The Kinds of Employees You Want to Hire | Hacker News Reader

The Kinds of Employees You Want to Hire

businessweek.com

27 pointscwan15 comments

I like how the author not so subtly compares the less self-driven employees to retarded people by saying they are like Forrest Gump.

Forest wins in the end so not sure that is such a great analogy :-)

He wins at the end because the movie is profoundly authoritarian and conservative: keep your mouth shut and do what you're told, and you will be rewarded.

Interesting point but totally not my interpretation of that story. I read it more like Explore the world, find a trusted partner, figure out who you are, and then just do you thing.

I would have liked to see a direct link to the research paper, and told more about it: name, release date, length, sponsor; especially since the whole article is based on it.

This might be it:

Judge, T. A. (2009). Core self-evaluations and work success.

Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 58-62.

http://www.ufstudies.net/tim/VITA/Judge-CSE.pdf

- but there are lots of similar papers linked from Judge's site. http://www.ufstudies.net/tim/VITA/

His work seems closely related to the concept of 'locus of control', a pretty well-studied area of psychology. People with an internal locus of control tend to be healther/more successful than those with an external locus of control.

Wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control

I've experienced plenty of different business and personal coaches, and probably the most important lesson (hat tip to Open Up Communication [1]) links into this article: "I create and choose the whole of my own reality".

Not just the stuff I can control. Not just the stuff I think about and want to create. The WHOLE of my life.

Of course, it makes no intellectual sense. And it's tempting to water it down into Stephen Covey's 'Circle of Influence'. But as a guiding principle it's awesomely powerful.

I go through life knowing that I can personally take responsibility for everything that happens to me. Which means I am empowered to change things, to make things happen, and to create exactly the life I want.

(Application of the principle is, of course, much more difficult. Still, even imperfectly applied, I see the results and I know I feel much better about my life than most of those around me.)

[1] http://www.openup.com.au/

"I create and choose the whole of my own reality".

This may be true, but it can't be known without massive self-awareness. I can only start off with that as a belief that may one day end up as knowledge from experience.

It's a good notion to use to test one's day to day experiences and see where they began internally to be manifested externally.

I suppose I intellectualize it a little like Pascal's Wager - I'll never know whether it's true or not, but when all things are weighted it's far better to believe than not.

Keep an open mind about God - beliefs will only block God out, or construe God in some pre-defined way. How does one keep an open mind? By not closing it.

To me, "God chooses your and its reality through you" is a better maxim to live by than "I create and choose the whole of my reality." Same thing actually, but in the latter it would be God saying the statement, rather than a person, or else a person very close to God.

"It is all futile" said Kind Solomon.

I am limited to choosing my reality to the extent that I can choose my dreams, which is basically impossible (unless lucid dreaming), but it is possible to choose the way one reacts to life events.

I guess my response to that is filtered because I don't believe in an interventionist God, but you make two good points.

Firstly, that an open mind (about anything - I made an analogy to Pascal's Wager but didn't introduce God into the discussion) is important. So often "I know" means "I say No" to possibility.

Secondly, I was initially inclined to think that giving God some agency in one's life defeats the initial argument I wanted to make about choice and power in life. On reflection, if you do believe in a God that can influence your reality, and believe you can communicate with her, then it's just another way of choosing dreams / goals and working to create them, and feeling like an important part of the whole universe.

Hm, and where am I on this scale?

I am pretty convinced that there are two types of events, those I can control and those I cannot control. I cannot control idiots in cars, so I cannot control if someone runs me over on my way to university, killing or crippling me, so I cannot control this change of my live.

However, I can certainly control that I get a good university degree and become a good developer and get to know people (even though this is always a hard internal struggling for some strongly introverted person like me).

But I guess, overall I agree with this article, which coincides with my basic principles (basically everything boiling down to: Failure is progress. Make things better or fail trying.), so yeah. With those remarks: good article :)

"I cannot control idiots in cars, so I cannot control if someone runs me over on my way to university, killing or crippling me..."

You can improve your dodging skills. Maybe play more Frogger. :)

Great - one more signal to fake in interviews. If enough interviewers believe that this is a discriminating sign (because they read it in businessweek), we have no choice but to flash it.

"history repeats itself, try and you'll succeed. never doubt that you're the one and you can have your dreaaams. you're the best... around..."

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