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What Is a Wildcard Person?

wildcardpeople.com

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Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#241

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

ajkjk wrote: post #226
YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously suggesting that Robert A. Heinlein, former naval officer, wouldn't care about the distinction between a ship and a boat? And you still ignored the two most difficult ones.

I think he knows the difference, but surely meant the life skill of captaining something rather than the literal many-years-to-acquire technical skill of doing so, because the former makes sense and the latter doesn't. Which two? Designing a building I see I skipped. That seems pretty attainable, he obviously didn't mean 'be a trained architect and building engineer' like you interpreted it. People in charge of organ…

He specifically said ‘conn a ship’. Conning is the specific highly technical act of directing the ship while in motion. Navy types are known to be sticklers for precise use of naval terms, so we have no reason to assume it doesn’t mean exactly what it says.

The task you are describing is not design; it’s specification or briefing at best. Heinlein was also an aeronautical engineer. Engineering is are also a profession where imprecise language costs lives.

The hardest one was “plan an invasion”, but I’m sure you’re about to tell me that a former naval officer and author of some of the most famous pieces of military science fiction didn’t really mean “plan an invasion” when he said it, or that despite modern history being full of poorly-planned invasions (and there’s one going on right now), actually it’s something you can learn on a three day course.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#242

Post by russellbeattie »

bookofjoe wrote: post #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 ou…

Wow. I just told this joke to my girlfriend literally this morning since we were talking about billable time (she's a consultant).

Only in the version I know it was a plumber in New York who was called to a fancy restaurant to fix a problem with the water which had stopped in the middle of dinner. The plumber takes out a small hammer, taps a random pipe and all the water starts flowing again.

$1001 bill. $1 for tapping the pipe. $1000 for knowing where to tap it.

I was surprised she hadn't heard it before as it's a classic, especially for anyone who bills for their time.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#243

Post by NickC25 »

kthejoker2 wrote: post #11

As a wildcard person, one thing not mentioned is they need to be complemented by at least one type A, no-nonsense delivery manager who can block their say-yes-to-everything attitude, help them prioritize and focus, and ensure the "boring stuff" like test suites and status reports are flowing. Together this tandem can do truly great things.

This is partially true - but with the caveat that said manager needs to have a clear understanding of what to say yes to, what to say no to, and also to have realistic expectations of what a wildcard can and can't do in terms of skillset.

This was me at my last job - within 3 weeks of being hired I was basically touching nearly all aspects of the organization - I was in sales meetings, talking with the developers and product designers, helping out customer service, etc. I didn't feel super productive but felt great knowing that I could help out anyone in a pinch across a wide spectrum, and also that people seemed to come to me to help solve their problem because if I wasn't the person to solve the issue, I knew the exact person who was, and I was in good standing with whoever that person was and could get things solved quickly (or responsibility passed to someone who could actually do what was necessary). The death knell came when a new HR person came in, and a new layer of management (another new employee - a former banker) was put in over me who insisted that I change teams and only work as a spreadsheet jockey and doing deep, repetitive M&A finance stuff (and having zero interactions with other teams) despite me having little experience in finance outside of managing my own portfolio and helping my previous company understand our market from a product and financial prespective. I tried my best but was completely out of my depth and when he fired me, he said it was my own fault for not having a banker's skillset. He kept blocking me from stuff I was better at doing where I could actually produce value for the organization.

Thing is - I was hired as a product manager and never actually given a product to manage or work on.

6 months of my career, destroyed. TLDR - a wildcard needs to be accompanied by someone who knows what the wildcard can, and can't do; and also who knows that tying a wildcard down to a boring project they aren't suited for is a bad use of the organization's time and capital.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#244

Post by lokimedes »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #178
lokimedes wrote: post #23

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

Me too, yet it changed with my diagnosis and COVID lockdown. I had a really open and frank discussion with my current employer, about who I am, what I can help with, but also the darker sides and how I’m not a magical creator and operator in one. They seem to accept that. That again gives me freedom to define the point I can exit my i initiatives, and have others take over. After 40 cycles around Sol, I know when burnout hits, and call the exit just before that. The second thing is making it clear that I need downtime. That is not a leave, but usually spent wandering the company, diagnosing and ideating. Then, when recharged I propose new initiatives and on it goes. This way of working has reignited my entrepreneurial side, to the extent that I’m starting a venture studio with the majority owner of the company, to make that process unbounded from the main company.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#245

Post by Jensson »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #230
Jensson wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The algorithms they ask for in interviews are so low level that any programmer could learn them in a couple of months, that is generalist level and not specialist level. Not all developers who pass them are generalists, but the people who don't aren't generalist developers. They could be generalist problems solvers who dabbles a bit in programming, but they aren't generalist developers.

I don’t know. I think this whole discussion is very vague if go by the example in the article, it sounds unlikely the developer described as the wildcard in the article would do very well on LeetCode.

A smart person who loves to learn and do new things and gets excited under pressure? Sounds like exactly the kind of person who would ace leetcode interviews to me, at least if they got a technical degree.

Such people hate to grind, so if they managed to get a technical degree they are smart and interested enough in the subject that they studied for fun or didn't need to study. So either they would gladly study for leetcode, or they would pass without studying it.

This assumes they have a degree though, if you take such a developer without a degree then I'd agree with you. But I wouldn't classify such a person as a generalist developer, they are a generalist who can code.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#246

Post by mjklin »

Growing up it all seems so one-sided

Opinions all provided

The future pre-decided

Detached and subdivided

In the mass-production zone

Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit more alone

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#247

Post by heavenlyblue »

mgkimsal wrote: post #154
Manjuuu wrote: post #128

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…

I think you just left out the most important bit of the story... What exactly did you do in order to reduce it from 25 hours to 30 minutes?

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#248

Post by tengbretson »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #175
BlackFly wrote: post #69

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…

That's absurd. You can learn how to butcher a hog in an afternoon (I'm not including curing ham or bacon in this statement).

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#249

Post by poulsbohemian »

The other side of this is that I've met several people over the years who were true world class experts in their fields (one literally wrote the book, the other had her phd in that niche, the third was employee #5 at the company, etc...) where suddenly those entire fields went poof as technology changed. So this is the tradeoff - do you specialize and potentially then have to shift in some new direction as the world change, or do you remain more generalized and thus sometimes have a harder time selling yourself?
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