if you are so obviously high-status that no one could possibly miss it, it may be both unnecessary and counterproductive to signal status, because this would let others conflate you with mid-status people (...) If you’re personally acquainted with the people around whom you attempt countersignaling, your previous signals (or other evidence to the effect that you are awesome) will already have accumulated. It’s not necessary to further prove yourself. (...) The trouble is that it’s easy to think one’s positive traits are so obvious that no one could miss them when really they aren’t. You are not as well known as you think you should be.
Maybe it’s just the not-so-much-socially-skilled me rediscovering the wheel here, but anyway, someone else may benefit from this little epiphany too: Humility is just another social tool, and if you are doing it wrong, you may hurt yourself. It is not as safe as it seems.
Here is when you should be humble:
(a) If your skills are measurable and low, so everyone else already knows you suck. If you admit it yourself, you save them the trouble of reminding you. You get a small bonus point for understanding your place in the ladder. Yeah, you will still be at the bottom of the ladder, but at least you will be kept alone, because you understand your place.
(b) If you skills are awesome, and everyone else around you already know this. (Make sure this is actually the case! Illusion of transparency, Dunning–Kruger effect, etc.) Then, being humble gets you a bonus point for demonstrating social skills by not hurting other people more than is necessary. But keep doing it only as long as other people demonstrate understanding that they are below you. When a potential competitor rises his head, don’t stay quiet, but destroy him. When he sufficiently shows that he learned his lesson, you may show some mercy again.
Here is when you should not be humble:
(c) If your skills are good, but most people have no way to know it, other than you demonstrating it or telling you have it. (Which is more often than you think!) In that case, if you say “well, I am not perfect”, and your equally- or less-skilled competitor says “luckily, I am”, you lose. You might think that people would notice your superior skills later, but that has a few problems. First, people remember their first impressions and usually don’t update. Also, there is the halo effect; if people believe that your competitor is great and you are mediocre, then everything he later does will seem better to them than when you do the same thing. Second, people often don’t have a way to directly measure and compare your skills.
In other words, humility seems like a universally good strategy, because it works for losers, and it works for Gandalf, so what’s the problem? The problem is, it does not work in the interval between being a loser and being a Gandalf, where most of you probably are.
Later, when you become Gandalf, you can again spread the meme that humility is a universally good strategy. It will hurt your less socially savvy competitors, which is a nice thing.
EDIT: Okay… after reading Christian’s reply… I am no longer sure about this… and I also admit that this was a very half-baked comment. I just had an epiphany, and wanted to write about it before I forget. The topic deserves more thinking, but now I don’t have the time to do it. I don’t want to become completely defensive about it, but I also believe it has a point. Most likely, the point is exaggerated. Here is my quick attempt for a safe rewrite:
It depends, but in a civilized setting, humility is a social virtue. You can be safely humble about traits and skills that people see anyway. However, with traits and skills that are less visible, you face a trade-off—the humble approach will give you social bonus, but in absence of evidence people may literally believe what you said, as long as it seems credible. To avoid false dilemma, you can provide positive information about yourself while using humble words, or make other people speak positively about you, etc. It also depends on whether the situation is unique or repeated, because with repetition the chance of people eventually seeing evidence of your skills increases.
The value of humility depends very much on the culture in which you are operating.
A ghetto kid you behaves humble will have a hard time. On the other hand in Japan being humble is very important and there’s social punishment from deviating from that standard.
Overconfidence in your hand is okay when you play poker. It costs you games when you play go.
First, people remember their first impressions and usually don’t update.
I think you underrate the effect of broken promises and failing to deliver.
When a potential competitor rises his head, don’t stay quiet, but destroy him. When he sufficiently shows that he learned his lesson, you may show some mercy again.
Outside of the ghetto where people value civilised society that’s not a good strategy. You frequently do lose social status when you destroy another person. There the phrase of giving someone the ropes to hang themselves. Everyone likes the king’s death but nobody likes the king’s slayer.
In one review of the scientific evidence on LW there’s the conclusion that modesty increases career success while efforts at self-promotion and being assertive rather diminish it. Especially if you see yourself as someone who’s not good at navigating social interactions you should bring a better argument if you want to contradict the published papers.
The value of humility depends very much on the culture in which you are operating.
Yes. So, to be more specific, I am usually thinking about an IT company in Europe, where the bosses EDIT: don’t care about the details of the development process, so they cannot judge an individual’s contribution well, and they mostly see the team output, where the details are mostly in a “black box”.
I think you underrate the effect of broken promises and failing to deliver.
If you are a member of a team, and the team delivers the product, how would the boss know whether it happened (a) because of your contribution, (b) regardless of your contribution, or even (c) despite your contribution?
