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Almost everything he says needs a [citation needed] tag at the end of it. I guess that's one problem with public speaking--it's pretty hard to take apart in tha

Almost everything he says needs a [citation needed] tag at the end of it. I guess that's one problem with public speaking--it's pretty hard to take apart in that manner. One of his comments highlights his overall problem, ...that ineffible, illusive gift, "Being a good teacher" ...in other words, he seems to think that teaching ability is "ineffable" and that therefore the best way to find the good ones is to (???) hire a large number, find the best ones, and fire the rest. Or something like that. One way or the other, objective measures are to be thrown away. That's his overall point, but that is pretty impractical. Ultimately, you have to measure people in some manner. You can't hire uncredentialled people on the chance that they might be good--it just wouldn't work that way. I don't know why he went on about sports for so long. The "combines" that he talks about are actually the last measure used to weed out prospective hires. The sports agents actually do their most important work watching the kids perform athletics at a high school and college level. Likewise, smart employers of programmers will look at past projects and jobs, and only then subject them to brain-teasers and white-board coding. That's always how it's been. ADDENDUM: Does it seem like Gladwell waxes a little too long about the physical beauty of the Russian hockey player at the beginning: http://blogs.msg.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/07/02/cherepanov_blog_070207dr.jpg http://blogs.msg.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/07/02/cherepa... ...I mean, I may not talk with an aural swish in my voice, but I think I can tell (for instance) a George Clooney from a Slavic Lummox.

timr 18y ago
That argument makes no sense. We have to measure people? Really? Why? If his claims are correct, then Gladwell is right -- we're doing worse by screening people according to criteria that are useless, because we're essentially randomly filtering out a large percentage of the people who are good at the job. You can attack the evidence for his claims, but if the evidence holds, then the conclusion Gladwell reaches is a logical consequence.
- mynameishere 18y ago
  I'm sympathetic to his claims, as I went to a crap school and got a crap GPA. Okay. I'd love it if people had judged me based upon my winning personality, my good looks, or my tendency to point out everyone's foibles, but I'm not sure those are a superior measure of coding skill... Even if they were, they could be subjected to analysis and so become objective measures themselves. The practical reality is that lots of jobs have 1000s of aspirants. How many kids want to play in the NBA? MILLIONS. You need something to divide them up, and if one objective measure is genuinely bad, it needs to be replaced by a better objective measure.
  - timr 18y ago
    I think his argument is that the best objective measurement of a basketball player's skill is his ability to play basketball.
    - mynameishere 18y ago
      Sure. But that's tautological. If that's really his point (and it seems to be, yes) then he's obviously playing a joke on his audience.
      - timr 18y ago
        So what? A tautology is not a bad argument. If the "objective metrics" are useless discriminators, then the only effect of using them is to make us feel as though we have control over a situation that we don't understand. In that scenario, it makes far more sense to restructure the game to allow more initial participants, and to cull the best players. You seem to be arguing that we must have "objective" filtering mechanisms, even if they're random. Gladwell is saying that the whole paradigm is wrong.
delackner 18y ago
"hire a large number, find the best ones, and fire the rest" Actually, in many cases this is the only way to find the best candidates. The near impossibility of firing teachers is the biggest impediment to improving teaching quality in the United States.
- Retric 18y ago
  I don't think the problem is finding great teachers it's finding any teachers. I was a great tutor in Collage but I would never become a teacher because the pay sucks. If we payed teachers 100k / year and fired the poor ones we could have a great talent pool but as long as they make 1/2 what I do there are just not going to be a huge pool to draw from.
aristus 18y ago
I don't know if he's conscious of it, but Gladwell is parroting Socrates, right down to the impossibility of transmitting "true knowledge". Circular arguments anchored by a mystery. As a philosophy it has no practical purpose except to waste people's time while appearing sage.

timr 18y ago

That argument makes no sense. We have to measure people? Really? Why? If his claims are correct, then Gladwell is right -- we're doing worse by screening people according to criteria that are useless, because we're essentially randomly filtering out a large percentage of the people who are good at the job. You can attack the evidence for his claims, but if the evidence holds, then the conclusion Gladwell reaches is a logical consequence.

mynameishere 18y ago
I'm sympathetic to his claims, as I went to a crap school and got a crap GPA. Okay. I'd love it if people had judged me based upon my winning personality, my good looks, or my tendency to point out everyone's foibles, but I'm not sure those are a superior measure of coding skill... Even if they were, they could be subjected to analysis and so become objective measures themselves. The practical reality is that lots of jobs have 1000s of aspirants. How many kids want to play in the NBA? MILLIONS. You need something to divide them up, and if one objective measure is genuinely bad, it needs to be replaced by a better objective measure.
- timr 18y ago
  I think his argument is that the best objective measurement of a basketball player's skill is his ability to play basketball.
  - mynameishere 18y ago
    Sure. But that's tautological. If that's really his point (and it seems to be, yes) then he's obviously playing a joke on his audience.
    - timr 18y ago
      So what? A tautology is not a bad argument. If the "objective metrics" are useless discriminators, then the only effect of using them is to make us feel as though we have control over a situation that we don't understand. In that scenario, it makes far more sense to restructure the game to allow more initial participants, and to cull the best players. You seem to be arguing that we must have "objective" filtering mechanisms, even if they're random. Gladwell is saying that the whole paradigm is wrong.

delackner 18y ago

"hire a large number, find the best ones, and fire the rest" Actually, in many cases this is the only way to find the best candidates. The near impossibility of firing teachers is the biggest impediment to improving teaching quality in the United States.

Retric 18y ago
I don't think the problem is finding great teachers it's finding any teachers. I was a great tutor in Collage but I would never become a teacher because the pay sucks. If we payed teachers 100k / year and fired the poor ones we could have a great talent pool but as long as they make 1/2 what I do there are just not going to be a huge pool to draw from.

aristus 18y ago

I don't know if he's conscious of it, but Gladwell is parroting Socrates, right down to the impossibility of transmitting "true knowledge". Circular arguments anchored by a mystery. As a philosophy it has no practical purpose except to waste people's time while appearing sage.