What makes a great programmer?

Experience and brutebrainpower enhance programming skill by helping programming knowledgeto build over time, rather than by directly boosting currentperformance, according to a new article in the Journal of IndividualDifferences.

Authors Gunnar RyeBergersen and Jan-Eric Gustafsson put 65 professional programmersthrough their paces for two straight days, tackling twelve meatytasks in the Java language to prove their programming skill; this waswhat the study ultimately wanted to better understand.

Participants all filledin an extensive questionnaire on Java programming knowledge. Someparticipants also completed a suite of tasks involving memorisingitems (e.g. letters) while simultaneously handling another task suchas checking sentences for errors. These measure working memory, thecomponent of mind that keeps things available for consciousprocessing, and related to 'g', our proposed fundamental level ofmental ability. Unfortunately working memory scores for over half theparticipants weren't taken due to logistical issues.

The authors modelledthe relationships between all variables, including years of workexperience, and found the best predictor of programming skill wasprogramming knowledge: it loaded onto skill with a value of .77, where one would meanperfect prediction. Once knowledge was taken into account, aprogrammer's skill didn't benefit from better working memory orlonger experience. Rather, these variables seem to matter earlier inthe process by building better knowledge: working memory to help theprogrammer make sense of complex concepts, experience to provide thetime for this to happen.

You can't get by in theprogramming industry with a static knowledge base, so working memoryand a sharp mind will always be in demand in the profession. Indeed,observing that their data found an association between working memoryand programming experience, the authors speculate that wannabes withpoor working memory are more likely to leave the profession entirely.But this study asks us to recognise that a whizzprogrammer's competence is thanks to applying that brainpower tolearning their trade.

Bergersen, G., & Gustafsson, J. (2011). Programming Skill, Knowledge, and Working Memory Among Professional Software Developers from an Investment Theory Perspective. Journal of Individual Differences, 32 (4), 201-209 DOI: 10.1027/1614-0001/a000052

Cynicism is bad for business

When someone we trust takes us for a ride, the bump back to earth is something we're unlikely to forget. But when we suspiciously reject an offer from someone else, we may never know what we've missed out on due to too little trust. Over time, such asymmetries in feedback can tip us toward an unwarranted cynical stance. It's clear that cynicism is as unhelpful a bias as naivety: it leads to guarded communication, reduced  sharing, and more self-serving biases, all of which may cause interactions to nosedive. A recent review by Chia-Jung Tsay and his team from Harvard Business School may help us understand cynicism and how it develops.

The review identifies some key triggers that enhance cynicism, including:

• Being new to negotiation - novices are more likely to believe that negotiation is always competitive;
• Thinking about the power of influence; for instance, knowledge that another party is a sales expert leads negotiators to suspect their offers more;
• Inclusion of a shady character - negotiating groups take the least trustworthy individual in the other group as the best indicator of group trustworthiness;
• Clear power asymmetries - people expect more misrepresentations from authorities with access to hidden information.

The authors point to a range of studies where participants reject offers that are in their rational best interest because of lurking cynicism that puts them off the whole venture. They warn us that the consequence is that "cynicism regarding others' motivations may become a self-fulfilling prophecy that leaves both sides worse off than would otherwise be the case." Happily, the review concludes with some advice we might take on to chart a better course:

• perspective-taking to recognise your 'opponent' is an active party in negotiations, cultivating a "healthy skepticism" that considers a full range of motives on their part;
• act with integrity - it increases the likelihood the other party will;
• encourage a level playing field that minimises hidden information;
• foster repeated exposure to specific negotiators to build a history of trust that is costly to undermine.

Try the techniques out, you won't regret it. Trust me.

Tsay, C., Shu, L., & Bazerman, M. (2011). Naïveté and Cynicism in Negotiations and Other Competitive Contexts The Academy of Management Annals, 5 (1), 495-518 DOI: 10.1080/19416520.2011.587283

Provoking behaviour: training roleplayers at assessment centres

Assessment days for evaluating work-relevant behaviours ofapplicants or job incumbents often draw on actors to perform as difficultteam-members or curious clients in meeting simulations. A recent study hasshown that these role-playing actors can be trained to effectively weave pre-writtendialogue prompts into the improvised simulations. However, whether this helpsmeasurement of participant behaviours is less clear.

The study authors Eveline Schollaert and Filip Lievens gave19 role-players training, which in one condition included explicit guidance onusing behaviour-eliciting prompts during assessment exercises; for example,"Mention that you feel bad about it" in order to provoke behavioursrelating to a dimension of interpersonal sensitivity. Such prompts are often provided in prep material, but actual usage was unknown. The authors wondered whetherrole-players could realistically increase their prompt usage through training, or whether this istoo much to ask an actor in the thick of a dynamic interaction.

At a subsequent assessment centre, the role-playersinteracted in simulations with 233 students from Ghent University. Role-playerswith prompt training were able to incorporate four to five times more promptsthan those without such training, an increase from about two prompts perexercise to 10-12.

More prompts ought to elicit more relevant behaviours, so theauthors expected observers to get a better picture of true 'candidate'performance. But this isn't clear. In the high-prompt condition, pairs ofraters watching the same role-play didn't agree any more on their ratings,suggesting the behaviours remained just as obscured as without prompts. Thatsaid, there was better correspondence of some of the ratings to other measurementsyou would expect to be related - for instance, interpersonal sensitivitycorrelated better with an Agreeableness personality score acquired pre-centre.But half of the predicted increases in correlation weren't observed.

