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What Is a Wildcard Person?

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171–180 of 278 posts

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#171
post #78

I think that's all of us, really. I'm reminded of Heinlein's quote "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently,…

Easier said than done.

For example, that's what Elon Musk believes he is.

He has enormous amounts of money to back his ideas, and then you have seen the results, mostly is just manipulation and other people actually do the things.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#172
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you care about things like income and career progression, do not let yourself become one of these people. They aren't valued, and it doesn't take a lot of staring at job postings or talking to hiring managers to figure out why. I have the opposite experience. Being a generalist allowed me to "climb" fast at my current company as I am able to lead projects holistically and coordinate cross-functional teams. I hav…

> industry legends like Jeff Dean or John Carmack Those are very bad examples that prove the gp's point. Sure, flexible and multitalented people are a huge asset IF they get their big break, if they get involved in a startup at the right time in the right industry, if they are lucky to not get crushed by abusive players etc. etc. But the chances of success are very slim, you likely won't be John Carmack. For every Ca…

Luck is always an essential ingredient in success. Can you point to any counterexamples: i.e. an industry legend who is a specialist?

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#173
I am one of these people. I got handed a bunch of weird tasks and jobs over the years as a result. I agree with the idea that these people do best in startups where flexibility is needed. In the big company I ended up working at, it held me back from advancement.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#174
>Henry Ford had ordered a dynamo for one of his plants. The dynamo didn’t work, and not even the manufacturers could figure out why. A Ford employee told his boss that von Neumann was “the smartest man in America,” so Ford called von Neumann and asked him to come out and take a look at the dynamo.

>Von Neumann came, looked at the schematics, walked around the dynamo, then took out a pencil. He marked a line on the outside casing and said, “If you’ll go in and cut the coil here, the dynamo will work fine.”

>They cut the coil, and the dynamo did work fine. Ford then told von Neumann to send him a bill for the work. Von Neumann sent Ford a bill for $5,000. Ford was astounded — $5,000 was a lot in the 1940s — and asked von Neumann for an itemised account. Here’s what he submitted:

>Drawing a line with the pencil: $1

>Knowing where to draw the line with the pencil: $4,999

>Ford paid the bill.

From: https://superintelligence.fandom.com/wiki/John_von_Neumann_(...

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#175

17 years ago, there was a popular essay about this sort of person, and the label at the time was "Free Electron": https://randsinrepose.com/archives/free-electron/ Before that, they were known as "generalists", autodidacts, polymaths, etc. The thing is that pretty much any clever person that's easily invested in novel things can become one of these people, so this label isn't reserved for people who are generalists,…

Yes, the idea and the debate is as old as history. I prefer the quote from Heinlein, "Specialization is for insects." Because actually, if you look at well run organizations, everybody needs to be a generalist to some degree. You don't just work in a silo and ignore every other aspect of what your organization does, otherwise you produce deficient solutions that your colleagues in their own siloes need to work around…

It's an evocative quote, but it's also nonsense. The selection of skills is a bit scattershot, but let's look at some examples: "butchering a hog" takes a year to learn, well, butchery to a professional standard, because someone who can butcher hogs but not cows sounds awfully 'specialised', some places even say that a butchery apprenticeship takes 24 months. (And I personally wouldn't trust an unqualified butcher to process meat I'd be eating.) Building a wall is easier, you can get a bricklaying certification in 8 weeks. Learning to "Fight efficiently" and "take orders" takes US army recruits 22 weeks (and we can throw another 12 weeks of officer training for giving orders and generously allowing this to count as 'planning an invasion'). Computer programming, sonnet-writing, account balancing, cooking and solving equations are actually part of general education, so let's ignore those. Basic first aid only takes a few days, and pitching manure can be learnt in under an hour. But then we get to "design a building" and "conn a ship" (not a boat, a ship). Conning a ship is a bachelor's level qualification in of itself, and designing entire buildings is a job for a chartered engineer, which requires years of experience and another bachelor's degree, so we're taking probably ten years of full-time training for those two alone. And I would not want to be on a ship piloted by someone who'd been on a 3-day course or live in a tower block designed by someone who'd read a couple of Wikipedia articles. Then we'll throw in a 4-year degree in whatever they're actually doing, and you're looking at a society whose adults don't start entering the workforce until their mid-thirties, and a newbie doctor or research scientist or some other field which requires postgraduate qualifications is probably in their early forties. This isn't even remotely viable as a way to run a society. And it's also implied that that list isn't even exhaustive, so the real numbers are even worse if there's some other complex safety-critical thing that Heinlein also felt should be on the list, like 'fly an airliner' or 'manage a chemical plant'.

