[hueving]

If that's what it takes to get a job as an engineer at the big companies, it's not particularly surprising that the quality of their engineers has declined as they've grown.

The skills of a con artist are not related to the ability to build good systems.

[magicalist]

>> learn how to have a conversation

> The skills of a con artist are not related to the ability to build good systems.

lol.

Communication is about moving information through someone's senses and into a model constructed in their head. If you can't effectively communicate about yourself, the interviewer is going to make more inferences about you and may focus on areas that aren't your strengths while not even knowing to ask about strengths you think are very relevant.

It would be great if they could just sense your innate value through your aura, but it's not going to work. Being able to talk about yourself may feel uncomfortable or like self-aggrandizement, but that's actually a great reason to practice it. The interviewer wants to learn about you but also has a bunch of other explicit and implicit goals (get through the interview questions, to not be incredibly bored, etc), so there's no reason not to do a good job at honestly telling them about yourself.

[dvtv75]

Drawing a conclusion from this, if a person has a disability that leads them to being unable to interact until they understand the nature (rules) of the person or group around them, then they're more-or-less screwed in an interview situation.

That does explain a few things. I am REALLY good at my job, and after working a job for a couple of years I become very good because of my disability, yet the same disability means I don't know how to interact with people so I interview poorly.

I don't know how to talk to people I haven't met and just doing it for practise isn't the way to learn. I really can't spare the 10 or 15 years it would take.

Ultimately, when someone asks something that's unexpected, makes a claim that's false or incorrect, I just freeze up and can't actually respond. In daily conversation with people I know it's not a problem, but with strangers I have to stand back and wait until I have a grasp their sense of humor, how much they think of themselves, and so forth, before I can speak.

[mwfunk]

Good communication skills are certainly essential to being a con artist, but they are also essential to working with other people who are almost certainly going to be very different from them. If someone is incapable of explaining something to another person or discussing and agreeing on a course of action, that's somebody who probably doesn't know a fraction of what they think they know.

For every gregarious person who uses their communication skills to fake competence, there's at least one person who is convinced that they are a misunderstood genius, but their lack of supposedly BS communication skills has cursed them from ever being fully appreciated by the "normals" that they think they are better than. You don't want to be either one of those people, they are equally useless when working on hard problems.

[hueving]

Communication skills have nothing to do with blowing your own horn.

[alpha_squared]

Conversely, the skills to build good systems are not related to working effectively with others. There's probably a balance that needs to be struck, though they're also not mutually exclusive.

[dasil003]

> the skills to build good systems are not related to working effectively with others

Yes they are if you're talking about the types of systems that large companies have. It is in fact so difficult that I believe it's a considerable advantage to have scopes small enough to be manageable by a single engineer, but inherent complexity is often well beyond that, especially for very profitable business engines.

[dkersten]

There isn't a single work project that I've been part of in the last ten years where communication wasn't important. If you work with anybody else (and if you are writing software for other people to use the then you should be), then communication is extremely important to build good, effective and useful systems.

[tn135]

> The skills of a con artist are not related to the ability to build good systems.

I think it is very very rude of you to call it a skill of "con artist". I have seen teams with average individuals achieving lot more than several very intelligent people simply because together they worked lot more better. Any company who ignored the communication and personal skills of their engineers is bound to fail.

[hueving]

You're suggesting constantly practicing talking about yourself and highlighting your skills. Building confidence is exactly what a con(fidence) artist does.

I'd rather have engineers that can actually discuss technical problems rather than deliver smooth talk about how they are incredible.