Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would rarely be effective to market yourself as a generalist on paper. If you have 3 primary skill sets you should have 3 focused resumes. If you want a position that requires a generalist, the only/best fit would be founder. In almost all other circumstances, companies hire for a problem and not general optimizations. Even if they need a generalist. I would posit that you have a marketing problem and not a skills…
If you've worked in the different specialties at different jobs (rather than interleaving all 3), won't focused resumes have glaring temporal holes in them?
Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
481–490 of 506 posts
Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always understood it to mean that a good idea doesn’t sell unless you execute well on it, and also that an idea doesn’t need to be unique, it just needs to be executed better than the competitors.
But that is also not always the case. If you are first to market you don't need to be executing better than the competitors since they don't necessarily exist. It's way more complex and subtle than the "execution is all that matters" or the "my idea is secured in a password protected powerpoint" camp. I have helped over a 100 startups and at least in my experience, it's not more correct to say execution is all that m…
Or, to put it another way, the founders made an MVP from their initial (for argument's sake, poor) idea, and then couldn't find product-market fit before running out of (bootstrapped or VC-funded) runway. Your argument, then, is that some ideas and MVPs make it impossible to find product-market fit, no matter who the founders / executive team are, because there is no market or whatever other reason beyond the startup's control.
And you would be correct if it wasn't possible for startups to pivot. But they do, sometimes multiple times, and sometimes successfully. Part of the reason why execution is everything is because good executives can take what the startup has learned about its product and its market, understand that the startup's current trajectory leads to bankruptcy, and make the necessary pivot which presents better odds at viability.
Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
#483This one had me stop >The explosive growth of the tech sector keeps average age down and depresses average wages. Compared to industries which existed in materially the same form in 1970, we have a stupidly compressed experience spectrum: 5+ years rounds to "senior." This is not a joke. I agree that it compresses the experience spectrum, but has the opposite effect on wages. It's tough to find any industry that pays…
Tech does not pay for experience. A new grad's compensation is often equal and some times greater than someone who's been in the trenches for 20 years. I don't know any other profession with this absurd inversion. And with a few notable exceptions, the idea that someone with 5 years of experience is Senior-anything is ridiculous. I remember myself at 5 years out, I didn't know shit compared to today. Yet, adjusted fo…
Nor should it. You should be payed for the type of work you do and there is only so much an individual contributor can do. However, at big companies, there are many levels and compensation ranges by a factor of 10 from the lowest level to the highest. You can make those big pay bumps but you have to perform at the required skills for the next level for which there are only so many available positions.
And from what I have experienced, while individuals can stall in their career progression if they don't pursue the responsibilities required for the next level, the higher ups are extremely correlated with experience.
Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
#484This one had me stop >The explosive growth of the tech sector keeps average age down and depresses average wages. Compared to industries which existed in materially the same form in 1970, we have a stupidly compressed experience spectrum: 5+ years rounds to "senior." This is not a joke. I agree that it compresses the experience spectrum, but has the opposite effect on wages. It's tough to find any industry that pays…
There is a reason software developer is consistently ranked as one of the best possible jobs.
Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
#485Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's tough to find any industry that pays more for the amount of experience/education. And in five years you'll be making about as much as you're ever going to make. I believe that was at least part of the point.
As someone with 25+ years in the same area of (non-web, non AmaGoogBook) engineering, this is totally the case. The wage curve goes flat and nobody offers anything above the median for increasingly large years of experience and battle scars.
Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
#486The hardest problem in B2C is distribution. The hardest problem in B2B is sales. AppAmaGooBookSoft are AppAmaGooBookSoft primarily because they have mortal locks on distribution. I agree with this, but I think it's interesting. Wasn't the Internet supposed to democratize distribution? All someone has to do is go to your website. And anybody can set up a website. So it seems like the Internet just shifted the goal pos…
> AppAmaGooBookSoft are AppAmaGooBookSoft primarily because they have mortal locks on distribution. Well, first of all, this isn't true. Google and FB aren't so profitable because of a distribution monopoly. They're profitable due to network effects.
How does google search get better from more people using it?
Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with all of that, though spending 4 years to make that determination seems crazy to me. A competent employer can figure out which hires are worthwhile in about a month or so. There’s another issue with using educational attainment as a proxy of intelligence: it doesn’t really help you distinguish among candidates who all have a bachelors degree. All you know is that they’re above some threshold, but not how f…
IQ test tell you how good someone is at pattern recognition, which is a major factor in abilo to learn. It doesn't tell you what they have learned, or if they have the criticality important skill of perseverance/grit. In fact, high IQ can reduce grit, since clever pattern matchers use their cleverness to avoid working hard on the toy problems of childhood.
