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>> Bill stopped what he was doing, fetched the sources for emacs (using ftp), found the source of the bug, fixed it, and sent off a patch. After that he restart

>> Bill stopped what he was doing, fetched the sources for emacs (using ftp), found the source of the bug, fixed it, and sent off a patch. After that he restarted emacs and continued right where he left off. >> Greatness isn't about "team player", "hard working", (...) Greatness is a property of the person, a deep love of the craft, and a focus on "doing it right". In your history I see a great deal of "hard work" and "team player". Moreover, to be able to perform like that, I'm quite sure he has been hard working for a long time. Of course, there is talent and virtuosity which I'm not downplaying. My point is that when people see such a virtuous performance (in all fields, like you mentioned), where there is clearly a lot of talent, there is a tendency to downplay the hard working part.

YZF 6y ago
Can't speak for the OP but I read "hard working" in double quotes as something that's not the same as someone who spent a lot of time perfecting their craft. So in the Dilbert sense of the word. I do notice the paper defines it as "someone who is willing to work for more than 8 hour days to deliver the software product". I'm thinking meh. I think hard work at some point is a requirement to achieving excellence in most disciplines, in something like martial arts, or music, pretty much everyone I consider to be great has spent some years where their whole life was the discipline. I'm not really aware of someone who got there by raw talent without the practice (there might be examples). My experience with software engineering is similar. However that's not the same as saying you'll become great by working 10 hour days, i.e. that sense of "hard working". You need to be in the right mindset. Also this sort of folklore is cool but you have to consider the context, great musicians are not necessarily great in any style of music or with any instrument. That said, some people are surprising skilled in broad areas and the skills do tend to transfer within the discipline to some degree. On top of that, to the novice, an intermediate may be considered great. You really need to have some perspective to be able to recognize greatness and appreciate it. EDIT: random btw is that most 6 string guitar chords work just as well with a missing string. Most simple chords have 3 notes in them and so with 6 strings there's enough redundancy. If you know where the root, third and 5th are in the chord (which most intermediate guitar players know) you'll immediately know whether the missing string removes any of those (even if it does the chord will still sound fine, you don't necessarily need all those 3 notes). Transposing on the fly is a little harder, but you don't really need to be a master to do that... So stuff like that may seem like magic but isn't necessarily so... Playing by ear is cool, usually people who start playing young are better at this, especially if this is how they started. This skill, to some degree, is also reasonably common...
lbblack 6y ago
Hard work is the essence of what produces so-called talent. It seems to my understanding that talent is more so the culmination of a chain of clever thinking which ultimately derives more understanding and natural association with XYZ, than a deterministic natural born trait. Albeit, there are most definitely physical strengths tied to DNA, it wouldn't be entirely far-fetched to claim that different people have different mental strengths. However, hard work doesn't always produce greatness. It would be misleading to say that hard work is equivalent to all other hard work. It's not. It's synonymous with the phrase, "practice makes perfect." Yet the phrase should really be amended to "perfect practice makes perfect." Aimless, bad practice will led to aimless, bad results. Mental focus and barricades are huge components as well. The greats are just as human as the rest of us. Comparison is mentally debilitating for everyone, especially if "talented" individuals have a higher rate of growth than the average. Yet I have to wonder, does the individual who "desires greatness" aspire to achieve validation for ego-boosting fictional accomplishments or truly wish to push the edge of their capabilities to their respective human limits? The former have no chance at putting their energy into prospective efforts. The latter may continue to develop and create something the world hasn't seen before, and or realize that they can do things they had believed they couldn't before.
- red_admiral 6y ago
  I agree - there's a huge different between wall-clock time spent on a task, and amount of actual progress made. Perhaps a talent in an area is simply the ability to use your practice time on those things that actually take you further.
red_admiral 6y ago
This is a point where Part III of Scott Alexander's [parable of the talents](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-talents/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-tal...) might be worth linking to. TLDR: Scott and his younger brother were both enrolled in piano class. His brother took to it and is now an internationally known musician. Scott meanwhile started off trying equally hard but never got anywhere in music - but won writing competition after writing competition without it feeling like effort to him.
analog31 6y ago
I think there's work and there's work. The people who've I've observed with great engineering talent have certainly worked to get it, but they have been selective to the point of selfishness about what work they do. That work might look like "fun" to colleagues, and so they are diplomatic about it, or don't do it completely out in the open. Of course the proliferation of free engineering tools makes it possible for them to have two lives, one doing the "hard work" that satisfies colleagues during the day, and the other "hard work" that develops talent at night. I've also seen many young engineers plunge straight into "hard work" consisting of running the CAD terminal and fighting fires, and those engineers were recognized as being productive but lost their fundamental knowledge and did not become great engineers.
Clubber 6y ago
I like to compare endeavors to athletics. People have natural talent that, by itself, will take you so far. People with less natural talent can work hard and supersede people with superior natural talent that don't work hard. To be the top of the top, you must have natural talent and nurture and bolster that with hard work. The common denominator of all the exceptional people is hard work.

