Being self-centered, dishonest, not taking responsibility, blaming others, etc.
Each person had to be very reliable, and that included admitting challenges, and asking for help, as long as it wasn't asking all the time.
Selfishness, where they would not compromise for the team, was a dealbreaker.
I gave each of my engineers a great deal of agency, and expected them to deliver, as opposed to having to ride them. They were grown-ups, and I needed them to act as if they were.
Personal Integrity and Honesty was a big deal for me, as was a sense of accountability.
Most managers "cop out," and only hire people that "fit the culture."
The problem is that homogeneity breeds mediocrity. If you want good, innovative stuff, you need to hire and manage people that don't "fit the mold." That's a challenge.
Everyone seems to get caught up on technical merit, but a good tech can generally be trained to do anything. During my tenure (almost 27 years, 25, as a manager), we went through many iterations of technology, programming languages, etc.
When we want a good, heterogeneous team, we need to hire for team cohesiveness, as well as technical merit. Almost no one we hired was able to just do the job, out of the starting gate. The tech was too specialized. We needed people that could be trained, and that would stay around (When they rolled up my team, the person with the least tenure had a decade).
Being self-centered, dishonest, not taking responsibility, blaming others, etc.
Each person had to be very reliable, and that included admitting challenges, and asking for help, as long as it wasn't asking all the time.
Selfishness, where they would not compromise for the team, was a dealbreaker.
I gave each of my engineers a great deal of agency, and expected them to deliver, as opposed to having to ride them. They were grown-ups, and I needed them to act as if they were.
Personal Integrity and Honesty was a big deal for me, as was a sense of accountability.
Most managers "cop out," and only hire people that "fit the culture."
The problem is that homogeneity breeds mediocrity. If you want good, innovative stuff, you need to hire and manage people that don't "fit the mold." That's a challenge.
Everyone seems to get caught up on technical merit, but a good tech can generally be trained to do anything. During my tenure (almost 27 years, 25, as a manager), we went through many iterations of technology, programming languages, etc.
When we want a good, heterogeneous team, we need to hire for team cohesiveness, as well as technical merit. Almost no one we hired was able to just do the job, out of the starting gate. The tech was too specialized. We needed people that could be trained, and that would stay around (When they rolled up my team, the person with the least tenure had a decade).