Excellent points. I would extend this to people interviewing for positions as well. One of the worst bosses I ever had threw up all these red flags in the interview, constantly complaining about how dumb the two people working for her were, how stupid the clients were, blah blah. I ignored it because the job sounded interesting, and anyway she was hiring me to manage the people for her.
Well, between accepting the job and starting, those two people quit (during the spring of 2020 when everything was locked down no less) and I offered my resignation letter some 9 months later. I learned that day that if someone does nothing but complain, the problem is likely them.
Not that some jobs or organizations are not truly FUBAR, but as you say, it is a big warning sign.
I am skeptical of your ability to distinguish "disgruntled" from "serene" in an interview.
There has be a _lot_ of research on personnel selection over the last 50+ years. A very consistent finding is that unstructured interviews are not a good predictor of performance. And it hasn't changed over time. Google disclosed a couple of years ago that their (in)famous interview questions didn't actually produce better results.
Given this, I think you should have a default prior similar to your "Null Hypothesis" in education.
One of the corollary findings in the interview literature is that the interviewer's perception of their interviewing effectiveness is, at best, not correlated with actual interviewing effectiveness. In fact, one of the best predictors of an interviewer's perception of a candidate is how much the _interviewer_ talks during the interviewer. And it's a positive, not negative correlation.
I stipulate that your distinction between "disgruntled" and "serene" makes sense. My objection is to the claim that your interview suggestions are likely to prove effective.
I worked for a research organization and I was always perplexed by how the proposal process went. It was next to impossible to get anything funded unless you convinced the evaluators and decision makers you already had the answer. Of course you rarely do even if there are thing(s) you want to try but getting funding depended on telling a story that convinced them you had the answer.
I see your framing much the same way. In moderately well-run organizations, most operational problems are problems because there aren't ready off-the-shelf answers. Most employees, especially those with no managerial training or experience are hard-pressed to come up with managerial solutions. That shouldn't mean a sincere effort to identify weaknesses isn't appropriate or useful.
And sometimes people certain they have the answers are the most destructive.
Dr. Kling, you may not have intended so, but this is one of the better arguments against wokeness, or at least intersectionality, which is entirely based on the assumption that members of favored groups can do no wrong deserving of criticism, and therefore anyone who questions them is just being a bigot or bully.
And this may very well cause your well-thought-out advice to backfire. Because an organization that refuses to hire those you call "disgruntled" will end up with very little "diversity" in its workforce, making it a likely target for misguided and undeserved civil rights enforcement actions.
I think this essay is phenomenal advice for small business and smallish units of larger businesses and I don't want to overly psychologize the disgruntled and the detractors and destroyers of institutional assabiyah, but it is in their temperament, which is a function of their DNA anywhere from 30 to 60 percent. Also, it seems that disgruntled is kind of vague if we are heading in to psychological territory.
Using the assumptions of Hanania and the at least clearly partially true male versus female divide and shift in norms, rules, customs was the problem of the past the disgruntled male employee, which could be elevation in grandiose narcissism or psychopathy? Is the problem of the present and possibly the future a different type of disgruntled employee, the vulnerable narcissist, which from the evidence seems to be a much higher problem with disgruntled females. And in the end the real question is how easily are these people weeded out in interviews? Are they as easily spotted and revealing of themselves?
Relatedly, Ted Gioia had a recent Substack post where he mentioned a firm that as part of their interview process, would take candidates out to lunch and introduce some sort of intentional problem. The goal was to avoid hiring candidates who both over and under-reacted to the problem. The former were presumed to lack the serenity to accept what can’t be changed and the latter to lack the courage to act on that which can be.
It’s interesting to apply this to political discourse. View the United States as employer, the citizens as employees. What percent of the electorate is “serene”? What percent “disgruntled?”
I would guess that the serene:disgruntled ratio of Substack readers runs quite a bit higher than that of the Twitter users.
I am in agreement with your suggestions. I am often surprised by the low quality of the interview process. Sometimes interviewers ask too many questions that reveal little about the applicant. The ability to identify job candidates with a reasonably good chance of being successful (via interviews, reading resumes, etc.) is a very valuable skill, yet often under appreciated, in my opinion
Excellent points. I would extend this to people interviewing for positions as well. One of the worst bosses I ever had threw up all these red flags in the interview, constantly complaining about how dumb the two people working for her were, how stupid the clients were, blah blah. I ignored it because the job sounded interesting, and anyway she was hiring me to manage the people for her.