You frequently do lose social status when you destroy another person. There the phrase of giving someone the ropes to hang themselves.
I agree completely here.
In one review of the scientific evidence on LW there’s the conclusion that modesty increases career success while efforts at self-promotion and being assertive rather diminish it.
It depends on the people skills of the boss. There are people you can impress by bragging, usually people with low self esteem. Other people simply get annoyed.
Social standing in software team is about more than technical skills. It’s also about the quality of relationships you have with the other people in your company.
Software people generally don’t play golf together, but in other areas that’s how relationships get build.
If you are a member of a team, and the team delivers the product, how would the boss know whether it happened (a) because of your contribution, (b) regardless of your contribution, or even (c) despite your contribution?
The boss would ask the team leader, aka the project manager.
EDIT: What I meant, is: if there are a few roughly equivalent programmers, and one of them must be selected as the project manager, just take this role. Even if the boss thinks it should be the one with most skills, and it isn’t you. Because from that moment, you are the one who provides feedback about skills of members of your team.
if there are a few roughly equivalent programmers, and one of them must be selected as the project manager, just take this role.
That’s not how it works in real life.
In a corporate setting with a team that’s not tiny, “project manager” is a separate position and moving from a programmer to a project manager is a big promotion. Moreover, it’s a switch from a programmer career track to a manager career track and so is quite important. You don’t “just take” it.
In freer settings (e.g. open source) or with teams of only a few programmers, project managers don’t have that much power and, in particular, lack the capability to be the sole source of information about how the project is doing and who’s contributing what. The boss may talk to you more, but he’ll chat with everyone else, too.
Moreover, unless your co-workers are total muppets, they will detect your attempts to shove them aside and hog all the glory for yourself. This is likely to have dire reputational consequences, especially if you are also lying to the management about who contributed how much to the project. In severe cases you can make yourself unemployable in the industry.
No, this is how it shouldn’t work in real life. But I think I know two specific examples where it did.
I guess in both situations it helped that no other programmer wanted the position. Also it seemed that the leadership of the company didn’t have a clue about what the team leader should really do; they probably imagined something like a programmer who coordinates other programmers, not a separate career track—but that is just my guess.
In both situations, these people were disliked by the rest of the team, but since no one wanted to replace them, their positions seemed safe.
In one situation, a few years later the company leadership realized that they need a separate management career track, and hired managers from outside (I don’t know what happened with the specific person). In other situation, a few years later the company hired a new programmer who replaced the original team leader (he became an ordinary programmer again), but that was caused by some changes in the company, mostly unrelated to how the old team leader behaved. So yeah, this strategy doesn’t work forever, but a few years are nice, and I don’t think there would be consequences for these people after changing a job.
if you are also lying to the management about who contributed how much to the project
I think you can see after a while whether the leadership of the company is interested in the details of how the company works, or if they prefer to isolate themselves and see the programming department merely as a “black box” that produces the desired output (it was the latter in both cases). And of course, you should avoid big specific lies.
I still consider this path dangerous and wouldn’t walk it myself. But I saw people who took the risk and seemed to win. It probably happened because the whole environment was ready to be abused this way.
I still consider this path dangerous and wouldn’t walk it myself.
You recommended it to people on LW:
Therefore, you should be the project manager. … if there are a few roughly equivalent programmers, and one of them must be selected as the project manager, just take this role.
This seems to assume that the only possible purpose of humility is as a means to improve one’s status. That seems, to put it mildly, not obviously correct. For example, you might attempt to be humble because …
… you think humble people are nicer to be around, and you want to make other people’s lives nicer.
… you think most people overestimate their own merits, see no reason why you should be an exception, and want to correct for this.
… you belong to a religion that commands (or at least commends) it.
… you have psychological hangups that make you feel bad when others regard you “too” positively.
There are arguments to be made against each of those, but none of them looks much like “you probably think that being humble will make others think better of you, but actually it likely won’t”.
(Side note: I get from Viliam’s comment the same impression as I do from some of Robin Hanson’s posts: a wilful refusal to consider any but the most cynical interpretation of something, where of course everyone is simply acting (or attempting to act) in their own selfish interests, where anything that looks like kindness or generosity is really a self-regarding status manoeuvre, etc., and where all this cynicism is too obvious to merit any kind of justification, but simply assumed as if everyone worth paying attention to will already agree. My instinctive reaction to this kind of stuff is to see it as a self-regarding status manoeuvre in its own right (“see how independent-minded and fearless I am!”) and move the author’s credibility down a notch or two. That’s probably not a fair reaction, but I suspect I’m not alone in having it.)
(One other pedantic note. It seems clear that “humility” here is being used to mean something like “self-deprecation”. I have seen the word used in other ways—e.g., to denote an attempt to have the exact same attitude to one’s own merits and demerits as to those of other people. Perhaps some other term might be less ambiguous.)
