Who's On Top? Asskickers...That's Who

I read this headline from the WSJ and I knew it was going to be absurd. Since when does being a rockstar at work equate to a bad thing?! Apparently you're not supposed to win?

...co-workers may possess a dose of one of the personality traits that psychologists call the "dark triad": manipulativeness, a tendency to influence others for selfish gain; narcissism, a profound self-centeredness; or an antisocial personality, lacking in empathy or concern for others.

People with dark traits are often attractive job candidates because they display charm, assertiveness and apparent leadership ability, the research review says. Researchers believe narcissists tend to do well in training programs because they want to be seen at their best.

 

"Renee LeBouef cuts short any co-workers' attempts to gossip with her since an experience with a Machiavellian manager on a previous job undermined her relationships at the office."

Get off your high horse lady. They're just trying to make conversation, not start office anarchy. But in the event they were, that would make for a great TV show.

 

Damn. You know you really made it in life when you feel semi-professional cause you read the WSJ articles people are posting about.

On-topic, people really need to start rigorously studying this area of psychology/sociology; that is to say, it seems we haven't really grasped an understanding of all the different personality types and how they interact in various environments. It appears to me, and this is anecdotal, that psychologists don't want to ask the hard questions about what makes us different... Why some people are the Littlefingers and others and the Ned Starks, and who on average makes more money or has more friends/relationships.

This article is case-in-point, because everyone here understands and can relate to having interacted with these types of people, and indeed most people on here probably display those characteristics quite often at work. This is nothing new, this is basically just saying that people sometimes control and direct social interactions to get what they want. I just wish researchers could look into this area of study, as it seems it could be groundbreaking as well as actually have palpable benefits for the average citizen.

"I did it for me...I liked it...I was good at it. And I was really... I was alive."
 

Life is tough but its tougher if you're stupid.

Basically there are the people who understand the game and those who don't even know there is a game to play. Of course they are going to hate on you for success.

What else do they have?

 
Best Response

Best to not understand and not play the game all that much and still be successful.

Study Engineering, CS, or maybe medicine/life sciences, kids. Aim to get good enough at building or creating stuff that you get far enough up on the utility curve that you don't really need to game the system to be happy.

You don't see doctors or programmers needing to manipulate people to make money (Facebook mood studies and chiropractic adjustments aside). I don't really have a strong opinion about manipulating people, but if you don't like it, there's ways to make money where the game really isn't played because people are too busy working.

Find a role where the base entry level pay already starts very high and entry into the field is based entirely off of competencies. Then develop a reputation for getting stuff done and having good ideas to move up. 80% of that is hard work and competence; 20% is politics, which does involve some of those "skills" in careful moderation.

You can spend all day figuring out how to split the pie, or you can just make it bigger for everyone, ensuring in the process that you get the majority (not necessarily all) of the piece you create. You tend to notice that the people who focus on just making the pie bigger tend to need to network and politic less for the same pay and probably about the same effort.

 
IlliniProgrammer:

You don't see doctors or programmers needing to manipulate people to make money

From what I have heard from friends, doctor's residency training program has far more office politics and manipulations going on than banking. And programmers? Just look at the back office IT managers at your bank or fund. How many of them got there by being good at programming? And how many of them by knowing how to manipulate people?

I would argue that banking is far more meritocratic than medical residency training program and back office IT.

 

Most of them got there with a CS degree and the ability to program.

My first boss (internship) was an excellent C++ developer. He also raced cars up at Villa Grove, IL.

My second boss wrote the system I worked on. He understood politics but was also a good developer.

My third boss wrote the system I worked on. He was one of the most productive and prolific coders on Wall Street. He developed a system with a distributed cache, 60 analytics screens (complete with everything from the pricing and risk models to the front end UI) in two years.

My current boss has a Finance PhD and is one of the smartest people I know.

You maybe move up by manipulating people to some extent, but the price of entry on the competence front is high enough that people who are 2-3 times as good at politics as they are at getting stuff done just don't show up as often in a well run front office technology organization.

You sometimes see politics when it comes to BAs and RTB. You see it less on the development side.

Let's not breed cynicism. If you're a smart, hardworking developer, you will join an organization where your boss is at a certain level of competency and largely leads by example and by getting stuff done and expecting his employees to keep up with him. That was my experience in Quant Analytics. We didn't have the time or energy for politics because we were too busy making changes to the bond pricer to accommodate new features. Furthermore, competent developers often get to make broad choices over which managers they work for or with.

 

Acting deliberately gets a bad rep and is often coined as manipulative. The same traits, actions and abilities required to be successful are true everywhere. It was actually one of the selling points for me on choosing CS, I would emphasize it was only one of the selling points. Why bat against Randy Johnson when you can set up a tee ball.

 

I don't think you need to understand finance the way the average WSO reader would understand that to mean. You need to understand compound interest, coding, and a little math. Maybe also the product you are pricing. Your job basically looks like a tech developer's except for the fact that you are working with Monte Carlo simulations or some better defined pricing model and input shocks while they are working with map-reduce or PATRICIA trees. You're both building and supporting code that helps the business.