YZF 6y ago

Can't speak for the OP but I read "hard working" in double quotes as something that's not the same as someone who spent a lot of time perfecting their craft. So in the Dilbert sense of the word. I do notice the paper defines it as "someone who is willing to work for more than 8 hour days to deliver the software product". I'm thinking meh. I think hard work at some point is a requirement to achieving excellence in most disciplines, in something like martial arts, or music, pretty much everyone I consider to be great has spent some years where their whole life was the discipline. I'm not really aware of someone who got there by raw talent without the practice (there might be examples). My experience with software engineering is similar. However that's not the same as saying you'll become great by working 10 hour days, i.e. that sense of "hard working". You need to be in the right mindset. Also this sort of folklore is cool but you have to consider the context, great musicians are not necessarily great in any style of music or with any instrument. That said, some people are surprising skilled in broad areas and the skills do tend to transfer within the discipline to some degree. On top of that, to the novice, an intermediate may be considered great. You really need to have some perspective to be able to recognize greatness and appreciate it. EDIT: random btw is that most 6 string guitar chords work just as well with a missing string. Most simple chords have 3 notes in them and so with 6 strings there's enough redundancy. If you know where the root, third and 5th are in the chord (which most intermediate guitar players know) you'll immediately know whether the missing string removes any of those (even if it does the chord will still sound fine, you don't necessarily need all those 3 notes). Transposing on the fly is a little harder, but you don't really need to be a master to do that... So stuff like that may seem like magic but isn't necessarily so... Playing by ear is cool, usually people who start playing young are better at this, especially if this is how they started. This skill, to some degree, is also reasonably common...

lbblack 6y ago

Hard work is the essence of what produces so-called talent. It seems to my understanding that talent is more so the culmination of a chain of clever thinking which ultimately derives more understanding and natural association with XYZ, than a deterministic natural born trait. Albeit, there are most definitely physical strengths tied to DNA, it wouldn't be entirely far-fetched to claim that different people have different mental strengths. However, hard work doesn't always produce greatness. It would be misleading to say that hard work is equivalent to all other hard work. It's not. It's synonymous with the phrase, "practice makes perfect." Yet the phrase should really be amended to "perfect practice makes perfect." Aimless, bad practice will led to aimless, bad results. Mental focus and barricades are huge components as well. The greats are just as human as the rest of us. Comparison is mentally debilitating for everyone, especially if "talented" individuals have a higher rate of growth than the average. Yet I have to wonder, does the individual who "desires greatness" aspire to achieve validation for ego-boosting fictional accomplishments or truly wish to push the edge of their capabilities to their respective human limits? The former have no chance at putting their energy into prospective efforts. The latter may continue to develop and create something the world hasn't seen before, and or realize that they can do things they had believed they couldn't before.

red_admiral 6y ago
I agree - there's a huge different between wall-clock time spent on a task, and amount of actual progress made. Perhaps a talent in an area is simply the ability to use your practice time on those things that actually take you further.

red_admiral 6y ago

This is a point where Part III of Scott Alexander's [parable of the talents](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-talents/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-tal...) might be worth linking to. TLDR: Scott and his younger brother were both enrolled in piano class. His brother took to it and is now an internationally known musician. Scott meanwhile started off trying equally hard but never got anywhere in music - but won writing competition after writing competition without it feeling like effort to him.

analog31 6y ago

I think there's work and there's work. The people who've I've observed with great engineering talent have certainly worked to get it, but they have been selective to the point of selfishness about what work they do. That work might look like "fun" to colleagues, and so they are diplomatic about it, or don't do it completely out in the open. Of course the proliferation of free engineering tools makes it possible for them to have two lives, one doing the "hard work" that satisfies colleagues during the day, and the other "hard work" that develops talent at night. I've also seen many young engineers plunge straight into "hard work" consisting of running the CAD terminal and fighting fires, and those engineers were recognized as being productive but lost their fundamental knowledge and did not become great engineers.

Clubber 6y ago

I like to compare endeavors to athletics. People have natural talent that, by itself, will take you so far. People with less natural talent can work hard and supersede people with superior natural talent that don't work hard. To be the top of the top, you must have natural talent and nurture and bolster that with hard work. The common denominator of all the exceptional people is hard work.