“A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept”
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Re: “A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept”
#2Link without the annoying Quora-login pop-over: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-profound-life-lesson...
Re: “A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept”
#3One of Ousterhout's examples of this principle is something that comes up frequently on HN:
"Before I came back to academia a couple of years ago I was out doing startups. What I noticed is that when people hire they are almost always hire based on experience. They're looking for somebody's resume trying to find the person who has already done the job they want them to do three times over. That's basically hiring based on Y-intercept.
Personally I don't think that's a very good way to hire. The people who are doing the same thing over and over again often get burnt out and typically the reason they're doing the same thing over and over again is they've maxed out. They can't do anything more than that. And, in fact, typically what happens when you level off is you level off slightly above your level of competence. So in fact you're not actually doing the current job all that well.
So what I would always hire on is based on aptitude, not on experience. You know, is this person ready to do the job? They may never have done it before and have no experience in this area, but are they a smart person who can figure things out? Are they a quick learner? And I've found that's a much better way to get really effective people."
Re: “A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept”
#4Why do Quora articles continue to make the front page when we can't read them? I'm greeted with http://i.imgur.com/WTeSt8s.png No, I won't sign in with Google, nor Facebook.
How do the people upvoting this read the article? Do they sign in? What possible benefit is there to signing in? They're basically holding content hostage.
When I defended Scribd, people came out in droves to point out how wrong it was to hold unique content hostage. I'll admit, it made me rethink my position. But it's strange to see that Quora doesn't get the same stick.
EDIT: If the HN homepage had a popup saying "Login with Google or Facebook to read all of HN," would you tolerate it?
Re: “A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept”
#5Re: “A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept”
#6Good points. I would add to his last point though that hiring at least one person with a high y-intercept can increase the slope of your other hires significantly. (It's a lot easier to learn something quickly if you have someone around who already knows a lot about it.) And people who both know a lot and learn quickly are expensive and rare, so I expect the optimal hiring process would look for a large percentage of relatively inexperienced fast learners, along with a small (but non-zero) percentage of more experienced people, even if they aren't likely to develop as quickly. (Perhaps consultants would fit well in that role too.)
Re: “A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept”
#7Why do Quora articles continue to make the front page when we can't read them? I'm greeted with http://i.imgur.com/WTeSt8s.png No, I won't sign in with Google, nor Facebook. How do the people upvoting this read the article? Do they sign in? What possible benefit is there to signing in? They're basically holding content hostage. When I defended Scribd, people came out in droves to point out how wrong it was to hold un…
I believe it's because everyone knows you can add ?share=1 at the end and have it work.
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-profound-life-lesson...
Still, I'm not a fan of this either.
Re: “A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept”
#8Why do Quora articles continue to make the front page when we can't read them? I'm greeted with http://i.imgur.com/WTeSt8s.png No, I won't sign in with Google, nor Facebook. How do the people upvoting this read the article? Do they sign in? What possible benefit is there to signing in? They're basically holding content hostage. When I defended Scribd, people came out in droves to point out how wrong it was to hold un…
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Re: “A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept”
#9Why do Quora articles continue to make the front page when we can't read them? I'm greeted with http://i.imgur.com/WTeSt8s.png No, I won't sign in with Google, nor Facebook. How do the people upvoting this read the article? Do they sign in? What possible benefit is there to signing in? They're basically holding content hostage. When I defended Scribd, people came out in droves to point out how wrong it was to hold un…
I believe it's because everyone knows you can add ?share=1 at the end and have it work. https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-profound-life-lesson... Still, I'm not a fan of this either.
Perhaps HN could either do this automatically for Quora links, or simply prohibit Quora links that don't already have this added?
Re: “A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept”
#10One of Ousterhout's examples of this principle is something that comes up frequently on HN: "Before I came back to academia a couple of years ago I was out doing startups. What I noticed is that when people hire they are almost always hire based on experience. They're looking for somebody's resume trying to find the person who has already done the job they want them to do three times over. That's basically hiring bas…
Intriguingly, that's the opposite of what's popular on HN. HN and /r/programming posters prefer the "Look at what I've done. Here are my projects" approach which is the y-intercept because it describes where they are. Asking them a question they've never heard before and observing their approach is a way (albeit imperfect) of seeing how fast one can deal with a novel problem.