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by e3b0c 2694 days ago
I recently realized that there are roughly two kinds of people, namely people who are good at symbolic/abstract ideas and people who are good at real/physical/touchable things, which can be considered orthogonal to the extrovert/introvert categorization. For a software engineering team, I find it tends to be suboptimal to have a physical-thinking oriented manager who dislikes abstract, symbolic notions, even though they are brilliant and would probably a good fit for say electrical or mechanical engineering teams.

My sampling space isn't large enough, but it's interesting to keep an eye on the personalities of the managers in your organization from that perspective.
4 comments
Rapzid 2694 days ago
In my experience there are two kinds of people; those who are good at many different things, and those who believe there are roughly two kinds of people.

I mean that only half jokingly. One of the reasons I like to work at smaller organizations these days is the pervasive belief in larger orgs that somebody has to fall into one of two categories. This is often rationalized as a way to identify strengths, however more often than not IMHO it's due to insecurity in ones own deficits.

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bpchaps 2694 days ago
You might find this interesting -http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2010/08/analysis-vs-algebra-pre...
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jghn 2694 days ago
This is interesting. I self-identify in the symbolic/abstract side of things and really struggle with how difficult it is when dealing with the real/physical/touchable camp. I've especially struggled with superiors who are in the latter group which tracks with what you say here. And as another point of anecdata I've personally been meandering my way into the leadership/management turf over recent years.
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watwut 2694 days ago
Yeah, I noticed that if I want to be perceived as good in x I often have to pretend that I am bad at y.

In reality, you can be good at both and like both and switch between them. You might have a preference and still be reasonably good at both. You might decide one is weakness and put effort into learning it overcoming initial dislike.

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