It seems clear that “humility” here is being used to mean something like “self-deprecation”. I have seen the word used in other ways
Yeah. I would like to have some textbook on social skills, where one chapter would be e.g. about humility: many possible interpretations of the word; which ones are helpful, and which ones are harmful, and how it depends on context. Specific, specific, specific.
EDIT: What I mean by this is that people sometimes give you an advice that “it is better to be humble”, but without the details about how specifically to be humble (and how specifically not to be humble), such advice can be even harmful. Also, the advice from other people usually comes with its own bias, namely that people are more likely to correct you on behavior that somehow harms or annoys them, but will be quiet about behavior that only harms you.
From “The Sin of Underconfidence”:
From “Things You Can’t Countersignal”:
Maybe it’s just the not-so-much-socially-skilled me rediscovering the wheel here, but anyway, someone else may benefit from this little epiphany too: Humility is just another social tool, and if you are doing it wrong, you may hurt yourself. It is not as safe as it seems.
Here is when you should be humble:
(a) If your skills are measurable and low, so everyone else already knows you suck. If you admit it yourself, you save them the trouble of reminding you. You get a small bonus point for understanding your place in the ladder. Yeah, you will still be at the bottom of the ladder, but at least you will be kept alone, because you understand your place.
(b) If you skills are awesome, and everyone else around you already know this. (Make sure this is actually the case! Illusion of transparency, Dunning–Kruger effect, etc.) Then, being humble gets you a bonus point for demonstrating social skills by not hurting other people more than is necessary. But keep doing it only as long as other people demonstrate understanding that they are below you. When a potential competitor rises his head, don’t stay quiet, but destroy him. When he sufficiently shows that he learned his lesson, you may show some mercy again.
Here is when you should not be humble:
(c) If your skills are good, but most people have no way to know it, other than you demonstrating it or telling you have it. (Which is more often than you think!) In that case, if you say “well, I am not perfect”, and your equally- or less-skilled competitor says “luckily, I am”, you lose. You might think that people would notice your superior skills later, but that has a few problems. First, people remember their first impressions and usually don’t update. Also, there is the halo effect; if people believe that your competitor is great and you are mediocre, then everything he later does will seem better to them than when you do the same thing. Second, people often don’t have a way to directly measure and compare your skills.
In other words, humility seems like a universally good strategy, because it works for losers, and it works for Gandalf, so what’s the problem? The problem is, it does not work in the interval between being a loser and being a Gandalf, where most of you probably are.
Later, when you become Gandalf, you can again spread the meme that humility is a universally good strategy. It will hurt your less socially savvy competitors, which is a nice thing.
EDIT: Okay… after reading Christian’s reply… I am no longer sure about this… and I also admit that this was a very half-baked comment. I just had an epiphany, and wanted to write about it before I forget. The topic deserves more thinking, but now I don’t have the time to do it. I don’t want to become completely defensive about it, but I also believe it has a point. Most likely, the point is exaggerated. Here is my quick attempt for a safe rewrite:
It depends, but in a civilized setting, humility is a social virtue. You can be safely humble about traits and skills that people see anyway. However, with traits and skills that are less visible, you face a trade-off—the humble approach will give you social bonus, but in absence of evidence people may literally believe what you said, as long as it seems credible. To avoid false dilemma, you can provide positive information about yourself while using humble words, or make other people speak positively about you, etc. It also depends on whether the situation is unique or repeated, because with repetition the chance of people eventually seeing evidence of your skills increases.
The value of humility depends very much on the culture in which you are operating.
A ghetto kid you behaves humble will have a hard time. On the other hand in Japan being humble is very important and there’s social punishment from deviating from that standard.
Overconfidence in your hand is okay when you play poker. It costs you games when you play go.
I think you underrate the effect of broken promises and failing to deliver.
Outside of the ghetto where people value civilised society that’s not a good strategy. You frequently do lose social status when you destroy another person. There the phrase of giving someone the ropes to hang themselves. Everyone likes the king’s death but nobody likes the king’s slayer.
In one review of the scientific evidence on LW there’s the conclusion that modesty increases career success while efforts at self-promotion and being assertive rather diminish it. Especially if you see yourself as someone who’s not good at navigating social interactions you should bring a better argument if you want to contradict the published papers.
Yes. So, to be more specific, I am usually thinking about an IT company in Europe, where the bosses EDIT: don’t care about the details of the development process, so they cannot judge an individual’s contribution well, and they mostly see the team output, where the details are mostly in a “black box”.
If you are a member of a team, and the team delivers the product, how would the boss know whether it happened (a) because of your contribution, (b) regardless of your contribution, or even (c) despite your contribution?
I agree completely here.
