Hire a fool, hire a jerk - who gives a damn if he can do the job?
Something that has impressed me in the worst possible way is this nation's preoccupation with what can only be called 'getalongness'. So long as everyone likes each other, so long as everyone gets along with each other, so long as everyone feels part of the team (no matter how utterly incompetent any given part of the team is), American employers would rather hire the getalong guy rather than the guy who knows how to get the job done.
"Despite a labor shortage in many sectors, some employers are pickier than ever about whom they hire. Businesses in fields where jobs are highly coveted -- or just sound like fun -- are stepping up efforts to weed out people who might have the right credentials but the wrong personality. Call it the "plays well with others" factor." (Link)
So. In order to please the idiots you've already hired - and who that works doesn't realise that most of his co-workers are idiots - you're going to hire yet more idiots, so that the idiots who presently work for you can continue to under-produce, rip you off, and generally fuck up your business, without feeling unhappy and so produce even less, rip you off to ever greater degrees, and fuck your business with an even greater sense of self-satisfied injustice than they already experience.
You people are incomparable imbeciles, and you deserve the utter destruction of everything you profess to believe in that's headed your way.
Tell me something, you unspeakable dumbasses, which is more important? That your co-workers like everyone they work with, or that those who work in your business are competent, reliable, and able to produce within deadlines - no matter how abrasive or 'unsuitable' their pesonalities happen to be?
"With the national unemployment rate low, at 4.7 percent, and the Baby Boom generation heading into retirement, employers from Microsoft Corp. to rural hospitals are worrying about finding enough workers. But companies like Rackspace Managed Hosting are bucking that trend, working hard to find reasons to turn people away. Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier said, "We'd rather miss a good one than hire a bad one."
We'd rather miss a good one than hire a bad one. What constitutes a 'bad one'? The kind of innovative, controversial, chance-taking thinking that used to typify American self-confidence, American industry, and American power. Not any more. Now, you're all so scared of causing offence that you'd rather accept second- or third-best choices, so long as they are uncontroversial and palatable to all, then pick the best and the brightest and most talented; just so long as no one in 'the team' feels uncomfortable.
Fuck the team.
"There's a possible downside, however. In a Harvard Business Review article titled "Fool vs. Jerk: Whom Would You Hire?" Tiziana Casciaro of Harvard and Miguel Sousa Lobo of Duke University point out that people generally like people who are similar to them, so hiring for congeniality can limit diversity of opinions. One venture capitalist told the authors that a capable manager he worked with built a team that "had a great time going out for a beer, but the quality of their work was seriously compromised."
Business is a social activity - but not a social club. Conflict, difference, spark original thinking and creativity - the kind of creativity for which Americans were once famous. Not anymore. No, now you pass the future of this country over to your competitors hand over fist - because you piss your pants whenever difficult decisions that involve choosing one option and rejecting another rear their ugly heads. God forbid you actually risk offending someone.
By all means, molly-coddle yourselves to destruction because you can't tolerate the idea that those who innovate and create productive and profitable change may not fit into your precious whitebread conceptions of what's acceptable. And meanwhile the rest of the world will laugh its ass off at you - laugh all the way to the bank.
You've became a nation of cowards and incompetents, and you don't even know it.