Comments on: Hiring happy people

By: Marcus Jones

Marcus Jones — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 19:27:21 +0000

I disagree with Jon Emmons, but I can say that everyone is different. But at the end of it all, if your not happy with where you work it is harder to do your job efficiently.

It can also make your work difficult, as well as make it difficult for that unhappy employee integrate with others effectively. Happiness is cheap and successful way of getting people to work hard and stay in their job.

By: Jon Emmons

Jon Emmons — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:05:42 +0000

Joel,

I disagree, and not just because I’ve worked with a lot of smart, happy people. People who enjoy what they’re doing are happier people and better workers! Look at the most successful people in any field and you’ll find people who are genuinely excited about what they’re doing and having fun.

By: PM Hut

PM Hut — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:28:54 +0000

I don’t want to stress on the happiness point as much as I would like to stress on this sentence: “I’ve seen folks with more experience than I come in to a job and have a negative impact on those around them and I’ve seen folks with practically no experience come in and do wonderfully.”

I had an intern working for me and she had no experience with the programming language we were using whatsoever, nevertheless, I approved her internship. She learned our programming language in literally 3 days (she had a Java background) and in a week she was actually producing. I think companies only hiring people with experience are missing a lot. Smart, inexperienced people can become smart, experienced, loyal, and happy employees very fast.

By: joel garry

joel garry — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:23:09 +0000

Congrats! You’ve now eliminated all the really smart people who aren’t gregarious. Fine for a sandwich shop. Fine for a sales job. Not fine for back end IT functions. But if they’re all going back to wherever in 2 years, I guess that’s ok too. If that’s what you want.

That’s not what I want. I don’t think that is too good for most companies most valuable assets, either.

Smart and happy don’t go well together in our society.

By: Roaster Dave

Roaster Dave — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:05:11 +0000

Well said! I can relate to the idea of having a very skilled person come into a job, only to find out that their people skills aren’t great at all, making it very difficult for other workers to enjoy their time at work.

Thanks for posting!!

dave