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How is this different from "senior generalist who did a few deep dives in specific areas and projects"?
The deep dives are driven by curiosity rather than by projects necessarily.
CURIOSITY seems to be the horizontal line; i.e. the person's latent curiosity about things, domains, areas, etc, and the urge to explore/discover is what drives the horizontal movement.
The 'amount of paint' variable, which is clearly the most important part of the physical reality underpinning the metaphor, would perhaps be akin to COMPETENCE. Competence is a stand-in word for intelligence, grit, suitable background knowledge, and probably a host of other qualities.
So what's the grand conclusion here? That highly curious and highly competent people tend to be prolific in their output?
Not so surprising perhaps, but fun to think about.
Thought-provoking metaphor. Upon reflection, I think the article emphasizes the wrong aspect of this -- the drip part itself -- at the expense of the more interesting elements (the length and breadth of the horizontal line, the amount of paint, etc). CURIOSITY seems to be the horizontal line; i.e. the person's latent curiosity about things, domains, areas, etc, and the urge to explore/discover is what drives the hori…
Maybe there's some sweet spot, where founders have enough real-world experience to understand how the world works, and how to build things, but are still curious and driven enough to jump off and try.
Past that point, I fear that curiosity starts declining even as competence increases - say, when you're 50, will you get the feeling you 'know' the world in-and-out, you 'know' there's no easy opportunities... and besides, you have a teenager-filled family, a mortgage, etc all of which perhaps stifle really broad-ranging curiosity not least because your time has more demands on it.
I like this. Sounds like one can have multiple drips going at once, including some that hve been dripping for a long time.
> Eventually the last drip stops and a new one starts.
Is this sentence saying that at some point the multiple ongoing drips might stop (or slow to a crawl), but the person is still learning, because they're already starting new drips?
I'd prefer to avoid misinterpretations of short-attention-span or serial-dabbler.
Also, the characterization of T-shaped here speaks of interests, but the motivations for skill development might actually be necessities, such as in an early startup. The interest can be a side-effect of something needing doing. You start to dig into the solution domain, anchored around a real problem, and it becomes interesting.
If only we could be comb-shaped.
Thought-provoking metaphor. Upon reflection, I think the article emphasizes the wrong aspect of this -- the drip part itself -- at the expense of the more interesting elements (the length and breadth of the horizontal line, the amount of paint, etc). CURIOSITY seems to be the horizontal line; i.e. the person's latent curiosity about things, domains, areas, etc, and the urge to explore/discover is what drives the hori…
Self replying with another thought: I always find it remarkable when really young founders (like college-age) are successful, because they lack so much understanding about the world, business, people, etc. BUT they likely have a great deal more curiosity and drive than older folks. Maybe there's some sweet spot, where founders have enough real-world experience to understand how the world works, and how to build thing…
(In the US, a super HR person's Spidey Sense would tingle, and they'd fly across the building and yank the keyboard out of someone's hands, before certain sentences could be finished. Then sit down for a constructive discussion about why generalizations are not only counterproductive and unfair, but also a big policy no-no at most established US companies. But on HN, we just have to frequently ask to please stop saying that.)
Thought-provoking metaphor. Upon reflection, I think the article emphasizes the wrong aspect of this -- the drip part itself -- at the expense of the more interesting elements (the length and breadth of the horizontal line, the amount of paint, etc). CURIOSITY seems to be the horizontal line; i.e. the person's latent curiosity about things, domains, areas, etc, and the urge to explore/discover is what drives the hori…
Thought-provoking metaphor. Upon reflection, I think the article emphasizes the wrong aspect of this -- the drip part itself -- at the expense of the more interesting elements (the length and breadth of the horizontal line, the amount of paint, etc). CURIOSITY seems to be the horizontal line; i.e. the person's latent curiosity about things, domains, areas, etc, and the urge to explore/discover is what drives the hori…
I like that! I would tweak the "amount of paint" from Competence to Enthusiasm. If you have Curiosity + Enthusiasm, the rest will take care of itself. That's why a 25 year old who just learned programming is more likely to develop an innovative new database than a 45 year old database expert who has "seen it all."
Thanks for sharing! I often call myself a flat bar, because I'm missing the one specialization for the T-shape. This description of the 'paint drip person' hit really close to home, so I think that that's what I'll call myself in the future.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Self replying with another thought: I always find it remarkable when really young founders (like college-age) are successful, because they lack so much understanding about the world, business, people, etc. BUT they likely have a great deal more curiosity and drive than older folks. Maybe there's some sweet spot, where founders have enough real-world experience to understand how the world works, and how to build thing…
It's a not-unusual theory, but it's bumping into something I'd really like to avoid (especially on HN), which is negative generalizations of different age/gender/racial/familystatus/etc. demographics in business contexts. (In the US, a super HR person's Spidey Sense would tingle, and they'd fly across the building and yank the keyboard out of someone's hands, before certain sentences could be finished. Then sit down…
I guess the classical example of this is the renaissance man, but that at least required different fields like art and science and not different kinds of programming.