Revolutionaries at the Workplace • Hacker News Board

Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#41

Post by groby_b » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #24

groby_b wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is, pardon the directness, bad pop psychology. If A players could recognize another one, our industry's hiring wouldn't be so incredibly broken. The idea that there are clear layers of engineering skill is... just plain wrong, and that's obvious to anyone who's worked on more than a few teams. It's a spectrum, and more, it's multidimensional. So is the idea that somehow people not in the top layer automatically…

I don't think you really understand the power of simple metrics. Making an assumption (perhaps invalid) based on your submissions and comments, you seem to be in a line of work whose sales pitch is "Things are complex. You need to hire us to explain it all to you." Or maybe you've worked on games; it's hard to tell. Since you've alluded to your experiences: I've picked a startup based only on their business descripti…

Really? We're playing the credentials game?

Sure.

I've worked on DIS. I've worked on industrial automation. I've worked on AAA games. Yes, I've been on (successful) startups as well. Yes, I've consulted, too. I've worked on the European space program. I'm currently responsible for a good-sized engineering org.

I'm in this business for something like 30+ years now. And based on all those experiences, I'm fairly certain that your simplistic approach will bite you, your team, your project at some point. I'm also fairly certain that you'll protest that strenuously until it happens. So, godspeed, and may the experience not be too painful.

Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#42

Post by drekk » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 8:28 PM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #18

I like this article, but there's another way of classifying that I also like: letter grades (remember those from school?) which uses hiring psychology a little more. In a successful startup, whom you hire makes or breaks you. 'A' players hire 'A' players. 'B' players hire 'C' players. Independent of Revolutionary vs. Evolutionary, we have pure intelligence, education, and animal cunning. An 'A' player has all those,…

What value do you find in inventing a caste system for engineers? Psychology already suffers from a replication crisis and pseudoscientific quackery; corporate psychology is even less broadly applicable to humans.

People are not static; they're not just their genes, and they're not just a grade. You said you're an A player, why don't we compare your hiring to a random selection of hiring managers with similar experience in your field?

My degree was in Integrative Neuroscience and I'd caution people against these "just so!" explanations. A good narrative is often more convincing than the correct one.

Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#43

Post by ziggus » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 8:30 PM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #18

I like this article, but there's another way of classifying that I also like: letter grades (remember those from school?) which uses hiring psychology a little more. In a successful startup, whom you hire makes or breaks you. 'A' players hire 'A' players. 'B' players hire 'C' players. Independent of Revolutionary vs. Evolutionary, we have pure intelligence, education, and animal cunning. An 'A' player has all those,…

This is the same kind of organizational naivete displayed by armchair middle-manager wannabes that think stack ranking is a great idea too.

Once you start trying to codify potential or current employees into buckets delineated by simplistic and frankly silly metrics and not by the value they produce in a given set of domains and contexts, then you've already lost the game.

Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#44

Post by trabant00 » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 8:35 PM UTC

Hokusai wrote: post #8

This is just pseudoscience. No studies, no test, just a guy opinion. Stop clarifying people this way. It's not useful, it's not insightfully. I have seen coworkers fighting for one thing but not another. One fights against bad work ethics, another for good tech and another one for their own right too be with his family. People is complex, everything comes in gradients and that changes as people grows and they learn a…

One can't wipe his own ass these days without it being scientifically proven to exist by a study. The same studies that can't get no replication. And even if they do, aren't actionable at all. Decision paralysis as religion.

"Things are complicated" gets thrown against every opinion that people don't like. Not saying anything is wisdom. God forbid anybody has any opinion and may God strike him down if he ever supports anything but tabula rasa.

Things got done before studies existed, you know. People built models from intuition and tested them in practice. Or observed patterns. But that's the old wrong ways, right? We publish something on a piece of paper now and unless a committee publishes it and calls it a study it can't be true. And if they do it's true and will remain this way forever, right?

Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#45

Post by drekk » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 8:37 PM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #24

groby_b wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is, pardon the directness, bad pop psychology. If A players could recognize another one, our industry's hiring wouldn't be so incredibly broken. The idea that there are clear layers of engineering skill is... just plain wrong, and that's obvious to anyone who's worked on more than a few teams. It's a spectrum, and more, it's multidimensional. So is the idea that somehow people not in the top layer automatically…

I don't think you really understand the power of simple metrics. Making an assumption (perhaps invalid) based on your submissions and comments, you seem to be in a line of work whose sales pitch is "Things are complex. You need to hire us to explain it all to you." Or maybe you've worked on games; it's hard to tell. Since you've alluded to your experiences: I've picked a startup based only on their business descripti…

I like how you wrapped condescension and a humble brag in the same breath.

