> I really do believe that social "skills" can't be
> learned, at least not well.
Well, I believe they can, but that's not the point. Being a social butterfly or socially inept doesn't matter here.
I have a customer-facing development position. I'm not the front-line of communication, but I am expected to answer the phone if I have to (esp. if it's a client), be polite, and not drive business away. That's really the all of it. I'm not expected to sell, or to cold-call anyone, but essentially the duties are: don't be a jerk.
If you survived an interview you're probably socially aware enough to handle this.
Exactly, I don't think anybody expects everyone in the company to spend a ton of effort on being something they're not, but I do think it's reasonable to expect that employees to treat customers respectfully.
Customers and other employees. My employer (which doesn't expose customers to engineering, or vice versa) has a "no assholes" policy and it works fantastically. It seems very much that we'd honestly rather not hire someone than hire a social problem, and it's one of my favorite things about working here.
The other thing is that social skills can be learned... just like tech skills can be learned. No-one is born understanding Lisp, but you can learn to use it by applying effort. For techies, effort in learning a tech skill is "fun", so they forget that they had to work for it. But yes, all skills have to be learned.
Comments
I have a customer-facing development position. I'm not the front-line of communication, but I am expected to answer the phone if I have to (esp. if it's a client), be polite, and not drive business away. That's really the all of it. I'm not expected to sell, or to cold-call anyone, but essentially the duties are: don't be a jerk.
If you survived an interview you're probably socially aware enough to handle this.
Exactly, I don't think anybody expects everyone in the company to spend a ton of effort on being something they're not, but I do think it's reasonable to expect that employees to treat customers respectfully.
Customers and other employees. My employer (which doesn't expose customers to engineering, or vice versa) has a "no assholes" policy and it works fantastically. It seems very much that we'd honestly rather not hire someone than hire a social problem, and it's one of my favorite things about working here.
The other thing is that social skills can be learned... just like tech skills can be learned. No-one is born understanding Lisp, but you can learn to use it by applying effort. For techies, effort in learning a tech skill is "fun", so they forget that they had to work for it. But yes, all skills have to be learned.