Confessions of an IT Manager_Phil Factor

Section IV: Hiring, Firing and other acts of Villainy 205
Time was against Fred and his ilk. An era that flattered itself to be 'inclusive'
soon weeded out the eccentrics from corporate IT departments. I believe that
with them went the creative spark and intrinsic stubbornness that is so vital to
development work. One persistent myth in the IT industry is that, in
development work, we need team players, not mavericks. It depends on what
the team is doing. Harmony is fine for picnics and team-bonding exercises, but
is not necessarily the precursor to productivity. The best development teams
I've worked on embraced the whole gamut of humanity – a wild mix of
cultures, sexuality, motivation, age and beliefs, spiced with maverick spirits
and eccentrics. The result being that everyone was jolted out of their
complacency, both professionally and personally, and learned to challenge
assumptions rather than accept them. The trick is to harness the resulting
energy and to share out the task to match each person's skills and temperament.
Nevertheless, 'Human Resources' practitioners persist in many enterprises,
with their 'personality' screening. This is an evil practice. Many will have
experienced job interviews for a technical role where one is required to engage
in 'role play', or is asked silly questions like 'if you were an animal, which
animal would you like to be', and so on. Any trained and qualified psychologist
will tell you that the tests are bunkum, culled from Girlie magazines. Even
voluntary, properly administered personality tests, validated on large
populations, and given in un-stressful settings, are notoriously unreliable. When
they suddenly pop up in an interview, without prior consent, and the candidate
has to give the 'right' answer when a potential job is at stake, they are a gross
impertinence, and probably illegal.
So cast a look around any IT development team. Typically, they will be all
of about the same age, usually all-male, with very similar backgrounds and
education. All good team players, supportive and wholesome, I'd guess. All
well and good, but I've been privileged to meet quite a few of the people who
made the great leaps forward in programming, and I suspect that the ones I've
met would have got weeded out by the modern interview process. Nowadays,
in this world of team players and well-adjusted, politically appropriate,
vegetarian programmers, the idea of the wild and the eccentric in the midst of
development activities would strike terror into many hearts.