Does it depend of profession?
It depends on the people skills of the boss. There are people you can impress by bragging, usually people with low self esteem. Other people simply get annoyed.
Social standing in software team is about more than technical skills. It’s also about the quality of relationships you have with the other people in your company.
Software people generally don’t play golf together, but in other areas that’s how relationships get build.
The boss would ask the team leader, aka the project manager.
Therefore, you should be the project manager.
EDIT: What I meant, is: if there are a few roughly equivalent programmers, and one of them must be selected as the project manager, just take this role. Even if the boss thinks it should be the one with most skills, and it isn’t you. Because from that moment, you are the one who provides feedback about skills of members of your team.
That’s not how it works in real life.
In a corporate setting with a team that’s not tiny, “project manager” is a separate position and moving from a programmer to a project manager is a big promotion. Moreover, it’s a switch from a programmer career track to a manager career track and so is quite important. You don’t “just take” it.
In freer settings (e.g. open source) or with teams of only a few programmers, project managers don’t have that much power and, in particular, lack the capability to be the sole source of information about how the project is doing and who’s contributing what. The boss may talk to you more, but he’ll chat with everyone else, too.
Moreover, unless your co-workers are total muppets, they will detect your attempts to shove them aside and hog all the glory for yourself. This is likely to have dire reputational consequences, especially if you are also lying to the management about who contributed how much to the project. In severe cases you can make yourself unemployable in the industry.
No, this is how it shouldn’t work in real life. But I think I know two specific examples where it did.
I guess in both situations it helped that no other programmer wanted the position. Also it seemed that the leadership of the company didn’t have a clue about what the team leader should really do; they probably imagined something like a programmer who coordinates other programmers, not a separate career track—but that is just my guess.
In both situations, these people were disliked by the rest of the team, but since no one wanted to replace them, their positions seemed safe.
In one situation, a few years later the company leadership realized that they need a separate management career track, and hired managers from outside (I don’t know what happened with the specific person). In other situation, a few years later the company hired a new programmer who replaced the original team leader (he became an ordinary programmer again), but that was caused by some changes in the company, mostly unrelated to how the old team leader behaved. So yeah, this strategy doesn’t work forever, but a few years are nice, and I don’t think there would be consequences for these people after changing a job.
I think you can see after a while whether the leadership of the company is interested in the details of how the company works, or if they prefer to isolate themselves and see the programming department merely as a “black box” that produces the desired output (it was the latter in both cases). And of course, you should avoid big specific lies.
I still consider this path dangerous and wouldn’t walk it myself. But I saw people who took the risk and seemed to win. It probably happened because the whole environment was ready to be abused this way.
You recommended it to people on LW:
No, you should be the boss’s boss :-P
This seems to assume that the only possible purpose of humility is as a means to improve one’s status. That seems, to put it mildly, not obviously correct. For example, you might attempt to be humble because …
… you think humble people are nicer to be around, and you want to make other people’s lives nicer.
… you think most people overestimate their own merits, see no reason why you should be an exception, and want to correct for this.
… you belong to a religion that commands (or at least commends) it.
… you have psychological hangups that make you feel bad when others regard you “too” positively.
There are arguments to be made against each of those, but none of them looks much like “you probably think that being humble will make others think better of you, but actually it likely won’t”.
(Side note: I get from Viliam’s comment the same impression as I do from some of Robin Hanson’s posts: a wilful refusal to consider any but the most cynical interpretation of something, where of course everyone is simply acting (or attempting to act) in their own selfish interests, where anything that looks like kindness or generosity is really a self-regarding status manoeuvre, etc., and where all this cynicism is too obvious to merit any kind of justification, but simply assumed as if everyone worth paying attention to will already agree. My instinctive reaction to this kind of stuff is to see it as a self-regarding status manoeuvre in its own right (“see how independent-minded and fearless I am!”) and move the author’s credibility down a notch or two. That’s probably not a fair reaction, but I suspect I’m not alone in having it.)
(One other pedantic note. It seems clear that “humility” here is being used to mean something like “self-deprecation”. I have seen the word used in other ways—e.g., to denote an attempt to have the exact same attitude to one’s own merits and demerits as to those of other people. Perhaps some other term might be less ambiguous.)
Yeah. I would like to have some textbook on social skills, where one chapter would be e.g. about humility: many possible interpretations of the word; which ones are helpful, and which ones are harmful, and how it depends on context. Specific, specific, specific.
EDIT: What I mean by this is that people sometimes give you an advice that “it is better to be humble”, but without the details about how specifically to be humble (and how specifically not to be humble), such advice can be even harmful. Also, the advice from other people usually comes with its own bias, namely that people are more likely to correct you on behavior that somehow harms or annoys them, but will be quiet about behavior that only harms you.