[od2m]

Yep, the truly brilliant folks are very bad at social skills / marketing themselves. They're usually introverts so although they're making critical contributions THEY'RE NOT RUNNING AROUND TELLING EVERYONE HOW GREAT THEY ARE.

Generally if someone is telling me how great they are, I assume they're not.

[enneff]

This is not true in my experience. Do you have any data to back this up? Seems like a bit of a poke in the eye to those of us that do a great job and have social skills.

[chimeracoder]

> Do you have any data to back this up?

Yeah, I would be skeptical of any claim that conflates introversion, being humble, and having bad social skills, which are three completely different topics.

[product50]

Usually the truly brilliant are good at both - social skills and their work.

Also, if an employee is really really good, they will not make the negative curve of the graph. It is normally the fringe players who are (unfairly) impacted.

[ahomescu1]

Brilliant people are often recognized as such and don't need self-promotion. I think GP was referring to good-but-not-brilliant people (which I think there are plenty of).

[jhspaybar]

Is there research to this stereotype of "smart people are introverts"? Especially in highly collaborative environments like software engineering. Being an introvert and an asshole seems completely opposite to asking for, receiving, and giving help. My experience tells me this is bad in the environment we work in...

[od2m]

First of all, introverts are not "assholes" -- they're just different. About one quarter of the population are introverts but about half of all "gifted" people are introverts. Most introverts learn to cope in an extrovert world by becoming "actors" -- learning how to interact with extroverts -- but some do not.

Introverts have physically different brain organizations and may grasp for words at times. They tend to dislike self promotion -- they perceive it as fake, and also dislike having attention drawn to them. They generally think a lot and say very little. They tend to focus on details quite a bit.

Introversion isn't a single dimensional thing, it's a cluster of dozens of tendencies brought about by this alternate brain organization.

Source: The Introvert Advantage (book).

[philwelch]

Are you trolling?