You invested in a company and profited by it. That's all that tells us. B can follow A, it doesn't follow that A caused B.

I see this in finance all the time. Traders perform so inconsistently at long timeframes, no better than chance, but think their training—domain knowledge—gives them systems knowledge. Systems are more than the sum of their parts or the individual actions of agents.

Boxing people into USDA grades like flesh is only ever constraining and I don't think the abstraction here collapses any uncertainty in exchange.

Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#46

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #30

jolux wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've picked a startup based only on their business description, where I didn't know a single person, and it IPO'ed in about 18 months. Anybody can do that once. If you could do it a hundred times in a row, or develop a science of picking startups, I might be more inclined to believe you.

If anybody could do that once, they'd all have done it already, and most of them wouldn't be posting on HN anymore.

[deleted]

Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#47

Post by Hokusai » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 9:22 PM UTC

Kranar wrote: post #38

Hokusai wrote: post #8

This is just pseudoscience. No studies, no test, just a guy opinion. Stop clarifying people this way. It's not useful, it's not insightfully. I have seen coworkers fighting for one thing but not another. One fights against bad work ethics, another for good tech and another one for their own right too be with his family. People is complex, everything comes in gradients and that changes as people grows and they learn a…

You can't just call something you disagree with pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is when an argument is presented in a way that directly suggests it's a scientific finding, or suggests that it follows the scientific method, but does so only superficially. No part of this article is intended to mislead you into thinking it's scientific or technical in nature. It is one person's opinion and they are sharing it and there's…

> call something you disagree with pseudoscience

You are right, this is just bullshit. It does not pretend to be a scientific study, I over interpreted what it was saying.

> There is very little that one can learn from psychology (with respect to this topic) as psychology lacks a great deal of consensus on this and most other subjects

That is a reason to beware of some random opinion, assertiveness does not need to correlate with reason. That this text is assertive does not make it valuable. I see no more learning that people will categorize others in search of a simplicity that is not there. As I said, it's not insightful in any way, it just simplifies to make people feel smart and think that they understand some truth that is no there.

Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#48

Post by jolux » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 9:22 PM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #30

jolux wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've picked a startup based only on their business description, where I didn't know a single person, and it IPO'ed in about 18 months. Anybody can do that once. If you could do it a hundred times in a row, or develop a science of picking startups, I might be more inclined to believe you.

If anybody could do that once, they'd all have done it already, and most of them wouldn't be posting on HN anymore.

You seem to think that you profited by sheer force of will and that no luck was involved. Evidence suggests there is an enormous amount of luck involved, in that the best startup investors still fail to profit most of the time. Without knowing more about your methodology, your claims here are akin to suggesting that one should only hire people who win the lottery, because clearly they're good at picking numbers.

Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#49

Post by AlbertCory » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #18

I like this article, but there's another way of classifying that I also like: letter grades (remember those from school?) which uses hiring psychology a little more. In a successful startup, whom you hire makes or breaks you. 'A' players hire 'A' players. 'B' players hire 'C' players. Independent of Revolutionary vs. Evolutionary, we have pure intelligence, education, and animal cunning. An 'A' player has all those,…

You'll note, HN'ers, that I never said that I was an A player, nor that engineers can all be divided up into castes. You all seem to be extrapolating based on your own prejudices.

It's just a (sometimes) useful way of thinking about top executives, who mostly can be assigned grades. Engineers are too complex to be divided that way.

As for me: yes, some A players did decide I could be useful. I think I was, as an engineer, and they thought so too. On hiring people: the record was more mixed; some good and some not so great.

Re: Revolutionaries at the Workplace

#50

Post by AlbertCory » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 10:29 PM UTC

exBarrelSpoiler wrote: post #39

AlbertCory wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you really understand the power of simple metrics. Making an assumption (perhaps invalid) based on your submissions and comments, you seem to be in a line of work whose sales pitch is "Things are complex. You need to hire us to explain it all to you." Or maybe you've worked on games; it's hard to tell. Since you've alluded to your experiences: I've picked a startup based only on their business descripti…

Trying to read the entrails into another poster's personality in response to a not very inflammatory comment is just plain gross. A pity, I was interested in reading Inventing the Future , but this sort of classless rude behavior has changed my mind.

Yeah, I bet you were in the very process of buying it. Maybe you can still cancel your order.

Let's review: the original article was a bit of pop psychology, like almost all "management science." I replied with some of my own. None of this is a double-blind, peer-reviewed study, and even if it were, it probably wouldn't be replicable, as others have pointed out.

groby_b then replied with some high-sounding condescension, puffing himself up: "our industry's hiring wouldn't be so incredibly broken" via all the incredible things he's seen. Except he didn't use any overt insults -- just passive aggressiveness.

Things went downhill from there.