Well, between accepting the job and starting, those two people quit (during the spring of 2020 when everything was locked down no less) and I offered my resignation letter some 9 months later. I learned that day that if someone does nothing but complain, the problem is likely them.
Not that some jobs or organizations are not truly FUBAR, but as you say, it is a big warning sign.
Is it okay to become disgruntled because you tried the constructive suggestion approach and no one listened? Asking for a friend.
I am skeptical of your ability to distinguish "disgruntled" from "serene" in an interview.
There has be a _lot_ of research on personnel selection over the last 50+ years. A very consistent finding is that unstructured interviews are not a good predictor of performance. And it hasn't changed over time. Google disclosed a couple of years ago that their (in)famous interview questions didn't actually produce better results.
Given this, I think you should have a default prior similar to your "Null Hypothesis" in education.
One of the corollary findings in the interview literature is that the interviewer's perception of their interviewing effectiveness is, at best, not correlated with actual interviewing effectiveness. In fact, one of the best predictors of an interviewer's perception of a candidate is how much the _interviewer_ talks during the interviewer. And it's a positive, not negative correlation.
I stipulate that your distinction between "disgruntled" and "serene" makes sense. My objection is to the claim that your interview suggestions are likely to prove effective.
I worked for a research organization and I was always perplexed by how the proposal process went. It was next to impossible to get anything funded unless you convinced the evaluators and decision makers you already had the answer. Of course you rarely do even if there are thing(s) you want to try but getting funding depended on telling a story that convinced them you had the answer.
I see your framing much the same way. In moderately well-run organizations, most operational problems are problems because there aren't ready off-the-shelf answers. Most employees, especially those with no managerial training or experience are hard-pressed to come up with managerial solutions. That shouldn't mean a sincere effort to identify weaknesses isn't appropriate or useful.
And sometimes people certain they have the answers are the most destructive.
Dr. Kling, you may not have intended so, but this is one of the better arguments against wokeness, or at least intersectionality, which is entirely based on the assumption that members of favored groups can do no wrong deserving of criticism, and therefore anyone who questions them is just being a bigot or bully.
And this may very well cause your well-thought-out advice to backfire. Because an organization that refuses to hire those you call "disgruntled" will end up with very little "diversity" in its workforce, making it a likely target for misguided and undeserved civil rights enforcement actions.
"It is in their temperament."
I think this essay is phenomenal advice for small business and smallish units of larger businesses and I don't want to overly psychologize the disgruntled and the detractors and destroyers of institutional assabiyah, but it is in their temperament, which is a function of their DNA anywhere from 30 to 60 percent. Also, it seems that disgruntled is kind of vague if we are heading in to psychological territory.
Using the assumptions of Hanania and the at least clearly partially true male versus female divide and shift in norms, rules, customs was the problem of the past the disgruntled male employee, which could be elevation in grandiose narcissism or psychopathy? Is the problem of the present and possibly the future a different type of disgruntled employee, the vulnerable narcissist, which from the evidence seems to be a much higher problem with disgruntled females. And in the end the real question is how easily are these people weeded out in interviews? Are they as easily spotted and revealing of themselves?
"Results showed that females scored significantly higher on vulnerable narcissism than males, but no gender differences were found for grandiose narcissism." - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343039617_Unmasking_gender_differences_in_narcissism_within_intimate_partner_violence_Accepted_version
Relatedly, Ted Gioia had a recent Substack post where he mentioned a firm that as part of their interview process, would take candidates out to lunch and introduce some sort of intentional problem. The goal was to avoid hiring candidates who both over and under-reacted to the problem. The former were presumed to lack the serenity to accept what can’t be changed and the latter to lack the courage to act on that which can be.
Useful concept.
It’s interesting to apply this to political discourse. View the United States as employer, the citizens as employees. What percent of the electorate is “serene”? What percent “disgruntled?”
I would guess that the serene:disgruntled ratio of Substack readers runs quite a bit higher than that of the Twitter users.
Seems relevant to a disgruntled political party. :)
I am in agreement with your suggestions. I am often surprised by the low quality of the interview process. Sometimes interviewers ask too many questions that reveal little about the applicant. The ability to identify job candidates with a reasonably good chance of being successful (via interviews, reading resumes, etc.) is a very valuable skill, yet often under appreciated, in my opinion