an introvert" - and we're talking about whether people should, generally, strive to be more extroverted at work. That there exists a successful introvert is not in question and isn't a good criticism of the article to me.

Equally to what?

The maximum success of extroverts or the average or the mean?

What exactly is meant by succesful? What's the measure?

Is it really not clear from context? "If introverts made an effort to be more extroverted, would it make them more successful?" Success I don't know what OP meant, but pay, seniority, I don't know that it changes the answer much.

By that logic there exist introverts who are more successful than extroverts.

If they become more successful if they act against their self is questionable, like asking straight people to become a little more gay or vice versa.

I think you've compensated by becoming excellent. That's not necessarily an option for others?

Don't see how this discredits the article. Making 1M a year as an autistic person might just mean you're a good trader that requires 0 human interaction. Says nothing about anything really.

I'm a manager of an engineering team.

Success is about the skills, contributions and value you bring to the table, not about how much you talk

This sounds naive. Most companies have some degree of 'politics' which is essentially people working in their own interests over the company's. This is somewhat unrelated to skills and value.

Also particularly in large organisations, work is not a perfect information game - there is no easy way to assign a fair / public a "value" to people to let you compare two employees. Most people will need to sell themselves or have other people sell them to get noticed, and some degree of social bonding can go a long way with this.

> Most companies have some degree of 'politics' which is essentially people working in their own interests over the company's. This is somewhat unrelated to skills and value.

as someone else put it: there are sides in office politics, and by choosing not to play you are picking a side by default, which is often the losing side.

"you can't be neutral on a moving train"

I think that depends on the company and the circumstances it finds itself in. Office politics can be more complex than what you are describing.

I didn’t mean to dismiss the importance of advocating for yourself or building relationships. My comment was more about the foundation of success

I think career success is purely whether people like you or not.

Your skills and contributions don't matter at all as long as they are not so bad that people absolutely can not ignore it. Companies are mostly build on diffusing individual responsibility. Even if you majorly mess up as long as the right people like you you will be fine.

Doesn't mean one needs to be an extrovert. Just have good social skills in general. It really depends on what your superiors prefer and the general company culture. Sometimes being quiet and not sticking out can be an asset as well. Sometimes people will like you because you have (or pretend to have) deep technical knowledge, sometimes they will hate you because you make them feel inferior and it is better to play dumb. Know your audience.

I think this is wrong. Career success comes from providing value to people (who have power over you). Getting them to like you is the easiest but not only way.

Isn't being liked by someone and providing value to someone basically the same? At least in a corporate context, a healthy way to think about this stuff this way in your private life.

I only examples I can think of where you are valued but not liked is maybe when you are valued as a scapegoat or something, like abusive stuff but generally being liked and providing value should be ideally be the same.

Of course you can be liked for different aspects, be it for performing well and so making your superiors look good to being a yes-man who validates their ideas or plainly being quiet and low maintenance. Depends on who is managing you.

You could be valued in the sense of you get the job done competently, but not liked in the sense of not being friends (being actively disliked is a bit different and that is dedinitely a problem).

I think skills and contributions may not guarantee success on their own, but they provide the foundation for building credibility and trust

If you don't mind my asking, what do you do?

Manage an engineering team

They are applying a "it worked for me, therefore it works for all" mentality.

And then you do the same thing in the next line...

no, they are applying the "I found one counterexample therefore the whole message must be incorrect for the general population". A distant relative of the semantic argument: "the sky is blue", "nuh-uh, not all skies are blue. once there was an atmospheric event, and the sky was a color other than blue. hence you are wrong..."

That's not what they did at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com