Maybe with sci-fi anti-aging techniques that mean people can still be expected to be healthy and productive in their nineties, but in the real world, Heinlein's generalist utopia is pure fantasy.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#176
post #161
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found my self in this position as well. So far I've managed to identify a few key points which has served me well so far. - Being able to produce results even when there is a lot of unknowns. - Fairly good communication skills across several departments. People usually listens to what you say. - Being known as goto kind of person. If it's about getting the gist about something or direct help of implementing any…

Interesting discussion. My solution has been to sell myself as a troubleshooter. So I usually see patterns and solutions that others do not and in such a case can bring something to table where people get stuck. A troubleshooter sounds very specialist while it skills are in actuality quite generalist (on the whole)

I've sold my self as a troubleshooter before, but that only got me into positions were I was maintaining old tech. Especially things others had no idea how/why it did work.

I still find my self in these situations, but not as much like before since I stopped using troubleshooter. But your miles may vary :)

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the idea and the debate is as old as history. I prefer the quote from Heinlein, "Specialization is for insects." Because actually, if you look at well run organizations, everybody needs to be a generalist to some degree. You don't just work in a silo and ignore every other aspect of what your organization does, otherwise you produce deficient solutions that your colleagues in their own siloes need to work around…

It's an evocative quote, but it's also nonsense. The selection of skills is a bit scattershot, but let's look at some examples: "butchering a hog" takes a year to learn, well, butchery to a professional standard, because someone who can butcher hogs but not cows sounds awfully 'specialised', some places even say that a butchery apprenticeship takes 24 months. (And I personally wouldn't trust an unqualified butcher to…

I think they're talking about butchering a hog at the skill level of a person who grew up near people who owned hogs, ie, definitely a "I did this with somebody at a barbecue a few times" and not "24 months of training".

Giving and taking orders likewise doesn't remotely require army training, it just requires growing up around human beings and being part of anything -- theater, bands, church groups, service groups, clubs.

Fight efficiently means, I believe, fistfight, aka, take some boxing lessons and you can check that one off.

I think you've really misunderstood the quote. Or maybe I have.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#178

This is me, this is how I generate value as a full-blown ADHD case. I wonder if there’s a correlation? To add credibility in a corporate setting I have somehow achieved a fearsome combination of Physics PhD, MBA and 25 years of wildcard software development / entrepreneurship. That, combined, legitimizes why I’m allowed to be the wildcard. How have you others managed to be this deep generalist in a specialist’s world…

I join companies early on and do 5 different jobs and get paid for 1, then burn out

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone can self-identify as they like, the real ones in this case are easy to spot just asking them to tell you some stories of absurd problems they solved. They always have a boatload of war stories.

An issue I’ve found is that often these stories don’t tend to be believed. To the untrained ear, they sound like typical BS everyone throws around. Tiny example: I joined a company and a nightly process was data import. The import was starting to take longer than 25 hours, threatening the “daily” aspect, and on the verge of causing logistical problems because of this. The problem had been looming for months and has t…

> “well, there was probably something you’re leaving out. Everyone likes to think their contribution is the most important, but things are a team effort. We’re not all superheroes”.

That's how people that give no contributions whatsoever would reply, I think. The pattern "identify thing that takes too long, local expert says it's unfixable and you don't understand, you fix it in a few hours, local expert downplays" is VERY common, but until the one controlling the budget is aware of reality I'm ok with it. And in those cases you see the good people because they get excited and want to help improve more things.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#180
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone can self-identify as they like, the real ones in this case are easy to spot just asking them to tell you some stories of absurd problems they solved. They always have a boatload of war stories.

Exactly. The real ones, with experience, can regale with numerous stories of their trials and tribulations. Critically, it won’t come across as boastful, because they’ll detail how they loved the challenge, the context, and the solution.

Yes.
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