Hire for polynomial degree, not slope! But watch for negative coefficients, particularly on the highest powered term. Wow, this shit writes itself.
Hire for Ө.
Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept
71–80 of 95 posts
Re: Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept
#72why use lines when you can use trigonometry? aren't we all made of waves anyway?
Re: Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept
#73This is a nerd way of saying what I already do, which is "hire people with a high ceiling"
As we all fool ourselves into thinking we have any capability whatsoever in predicting that ceiling from a few hours of interview.
Re: Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept
#74Nitpick: 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…
> 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 alre…
I don’t think there’s any evidence that senior devs stick around longer than junior devs. Senior devs are often in extremely high demand, and can change jobs more easily.
Re: Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept
#75I'm a huge fan of lifelong learning, and overall agree with this post. But, from a hiring perspective, it is missing a few important details: 1. Sometimes you have things that need to be achieved in a time-sensitive fashion, i.e. the time to ramp up may be problematic, and "taking a chance" may have real business ramifications. 2. Even if you don't have anything urgent, naturally there should be some discount factor…
also, how would you measure someone's slope? would it even be fair to evaluate them by it?
Even if it was linear, you can’t tell the slope of a line from one measurement, and an interview is one measurement. You’d need two interviews separated by some time, which is obviously impractical.
Re: Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept
#76This is stupid model that mistakes brevity for insight.
But for the sake of argument Let’s assume the function metaphor to be true. The value of the employee to the firm isn’t the value of the of f(x) at a given point in time, it’s the value under the curve for an expected time horizon, so given the f’(x) and f(0) and the time horizon it’s not clear that either is better. Apart from that it’s very unlikely that f(x) is linear. It’s very unlikely that f(x) will grow to infinity. More likely is that the improvement will top out somewhere and maybe you should think about higher derivatives.
Re: Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept
#77Stop 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 cultu…
> A metaphor or analogy greatly oversimplifies reality and will lead you to make terrible decisions.
I think I disagree with this. Metaphors and analogies provide interesting ways to illustrate principles, and good decisions are often rooted in good principles.
Attempting to model human behavior as a one dimensional line? Yeah, not good. But remembering a person is more than the moment you meet them in? Great advice.
Re: Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept
#78How do you tell slope from one point?
When you’re working with someone on a project, you get lots of datapoints, some of which are pretty close to a direct measurement of m (not y, but m directly). When the team is discussing something, are they following along, contributing, remembering and integrating what they were exposed to last week? Or are you telling them for the third week in a row the exact same thing? This is not anything like “once a year tel…
Yes but this is about hiring. By “one point” they mean an interview
Re: Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept
#79I dislike this in that it promotes ageist thinking in many people. There is a presumption that younger people will have a higher slope. In one sense, it's true. Consider the weightlifting analogy. It is easier to train to deadlift from half your body weight to 1x your body weight, than is is to deadlift 2x your body weight to 2.5x your body weight. Similarly, capable junior developers become "mid-level" and sometimes…
This is all about value to the company… they have to pay the 60 year old the actual value of their work, because it is established and known. The 22 year old they can pay at an entry level rate, and then in a few years be getting intermediate value for that same entry level rate.
> and then in a few years be getting intermediate value for that same entry level rate.
If you're expecting to pay someone an entry-level rate ~3 years into their career you're going to be getting exactly zero value out of them as they will get a job at a company that pays them what they're worth.
Re: Hire for slope, not Y-Intercept
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you’re working with someone on a project, you get lots of datapoints, some of which are pretty close to a direct measurement of m (not y, but m directly). When the team is discussing something, are they following along, contributing, remembering and integrating what they were exposed to last week? Or are you telling them for the third week in a row the exact same thing? This is not anything like “once a year tel…
Yes but this is about hiring. By “one point” they mean an interview
Yeah, I was confusing the threading with another post talking about employees as they develop from interns to junior full-time towards senior. Given where it actually is in the tree, I deserve the downvotes I got.