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Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept

matt-rickard.com

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Re: Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept

#41

Post by BossingAround »

It's kind of interesting many commenters here require a proof during an interview.

So, while this can be highly flawed, how about asking the candidate? I find more often than not that if I ask the candidate how excited they are about learning stuff, they tell the truth. Especially when I probe a bit deeper, what do they want to learn, why, and, most importantly, what is their learning process.

If someone indicates they have a periodic study system in place, that's a strong indicator in the right direction. If someone tells me they have a goal they are achieving right now, that's amazing. If they can even estimate how long it will take them based on previous data, that sounds like a winner to me.

At that point, I am confident that they want to learn, and I have to assess other things, like what's their starting point, personality, etc.

I don't have a proof of their slope for learning. They could very well be lying just to get the job, but it's way better than disregarding slope because you can't prove it.

Re: Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept

#44

Post by cornel_io »

Nitpick: you're usually not measuring y-intercept, but y value at a point in time. For young people the two are pretty close, but for older ones not so much.

And for young devs, I 100% agree that slope is more important: the 1-3 years they're with your company will be ~half their careers or more, and they will hopefully grow quite a bit. Whenever you hire someone green you're betting almost exclusively on growth as opposed to current skillset.

For seniors (say 10 years and beyond), they're not going to be with you long enough for progress to make a huge difference, especially if they're decent to start out with - maybe that's not true 100% of the time, some people will stay around longer than expected and some people really do keep growing rapidly even into late career, but it's a reasonable guess. You're paying them primarily for the growth they've already done.

Re: Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept

#45

Post by lumost »

mcherm wrote: post #31

Suppose my interviewing process is rather limited and I can only measure the y-intercept with pretty severe error bars... like to within +/- 30%. Also, my interviewing process is even MORE clueless at measuring the slope... it could be tilted +/- 30 degrees from where it is (note: that means the slope might well be negative) and also THAT measurement is especially subject to unconscious racial and similarity bias. Th…

TBH every time I've been in a debrief where someone was pushing to hire an individual who didn't quite clear the bar it's because the candidate "reminded them of an earlier version of themselves". This reminder is the most biased form of hiring I've encountered, as it's almost entirely based on the interviewer assuming context about the candidates background and assuming that that background leads to success.

Re: Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept

#46

Post by yashap »

sweetcheekz wrote: post #43

A lot of the comment section highlights the obvious problem: this is fine theoretically (maybe even obviously correct), but much harder to get right in practice.

On top of that, it’s only even maybe-obviously-theoretically-correct if the employee stays a long time. If they stay for 5-10 years, I’d think rapid improvement tends to beat current ability. If they only stay for 1-3 years, though, the quick learner likely provides less value. Even if they catch up after say 2-3 years, they were providing less value while catching up.

Re: Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept

#47

Post by monocasa »

cornel_io wrote: post #44

Nitpick: you're usually not measuring y-intercept, but y value at a point in time. For young people the two are pretty close, but for older ones not so much. And for young devs, I 100% agree that slope is more important: the 1-3 years they're with your company will be ~half their careers or more, and they will hopefully grow quite a bit. Whenever you hire someone green you're betting almost exclusively on growth as o…

Yeah, exactly what I came in here to say. It's more vectors than slopes. You add the vectors of where they're at and where they're going.

You don't count against someone for absolutely already killing it even if you don't expect them to have the same increases in ability as a fresh grad with a lot of basics still to learn.

Re: Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept

#48

Post by YZF »

cornel_io wrote: post #44

Nitpick: you're usually not measuring y-intercept, but y value at a point in time. For young people the two are pretty close, but for older ones not so much. And for young devs, I 100% agree that slope is more important: the 1-3 years they're with your company will be ~half their careers or more, and they will hopefully grow quite a bit. Whenever you hire someone green you're betting almost exclusively on growth as o…

Senior people will still learn the domain unless you're hiring them to do something they already know and/or is trivial. I think even for the most senior it's like 6-12 months to really come up to speed in a new role and then over the next few years there's still growth that is related to the growth of the project. The senior person is still going to be a lot more effective 3-5 years in assuming you can keep them engaged.

Re: Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept

#49

Post by beebmam »

Stop believing metaphors and analogies are persuasive.

There's no reason to think that company performance is linear, or fits any basic function at all. Reality is far more complex than this. A metaphor or analogy greatly oversimplifies reality and will lead you to make terrible decisions.

Please, please stop believing things just because the person who is making the claim sounds confident. I'm begging us, as a culture.

Re: Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept

#50

Post by chongli »

cornel_io wrote: post #44

Nitpick: you're usually not measuring y-intercept, but y value at a point in time. For young people the two are pretty close, but for older ones not so much. And for young devs, I 100% agree that slope is more important: the 1-3 years they're with your company will be ~half their careers or more, and they will hopefully grow quite a bit. Whenever you hire someone green you're betting almost exclusively on growth as o…

Nitpick of a nitpick: for an interviewer, t=0 is right now. They’re interested in predicting your future performance on the job, assuming they hire you, and so it makes sense for positive t-values to be the future and negative t-values to be the past.
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