[TeMPOraL]

> It's never about what you can do.

> Always about who you know.

Sorry for a tangent to a tangent, but I keep hearing this being said all the time as something negative - even though it's obvious, natural, and how everyone says it should be. Some ways of promoting this arrangement include statements like:

- There's no "I" in "team"

- Team productivity matters more than individual productivity

- Most valuable employees are force multipliers for their team

- Being 2x multiplier for a team of 5+ beats being a 10x engineer

Etc.

How do people saying these things (and this is nearly everyone, it's the industry zeitgeist) think it works in practice? That you can skill up in being "a force multiplier for a team"? That you can grow your team multiplication factor from 1x to 2x to 3x to ... in isolation, and then slot yourself into any team to give them an instant bonus?

No, any kind of force multiplication is achieved through working relationships. The fuzzy stuff. Two people equally competent in their field and with equivalent EQ aren't freely swappable between the teams, because they don't have identical personalities, quirks and habits. Force multiplication involves people working together for some time, molding themselves to fit each other.

In the process, people working well together grow to know and like, or at least respect, each other. They become each other's "first on the list for X", or "example of how to do Y". Which is exactly how "it's about who you know" works in practice.

[NineStarPoint]

I think that the extent to what you say is true depends on who has hiring power. The farther removed from the actual team hiring decisions are made, the less someones ability to work effectively matters. If you can convince some MBAs you’re a 10X programmer, it may not matter than you’ve left behind a stream of teams that disliked working for you. If all hiring decisions are made by a team lead with no subject master expertise, you end up in a similar situation. It’s ultimately the case that it comes down to convincing the person who will hire you that you’ll act as you described, but in tons of companies the person you’re convincing isn’t actually the person who has the insight necessary to judge what you’ve said.

[oblio]

> How do people saying these things (and this is nearly everyone, it's the industry zeitgeist) think it works in practice?

They don't. Well, they think that about themselves personally, but otherwise, no, they don't really believe it en masse.

It's vranyo: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vranyo

[ryandrake]

Great vocabulary word, and perfect description of the activity. "Half-lies [...], told [...] as a fantasy, suppressing unpleasant parts of the truth.

I respect OP (TeMPOraL), he(?) has a long track record of great comments and insights on HN. I always look forward to his comments. But what he is describing is kind of a fantasy that we tell ourselves to get through the unpleasantness. Or more accurately, it's how the working world works in theory, but not in practice. "Team productivity" "Individual as force multiplier" these are phrases straight out of the employee handbook. It's how the company pretends career development works. And a lot of people believe it!

How it actually works is like High School. There are cliques. There are in-groups and out-groups. If you're part of the in-group, you're going places. Your individual performance sometimes matters, sometimes doesn't. Your actual teamwork and team accomplishments sometimes matter, sometimes don't. If you're in the out-group, nothing you do matters. You could be Ken Thompson but if you're not in the right clique, your career is going nowhere.

I've seen it almost everywhere I've worked. A low or medium performer manages to charm his way into the right clique, get liked by the right exec, and his career skyrockets, despite spotty actual work output. Despite their projects failing, despite their direct reports quitting. All the way up to Director level at FAANG--the sky is the limit. All because they got into the in-group and befriended the right people. I've seen top performers stagnate and quit out of frustration, because despite both great individual output and team success, the VP just didn't like the guy, and that was that. There's no way around it. I had a boss who picked favorites and villains. If you were the Golden Boy, you could do no wrong, and you were on track for promotion purely for being in her favor. If you were the unlucky villain, you could do no right and ended up just being a punching bag.

The actual corporate world in practice is nothing like the optimistic and egalitarian employee handbook. It's 80's High School again with jocks and cheerleaders and dweebs and losers.

[TeMPOraL]

> he(?)

Yes :).

> But what he is describing is kind of a fantasy that we tell ourselves to get through the unpleasantness. Or more accurately, it's how the working world works in theory, but not in practice.

I think I've failed to communicate clearly that I don't buy into the fantasy. I mostly agree with your description, though I think reality is somewhat better on average than High School. The "school dynamics" at workplace are moderated a bit, as the market adds a degree of back-pressure to which adults are more sensitive than teenagers - basically, someone has to do some things right at least some of the time, or else companies go under and people lose their livelihoods.

My point is that you (the generic you) can't at the same time extol teamwork, being a force multiplier, etc., and also complain that the working world is about "who you know" and not "what you do". Those are two sides of the same coin. Strong teamwork requires people to adjust to each other, and over time this does create an in-group of sorts. People learn to trust each other, and become "better than random" choices for each other for future opportunities.

If the professional world wants to double-down on humanity, team-building, collaboration, then it must also find a way to live with how the humane, social aspects actually work - people build relationships, webs of trust, and tend to favor those connections strongly, because they're the known quality, the variance-reducing, safe alternative to random outsiders. Conversely, if the professional world wants to double down on blind fairness as a principle, then it must stop with the "good team work > individual competence" mantra. I don't think you can have both - they're fundamentally opposed.

And personally, I haven't made up my mind on which perspective I prefer. (Or even my reasoning here is sound.)