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Don't Look for Talent, Find People Who Do Things

tuckermax.me

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Re: Don't Look for Talent, Find People Who Do Things

#31

Post by sliverstorm »

_greim_ wrote: post #4

> Don't look for talent Isn't talent the ability to do things well? Or maybe I lack a nuanced definition of "talent". Or maybe the headline is trying to be sensational.

You can boil the point of the article down to this line:

no one is good at identifying talent ahead of time

It isn't that you don't want talent, or that talent isn't exactly what you want all of your employees to have, but it is difficult to identify. So, the theory in the article seems to go, instead of trying to measure talent, look for other things in your workers- things that have a non-causal relationship to talent.

I swear there is a word for this in statistics- factors which do not have a clear causal relationship, yet still tend to be found together...

Re: Don't Look for Talent, Find People Who Do Things

#33

Post by bennyg »

iamareyoucreat wrote: post #17
dsirijus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often, people confuse swirling ideas seeking form in their head for creativity.

I think the other situation is more common: smart people with swirling unique thoughts keep them hidden because they don't consider themselves creative.

I agree completely. When I was in Art school I was working on a project that instead of using charcoal to create the darks on a white sheet of paper, the assignment was to use a white conte crayon to denote the light areas on a black sheet of paper. I had taken my assignment home and was working on it in my living room when a neighbor and friend of mine knocked on my door and he came in and looked at what I was doing. He was a Mech. E student, and a damn smart person. He told me to my face that he could never do what I was doing because he wasn't creative.

"Creative" doesn't just apply to visual arts - it's a thinking style. And every human, ever, is creative - just in different avenues. And those avenues are all obtainable by all people.

Re: Don't Look for Talent, Find People Who Do Things

#34

Post by metaphorm »

iamareyoucreat wrote: post #17
dsirijus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often, people confuse swirling ideas seeking form in their head for creativity.

I think the other situation is more common: smart people with swirling unique thoughts keep them hidden because they don't consider themselves creative.

there are lots of smart people with good ideas. there are very few smart people with good ideas who have MADE SOMETHING based on one of those ideas.

Re: Don't Look for Talent, Find People Who Do Things

#35

Post by nether »

bennyg wrote: post #33
iamareyoucreat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the other situation is more common: smart people with swirling unique thoughts keep them hidden because they don't consider themselves creative.

I agree completely. When I was in Art school I was working on a project that instead of using charcoal to create the darks on a white sheet of paper, the assignment was to use a white conte crayon to denote the light areas on a black sheet of paper. I had taken my assignment home and was working on it in my living room when a neighbor and friend of mine knocked on my door and he came in and looked at what I was doing…

Today "creative" usually refers to originality, not the act of creation. It's no worse than using "engineer" to mean computer programmer rather than someone who works on something with an engine.

Re: Don't Look for Talent, Find People Who Do Things

#36

Post by metaphorm »

nawitus wrote: post #22
wonnage wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have your cause and effect backwards. Being paid 50k doesn't make you a bad developer. But bad developers tend to get paid less. At least, one would hope...

Developer pay seems to be mostly based on "years worked", not on merit.

pretty much. the only time you can really use income to try and glean the quality of a developer is if they have alot of years of experience but still aren't being paid very much.

Re: Don't Look for Talent, Find People Who Do Things

#37

Post by metaphorm »

_greim_ wrote: post #4

> Don't look for talent Isn't talent the ability to do things well? Or maybe I lack a nuanced definition of "talent". Or maybe the headline is trying to be sensational.

the criticism is that some people believe they can correlate talent with abstract measurements. Tucker is saying you can only reliably correlate talent by evaluating the works of the person.

Re: Don't Look for Talent, Find People Who Do Things

#39

Post by bennyg »

wonnage wrote: post #21
rza wrote: post #13

"Dogshit developers get paid 50k to start. Good ones are over 100k. You just have to have actual skills." Because how much someone makes determines if they're dogshit or not.

I think you have your cause and effect backwards. Being paid 50k doesn't make you a bad developer. But bad developers tend to get paid less. At least, one would hope...

Location, location, location matters too. $50k in Alabama is at least $100k in SF.
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