There's a lot of politics in Run-The-Bank and desktop support. They're not expected to code. I would argue you may be able to land a support job at Citi with a psychology degree and a MIS minor. (However there are a lot of smart competent people there who take pride in their work. My point is just that the hurdle for entry and the job requirements are less technical in support than development.)

For a development role at a bank- where you are writing code every day- be it Quant Analytics or trade clearing or electronic trading- there's a certain skill set required of employees and managers that tends to crowd out the other skillsets that you might otherwise have room for in your brain.

I would just argue that having been in IT for two years (as part of quant analytics), my experience was more representative of a general developer role in IT than you would think. We had to deal with the same regulatory stuff from the CIO's office to do a release. We also tended to be the first phone call from the trader in the informal support structure that existed when something broke, regardless of tickets. People respect you for your competence and ability to fix or make stuff, and they are your friends because you are a nice and reasonably genuine person. People who try to over complicate things are really playing with fire when you're dealing with a lot of very smart perceptive people who didn't enjoy jr high very much and prefer to just keep things simple. That's the complexity of politics in the tech world.

 

I have been programming for a few years, and this summer, I have started as an analyst in a small PE. I completely agree with your (illiniProgrammer) observations. Just the other day I was talking very similar topic with my friends when they asked me how am I liking finance world.

I agree that there are politics in IT as well but at the end of the day a guy with better design will win even if he does not speak a word. In IT, you build solutions for longer term use and you want to come up with better designs and coding styles to make your (and your teammates) life easier. So who ever makes this happen wins regardless of politics.

My finance experience is very limited so my observations might not reflect in a broader way but I find the politics here are so annoying. you want to ass kiss people around you and esp your boss to get ahead or whatever. People who project confidence (either fake or real) regardless the guy knows the stuff would be perceived as a go getter..etc..to me this is a world of change.

The transition is going to be tougher than I thought, based on my last 8 weeks experience.

My 2 cents.

 

there are levels of skill and work ethic that are pre-reqs in every job, but after that don't kid yourself politics are everywhere. I say this as someone who considers myself very good at politics and someone who used to say "I want to get a job with no politics". There is no job without politics and if you want to get to a position where you can make a lot of money on wall st standards then you will have to be good at playing that game. The thing is that until you pass the initial level of the business (ie when ur under 27ish) then you really shouldn't worry about it because you still haven't passed the initial test of can you work hard and are you of decent intelligence...but later on yes it is big.

To pre-empt IlliniProgrammer this is not true if you just want to have a decent job that allows you to hang glide on the weekends and please let us not get into a debate about whether it is better to make a lot of money or go hang gliding.

 

The point is that the skill prereqs for finance are fairly low while the skill prereqs in many other fields are higher.

You can make more money as a cardiologist than you can as a regional manager for a McDonald's franchise. So your career is a function of many variables and you can have an extremely successful career without needing to worry about politics.

 

I'd qualify your statement. Other high paying fields may be more meritocratic based on your skills and between the two I think CS for example is a lot easier to be successful in because your relative competition is lower. Banking you are always up against Ivy educated people willing to put in 90hr weeks and play the game.

Its a lot easier to stand out when your colleagues view 50-55hr weeks as torturous, have a diverse background regarding education, especially when many lack some social skills or other aspects of "the game".

 

Fair enough. I can only speak for tech. I do argue that transparency promotes meritocracy and limits the value of politics. I think the trend is more transparency rather than less transparency, and with Medicare now publishing costs and outcomes, it seems like patients will have more control over which specialist they see (health insurer permitting).

 

there are plenty of politics in medicine I am sure, but I want to be clear what I am talking about...I work in a results oriented business and without the results in black and white the politics don't matter. The results are the pre-requisite and don't even bother thinking about politics without the ability to deliver real, hard results. But politics are a very subtle thing...it isn't Frank Underwood in House of Cards killing people...in the real world its more like when to push your advantage and move for career advancement, when to lay low, when to be a team player and when to be an asshole, what makes people above you tick, what makes them deeply insecure, what makes others work for you, etc. There are plenty of great traders, bankers, programmers, and yes even heart surgeons out there but there is still always going to be one Chief and a bunch of Indians at any given time and eventually if you aspire to be a "chief" you will have to navigate these waters. Most of this stuff comes naturally or it doesn't., but eventually one becomes cognizant that it can add or subtract 0's from the end of your net worth over your career. At a young age one doesnt even need to be thinking about this stuff though, because as mentioned above the first thing is to be a true value-add...as a junior person your politics is to work your ass off and let everyone know that you are trying to help them make money. I guess if there is one tip that can be used at a young age it is never act out of emotion and rather always act purposefully and in your interests....there is nothing more immature and weak that lashing out because of an emotional issue. That is always true at any age.

 

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