4 ms·

You create a strawman. Nobody denies what you claim. The issue is not at all the existence of "great people" (for anything). The problem is how do you find the

You create a strawman. Nobody denies what you claim. The issue is not at all the existence of "great people" (for anything). The problem is how do you find them. You have a thousand people in front of you. Now please make a prediction that actually works reliably for big numbers of people. Your argument suffers from the same problem as any of the others that always come up after something happened, "why didn't they...". You look backwards. You make a "prediction"about something in the past and of course you get 100% accuracy and think "that's easy". Okay, now please make tat prediction for the future. You have people in front of you whom you know zilch about. Now make - en mass - statements about their future work that when looking back from the future will still look good. About your > Was Heaviside a great engineer? Now please make that backward-looking prediction about his greatness for the same person before it turned out that he was good. And not just for one person either, do it for thousands of not-famous people with some degree of consistency. And then report about all your predictions, not just the few that worked, and don't forget to mention if you did some extreme filtering beforehand in order to ensure you get a lot of "hits", leaving a large part of potential candidates without any chance to begin with. That kind of thing works for some (like so many "recipes for success") but not for society.

sokoloff 9y ago
> You have a thousand people in front of you. Now please make a prediction that actually works reliably for big numbers of people. The simplest answer is to predict that 0 of the 1000 are great developers. That will be reliable for most cohorts of 1000 people and most active industry applicants for developer positions. You can only reliably find greatness by filtering through many college applicants, training and mentoring them, keeping, motivating, and incenting the best, or by using networking and references to find the standout performers. It’s so rare for these industry experienced people to need to apply for a job cold that that is a tremendously adverse pool from which to select in my experience If greatness is the goal. If good enough is the goal, there are plenty more of those devs available.
- pkaye 9y ago
  So your plan would be to hire all the college applicants that applied (or a random sample) and then mentor and train them to see who works out the best?
  - sokoloff 9y ago
    No, you hire the ones who seem interested, skilled “enough”, and intelligent (possibly in reverse order of importance). You can very safely make a cut against some very likely poor candidates. But yeah, you have a light filter and then let them grow and evolve. You can’t possibly learn in 4 hours anywhere near what you can in 2 years. In college recruiting, you’re looking for “could be solid” and you get the raw material for that a lot. Some happen to turn out great. Finding greatness in industry is driven mostly by asking some of your best employees to search their networks for their best ex-colleagues and otherwise by dumb luck (someone tried a startup that went bust and no one in their network had an opening, someone is moving to a new city with no network, etc)
    - pkaye 9y ago
      Those three traits are exactly what I use for college recruiting. I guess some people look at great developers on an absolute scale but I consider it on a relative scale within the role under consideration. I consider those three traits make a junior candidate great. Actually those same traits are important for all roles. It is just that for junior roles I don't expect much beyond that.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

sokoloff 9y ago

> You have a thousand people in front of you. Now please make a prediction that actually works reliably for big numbers of people. The simplest answer is to predict that 0 of the 1000 are great developers. That will be reliable for most cohorts of 1000 people and most active industry applicants for developer positions. You can only reliably find greatness by filtering through many college applicants, training and mentoring them, keeping, motivating, and incenting the best, or by using networking and references to find the standout performers. It’s so rare for these industry experienced people to need to apply for a job cold that that is a tremendously adverse pool from which to select in my experience If greatness is the goal. If good enough is the goal, there are plenty more of those devs available.

pkaye 9y ago
So your plan would be to hire all the college applicants that applied (or a random sample) and then mentor and train them to see who works out the best?
- sokoloff 9y ago
  No, you hire the ones who seem interested, skilled “enough”, and intelligent (possibly in reverse order of importance). You can very safely make a cut against some very likely poor candidates. But yeah, you have a light filter and then let them grow and evolve. You can’t possibly learn in 4 hours anywhere near what you can in 2 years. In college recruiting, you’re looking for “could be solid” and you get the raw material for that a lot. Some happen to turn out great. Finding greatness in industry is driven mostly by asking some of your best employees to search their networks for their best ex-colleagues and otherwise by dumb luck (someone tried a startup that went bust and no one in their network had an opening, someone is moving to a new city with no network, etc)
  - pkaye 9y ago
    Those three traits are exactly what I use for college recruiting. I guess some people look at great developers on an absolute scale but I consider it on a relative scale within the role under consideration. I consider those three traits make a junior candidate great. Actually those same traits are important for all roles. It is just that for junior roles I don't expect much beyond that.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]