Regarding their unsupported hypotheses, the authors wonderwhether the rating assessors should also have been trained on prompt use toencourage sensitivity to candidate reactions. I have additional concerns on thenature of the assessors -minimally trained masters students - used to drawconclusions about a professionalised domain. Nonetheless, this rare examinationof role-player impact on face to face assessments suggests training cangenerate more dimension-focused contributions, which in turn may result inmeasurements with more predictive power.

Schollaert, E., & Lievens, F. (2011). The Use of Role-Player Prompts in Assessment Center Exercises International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 19 (2), 190-197 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2389.2011.00546.x

MBA early career challenges: handling others and reconceiving yourself

MBA courses are meant to prepare their students to become effective business leaders, and give a lot of attention to that goal. This mid-late career focus makes it reasonable to wonder how MBA graduates are equipped for their earlier career, when they take their classroom knowledge to a managerial role with significant responsibilities. Beth Benjamin and Charles O'Reilly of Stanford University conducted a qualitative investigation into early-career challenges for 55 such “manager-graduates”, to understand the near-term needs of a newly minted MBA, and hence how their course could leave them better prepared.

Their interviews, exploring especially challenging episodes in the early career of these manager-graduates, illustrated how an educational experience emphasising analytical problem solving, graft, and individual success, inevitably shapes a more task-oriented approach. Often knowing 'what' to do, the manager-graduate is less sure on 'how to do it', notably in the social dimension.

Aggressively outdoing his peers to wind up with a promotion, one interviewee entered his role only to have several team members - once his peers - walk out. His learning from this was to “treat your peers as though they might someday be your boss or direct reports.” Another trap was assuming that others share your approach, motivation and skills towards work issues; this can lead to overly relaxed expectation-setting or misjudging how to motivate others for a new direction. One interviewee baldly stated "[Business School] doesn’t prepare you to manage a wide swatch of people", such as those whose life doesn’t revolve around business excellence.

Another theme of the research was the need for manager-graduates to shift mind-set. They needed to flourish when their role didn't provide opportunity for direct personal achievements, by embracing being a "caretaker for something larger than myself". They also needed to cope with, and learn from, personal disappointments, which can be a real challenge for a perennial straight-A student unused to such situations.

All the challenges represented some form of transition point, where the manager-graduate had to drop old assumptions, turn to different skills, renegotiate relationships or take a new approach. Such transitions are vital times for spurring learning forward, but can be problematic if they come before the individual is ready for them.

Benjamin and O'Reilly fear the MBA system doesn't accomplish this preparation, as "teaching leadership principles without sufficient application opportunities runs the risk of making complex leadership concepts appear simple and obvious"; for instance, we should be empathic leaders - but how do we manage that? Although applied learning does occur in MBAs, they feel there is a need for better integration, to understand the how in the context of the what, to provide their students well-practiced strategies to carry them through the situations of stress that will undoubtedly define their early career.

Benjamin, B., & O'Reilly, C. (2011). Becoming a Leader: Early Career Challenges Faced by MBA Graduates The Academy of Management Learning and Education, 10 (3), 452-472 DOI: 10.5465/amle.2011.0002

Extreme numbers influence initial salary offers

Despite some schools of thought, it's generally to your advantage to name a price first in negotiations. This is thanks to the anchoring effect, where presenting a value skews later judgments towards it.  There is plenty of evidence that setting salary for a new role is influenced by relevant anchors, such as the applicant stating their previous pay or expectations for this job. But decision-making research suggests that estimates and attributions can be influenced by even arbitrary and extreme anchors. Todd Thorsteinson at the University of Idaho set about seeing how crazy numbers might also shape take-home pay.

206 psychology students were asked to make a salary suggestion for a desirable job applicant question. Participants were presented with the applicant's description including two anchors: a realistic one of the applicant's previous salary ($29,000), and an unusual one of either $100k or $1, embedded within a joking statement they made about their salary expectations. The joking context was considered necessary to allow the unusual anchor to be presented without triggering other effects, like being considered overly arrogant or having poor judgment. Participants given the high unusual anchor awarded a higher salary than both those given the low unusual anchor and a control condition with just the realistic anchor.

A second experiment asked its 150 participants to additionally record their perceptions when reading about the applicant, and introduced an even more extreme anchor: one million dollars. Participants were not put off by the extreme anchor, perceiving it as just as plausible and influential as  the $100k reference, and in both cases ended up offering the applicant a higher salary than when these high anchors were absent. So, just as in the literature on estimation, even radically inappropriate anchors can sway decisions. It's worth noting too that the unusual anchors had their effect despite being presented alongside realistic ones, as some studies have suggested that in such situations we may simply defer to the more plausible. That wasn't the case here.

There are risks to naming a salary first, such as underselling yourself or pricking the sensibilities of the hirer. So using a joke to introduce an anchoring value may be a safer bet. Organisations may of course respond: using clearly defined pay ranges and clear criteria to shape a fair financial offer for a desired candidate. Both parties should take seriously the power of framing the financial borders of a negotiation.

THORSTEINSON, T. (2011). Initiating Salary Discussions With an Extreme Request: Anchoring Effects on Initial Salary Offers1 Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 41 (7), 1774-1792 DOI: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2011.00779.x