I believe the words "bored to tears" summarize the experience quite well.
While the majority of pupils get a standardized curriculum designed to keep their interest at a steady pace, pupils with a high learning capacity get no such thing. If they try to learn faster, it doesn't fit with the governance and management model within which the teacher must operate. Therefore, most teachers are at a loss when faced with these statistical outliers.
Also, other pupils may experience emotions of inadequacy and unfairness when a fellow pupil just blasts through the material in minutes that would take them all week. This may lead to the high capacity pupil being a target of some unfortunate group dynamics.
Since schools have no governance model for this, the high learning capacity pupil's school experience is essentially unmanaged. At a loss, society almost invariably resorts to platitudes like "No need to feel sorry for them, because they are so fortunate to be smart. We must focus on the pupils that struggle."
A few years down the line, the pupil's inner motivation may be completely replaced by depression, self-blaming or worse. Then the platitudes take a turn for the worse with blaming the pupil's willingness to work: "In fact, high IQ can reduce grit, since clever pattern matchers use their cleverness to avoid working hard on the toy problems of childhood."
Fortunately, my own school days are long since gone. Without blaming any person in the system, I can say: "Good riddance!" to this whole pitiful affair of how society treated me as a child.
Instead, I can draw attention to this problem by saying clearly that these are children that never asked for these gifts in the first place. Let's as a society realize that what we are doing to them is absolutely wrong and woefully irresponsible.
Fortunately, at least one western country has political attention on this right now. I will work hard and with "grit" to make sure that my experience and observations can help in creating new policies. In particular I wish to address how to practically leverage the pupils' own drive to learn without incurring social/peer stigma or ridiculous costs.
Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
IQ test tell you how good someone is at pattern recognition, which is a major factor in abilo to learn. It doesn't tell you what they have learned, or if they have the criticality important skill of perseverance/grit. In fact, high IQ can reduce grit, since clever pattern matchers use their cleverness to avoid working hard on the toy problems of childhood.
My personal take on this is that high IQ quickly turns into a liability in childhood. Particularly when entering the school system. I believe the words "bored to tears" summarize the experience quite well. While the majority of pupils get a standardized curriculum designed to keep their interest at a steady pace, pupils with a high learning capacity get no such thing. If they try to learn faster, it doesn't fit with…
We are perfectly happy to identify athletic talent and enact systems so that the athletically talented are matched up with peers who share their gifts, but we mostly refuse to do this for intellectual talent.
I was fortunate enough to attend a program that handled this pretty well. Basically it was 120 kids from 11-18 who skipped high school and attended university together instead. It’s called the Early Entrance Program and it’s at Cal State Los Angeles:
http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/eep
The issue I face is that I am raising my children in Portland, Oregon, so this program will not be an option for them. Our personal approach is to home school instead. And I’ll probably investigate starting something like the Early Entrance Program at the state university in Portland here.
Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that is also not always the case. If you are first to market you don't need to be executing better than the competitors since they don't necessarily exist. It's way more complex and subtle than the "execution is all that matters" or the "my idea is secured in a password protected powerpoint" camp. I have helped over a 100 startups and at least in my experience, it's not more correct to say execution is all that m…
> Plenty of well-executed ideas don't ever go anywhere because the ideas were wrong, to begin with. Or, to put it another way, the founders made an MVP from their initial (for argument's sake, poor) idea, and then couldn't find product-market fit before running out of (bootstrapped or VC-funded) runway. Your argument, then, is that some ideas and MVPs make it impossible to find product-market fit, no matter who the f…
Again this obsessions witch claiming execution as somehow being in opposition to idea is what's wrong here.
Both are important.
Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already
#490Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Higher education is used as a proxy for intelligence by companies who are hiring because they are not allowed to use IQ tests. I think you're wrong about that, http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/sto...
Your link is to a story about an employer who uses a test which is a proxy for intelligence (they even give the rough equivalency between the test they use and IQ). I think that supports my point that intelligence is one of the more important things employers are looking for. Most employers don’t have the resources to develop a hiring screening test and then certify that it is not discriminatory, so they use educatio…
https://www.hiresuccess.com/blog/is-employment-testing-legal
>I think that supports my point
I didn't say it invalidated your point. I'm trying to draw your attention to a specific area in your statement that is wrong. You can simply say,
>Higher education is used as a proxy for intelligence by companies
That's enough. Nobody will argue with you about that.