Just Call Me Willy
Posted February 4, 2019
I doubt Willy Wonka ever had a resume. But he possessed every trait an innovative company could want in an employee.
Chocolate factory redux
I'll be honest. As a kid, I never thought about Willy Wonka's job qualifications. But after reading about innovative companies ditching resumes in favor of A.I.-driven tests that measure cognitive and emotional capabilities, I revisited his skill set.
Pymetrics, the company Tesla, Accenture and LinkedIn employ, uses game-like brain tasks to measure problem-solving skills, multitasking ability and altruism, a.k.a. selflessness. I thought about these traits recently as I rewatched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I noticed how calm Willy Wonka stayed as one child after another imploded on tour. They drowned in chocolate, turned into blueberries, shrunk themselves and guzzled down anti-gravity juice that floated them precariously close to multi-stories high ceiling fans. But none of it phased Mr. Wonka.
Great employees are problem solvers
When Violet transformed into a giant blueberry after chewing some beta test gum, Willy Wonka knew her condition wasn't permanent. Likewise when Ralph shrunk himself by jumping in front of the laser beam. Time reversed their bad decisions, and he already had a contingency squad, a.k.a. the Oompaloompas, on hand to direct those kids to the time-out room where they could think about what they'd done.
I'm no Oompaloompa, but in the past few weeks alone I've figured out how to reverse a page update in Sitecore by commenting out enough code to keep my changes in place for a few hours til the official email went out. I also found a handy little toggle script to show/hide content, which eliminated the need for another page. I even modified a Webkit script that will give some images a black-and-white rollover effect without loading a second set of images.
Multitaskers understand the big picture
When greedy Augustus fell into the chocolate river, Willy didn't panic. He understood the factory's infrastructure, so he knew the kid would be sucked into the exit chute tout de suite. The bigger problem was probably the polluted river. But I bet there was a plan in place for that too.
As a nascent developer, I'm definitely still learning how to combine languages, frameworks and libraries, which I'm doing in my work-in-progress React, Redux and Firebase blog project. But thanks to years of website management, I've already learned how they work, how users interact with new features and what it takes to transport them from the home page to the content they really want. Along the way I've paid attention to the big picture and acquired the various skills to understand it.
Altruists put the team first
Remember when Charlie and his uncle get busted for drinking the anti-gravity juice? As a kid, I thought he'd blown his chance at winning the ultimate prize. But Willy Wonka was looking out for his little Oompaloompas, and he knew he had to pass the factory down to someone as kind and generous as himself. He saw those traits in Charlie. So despite his mistake, Mr. Wonka felt comfortable giving Charlie the keys to the kingdom.
True altruists don't really call themselves altruistic; they're too busy looking out for everybody else. I will say it's taken me a little longer to get to the place where I can devote my time learning to code because I had children to raise and a grandmother to care for. I wouldn't change those years for anything. And the empathy I learned along the way is bound to help me in future roles.
Bottom line? There's more to people than their past experience. In fact, cognitive abilities such as understanding how everything fits together and the importance of ensuring everyone succeeds are worth their weight in gold. Or at least chocolate.