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What Is a Wildcard Person?

wildcardpeople.com

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Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#251

Post by leros »

bob1029 wrote: post #217

I am definitely somewhere on this spectrum. If you find yourself in this bucket, try to add 1 more trick to your repertoire: Patience. For me, this has proven to be a far more difficult lesson than anything in the actual computer system. Sitting quietly and waiting for others to deliberate something important, often across days and weeks, feels like torture to me. Especially, when the answer is so obvious in my own m…

Patience is a good advice. I'll also say, it's often important to let people in various functions add their input, even if you can operate all those functions yourself.

My super power is being able to understand many aspects of the business (engineering, product, marketing, sales, etc) and hold it in my head all at once. At least to a degree. But enough of a degree that I can make decisions just about instantly in my head that would require most people to have numerous meetings to bring the various stakeholders together to figure out all the related components.

It works really well and I can do things very quickly and effectively, but it does often bother people that they're not involved in the process because they're used to having their inputs asked for.

Usually what I is parallelize the process. I'll make a preliminary decision in my head, start executing it on, and then in the background, I'll also have conversations with the various stakeholders. Usually, nothing comes out of it, but they get to feel included, and sometimes they do provide valuable input, so it is beneficial too.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#252

Post by ajkjk »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #241
ajkjk wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 professio…

Oh, I totally missed that one.

Yeah, sounds like "conn a ship" and "plan an invasion" are actually him just being weirdly militaristic. I guess he thinks everyone should have some career in the military for a while

No matter. My complain was that for some reason you were making the other ones sound like they take a long time to learn, which is obviously absurd.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#253

Post by random314 »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #196
random314 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specialist and fungible are contradictory. It's true that they don't hire specialists - but there are only 7-8 different software profiles they look for. 1. ML 2. Systems 3. Product 4. Data engineer 5. SRE ....

Are you implying most companies have 37 profiles? Even this article was giving multiple examples or a little Web shop that probably has less profiles than 7.

Obviously no.

What I meant is that they don't specifically try to hire nodejs/computer vision/graphics/kubernetes specialists etc.

Lots of startups and mid level companies are looking to hire specialists in computer vision, nlp, scala expertise etc.

So startups can have 4-5 highly specialized profiles.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#254

Post by asabla »

prox wrote: post #203
asabla wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Yeah this comment thread is certainly enlightening in that regard. Maybe I should rethink my strategy! May I ask what you market yourself now?

I've kind of switched over to a more specialized direction, but I still do include all/some the general stuff as well.

Meaning: It's imperative you explain there is a focus on what you're specialized/interested in. And if they're still interested there is a lot of extra goodies you know as well. But only as long as it's part of the assignment/position you're interviewing for.

I know this answer is a bit vague, but I hope it was still to some good use for you.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#255

Post by hogbutcher »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #216
analog31 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take is that Heinlein was trying to write literature, not documentation. So a colorful exaggeration makes sense.

People, including the poster I was replying to aren’t generally writing literature when they quote it though, and they like quoting that a lot.

How about you actually try to learn butchering a hog and stop complaining how hard it is? It took me about two hogs and a good teacher to get it sufficiently right, and I was a ten-year old kid back then. Claiming that simple things like that take years to learn is writing rich literature. Earning a living doing skill X takes a lot longer, but learning those skills is not a big trouble. If you've had an active rural childhood with good parents most of those skills are "completed" very early.

Writing a good poem and planning an invasion takes some maturity, but those should be interpreted similarly. Learn about basic logistics and doing projects and then you can plan an invasion. Making things more complicated than they are is just another way to do nothing at all. Learning takes some time and effort, if it's too much for you I understand, but don't discourage others with your weak excuses while thinking that you must become a specialist in every field to become a generalist.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#256

Post by hogbutcher »

RajT88 wrote: post #193
b800h wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, with caveats. There's the idea of a "T-shaped person": A little bit of knowledge in a lot of things, with deep knowledge in one area. This is what organisations tend to hire for. The wildcard person eventually develops into a shape more akin to the differencing mark seen in heraldry for first-born sons. Much broader and deeper general knowledge, and several areas of very deep knowledge. As one of these pe…

You are getting into a metaphor I saw here on HN some years back: "The Paint Drip" model of skilling. The more you paint over a spot, the more it drips as paint accumulates. The things you spend the most time on, have the longest drips. Some may be in a T-shape, but as you say, there may be many longish drips in a person's skillset. For the first 10 years of my career, I was more T-shaped. But also pretty good at jum…

>"Try me; who knows what I'll know or be able to figure out". This mindset is usually highly toxic in workplace. At minimum it's a nice way to get yourself branded the official a-hole smartypants of the company.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#257

Post by RajT88 »

hogbutcher wrote: post #256
RajT88 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are getting into a metaphor I saw here on HN some years back: "The Paint Drip" model of skilling. The more you paint over a spot, the more it drips as paint accumulates. The things you spend the most time on, have the longest drips. Some may be in a T-shape, but as you say, there may be many longish drips in a person's skillset. For the first 10 years of my career, I was more T-shaped. But also pretty good at jum…

>"Try me; who knows what I'll know or be able to figure out". This mindset is usually highly toxic in workplace. At minimum it's a nice way to get yourself branded the official a-hole smartypants of the company.

Nah. I am definitely not that guy.

Toxic, perhaps for me. In that if I see something not getting done and I cannot get anyone to do something about it, I will try and handle it. I learn a lot along the way, but at times have too heavy a workload as a result.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#258

Post by captainkrtek »

exmadscientist wrote: post #130
captainkrtek wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I relate to this with my ADHD as well. I work for a certain cloud provider, and made my name by ambulance chasing both on my team and company-wide for interesting problems. Turned debugging complex networking/systems/security/etc. issues, regardless of my day to day role, into my “specialization”. My actual role is still as a software engineer on a team in the networking domain, so it works nicely. Over the years has…

Remember also that "ADHD" is more complicated than a binary off-or-on thing. I've never been diagnosed with ADHD and doubt I would be if specifically evaluated for it, but I have another diagnosis that comes with "ADHD-lite" behavior as part of its usual phenotype. It originates from a different place (as far as anyone knows) but it sure looks pretty similar. So what I'm saying is, you should think of "ADHD" as a len…

Definitely agree, and to clarify I do have a diagnosis (and take medication). I don’t view it as a condition per-se, just part of who I am, as well as something that makes life interesting.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#259

Post by krimpenrik »

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…

This is also me to the dot. I am also trailing ADHD pills to mitigate the bad organizatio part. I am 33, and i am looking forward in my agenda planning for a week or 2. Before this would be 2 hours.

I also feel that the wildcard person is like this because of some specific characteristics, like to never want to quitte before working etc, which comes with huge downsides, couple relationships on my end.

My saying is that I can fix anything if you give me enough time.

To all the wildcards, shield yourself from abuse by your employer.

Re: What Is a Wildcard Person?

#260

Post by riekus »

dax77 wrote: post #15

This is targeted at a would-be wildcard manager, but for those of you who identify this way, how do you describe this skillset? I’m a combination product manager, data engineer, strategy consultant, and UX/UI designer. While everyone I’ve ever worked with sees that I really am capable across those roles in time, it’s been challenging to convey the breadth of expertise to a hiring manager, without seeming quite arroga…

I identify myself with the wildcard person. I would adjust my resume to lean more towards the hiring position. After hirin they get to know the swiss army knife.
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