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off topic - will the cliched human tendency of saying "X is just Y" ever end ?
Some people have made the solid point that a corollary to:
> After a baseline level of competency is satisfied, who you hire does not matter.
Is that the hiring team has a solid understanding of what that baseline level of competency is, in the first place. In my previous job, this was the limiting factor: the head of our hiring had absolutely no idea where that bar was.
These articles always skip over the all important context: What is the engineering team supposed to accomplish? > After a baseline level of competency is satisfied, who you hire does not matter. For your average CRUD web app this is obviously true. For the Manhattan Project it’s obviously false. Most engineering work falls somewhere in-between.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calutron_Girls
These were high school graduates (largely female), who sat around fiddling with the controls to manually run the uranium purification knobs.
Apparently, engineers and scientists were really bad at this job. I don't know how they figured it out, but high school females had just the right mindset to watch the control panel and move the dials correctly.
None of the Calutron Girls knew they were making the bomb. In fact, the article where I read about them was an interview with an old-lady in the 2000s, who was surprised to learn that her high-school summer job was building the A-Bomb!! I think they were told that it was very important for the war effort that they do their job correctly, but that was about it.
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So even for an incredibly complicated job like the Manhattan project (which obviously needed top-tier scientists), it turns out that top-tier scientists / engineers simply don't have the mindset to do some dreary day-to-day tasks. Other people (such as the Calutron Girls) may end up having a better mindset to do these parts of the job.
I wouldn't be surprised if our understanding of human psychology, sociology, and group-dynamics are still poor today. The ideal team composition is still a big mystery, especially on big hypothetical jobs like a "Manhattan Project".
These articles always skip over the all important context: What is the engineering team supposed to accomplish? > After a baseline level of competency is satisfied, who you hire does not matter. For your average CRUD web app this is obviously true. For the Manhattan Project it’s obviously false. Most engineering work falls somewhere in-between.
Funny you bring up the Manhattan project, as the actual uranium was purified by the "Calutron Girls". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calutron_Girls These were high school graduates (largely female), who sat around fiddling with the controls to manually run the uranium purification knobs. Apparently, engineers and scientists were really bad at this job. I don't know how they figured it out, but high school females had…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny you bring up the Manhattan project, as the actual uranium was purified by the "Calutron Girls". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calutron_Girls These were high school graduates (largely female), who sat around fiddling with the controls to manually run the uranium purification knobs. Apparently, engineers and scientists were really bad at this job. I don't know how they figured it out, but high school females had…
Yep, before we had mechanical and electronic computers, there were human computers, and they apparently too were mostly women: [0] . I think (but it's just a speculation of mine) that it's not because women inherently have a "better mindset to do some dreary day-to-day tasks" but that it's an acquired trait: I blame it on heavy training in cleaning and sewing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation)
I probably should be more specific: the enrichment facility had roughly 20,000 employees. That's more than enough time for managers to figure out who was good and/or bad at the job, as well as to build stereotypes / culture for how to pick out a good candidate for hiring.
It very well could be that these women had tedious hobbies (such as sewing, crochets, or other textile work), which made them predisposed to passing whatever tests the enrichment facility had.
In either case, the end result is the room full of tens of thousands of young women.
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Another link on the Calutron Girls: https://www.energy.gov/articles/five-fast-facts-about-calutr...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I understand the author, it's always obviously true. She just ups the baseline to genius level if you're on the Manhattan project. Which makes the statement mostly tautological: Hire only people capable of doing the work. Maybe she doesn't want you to hire overqualified people, and wants you to shift focus on what qualities the team as a whole is missing. All of this never makes it out of hiring 101 teritor…
I mean, is it true even then? I know it doesn't work like that, but as a first approximation we can imagine that people working on the Manhattan project would be able to write some javascript or whatever given the chance, while the opposite isn't true. So you would still want to hire the best people you can get your hands on: maybe you underestimated the difficulty of the current project, or the next one will be hard…
All the article is trying to say (as far as I can tell) is "do not wait for the perfect hire if you have a perfectly good hire".
The "complex contagion" and "network effects" are what triggered the insight for them, but are not really necessary to understanding the principle.
These articles always skip over the all important context: What is the engineering team supposed to accomplish? > After a baseline level of competency is satisfied, who you hire does not matter. For your average CRUD web app this is obviously true. For the Manhattan Project it’s obviously false. Most engineering work falls somewhere in-between.
Consider that it took Newton and Leibniz to invent calculus, but, once invented, we expect high school/college students to be able to learn it.
I think for almost all roles in the Manhattan Project (possibly everyone except Oppenheimer himself, and there were plenty of other candidates for even that role) you could hire and train anyone with a baseline level of competency in the work needed. It wasn't the sort of work that required genius, but at the same time, it was novel; nobody came into the project deeply experienced in refining uranium or whatever. So as long as you structured the project in a way that people could get up to speed quickly you were fine.
It's been an interesting thought exercise to ignore typical management styles focusing on command and control structures, and shifting to holistic view of the organization and the networks that support its function. i.e. if you want to understand success of your top performers, you have to consider the system they operate within and how it enables their success. I think that relates to the point of this article, and I really enjoyed connecting the dots.