4 ms·

I tend to put it this way: If you are entrepreneurially/leadership- minded and can develop a talent for identifying talent, you can be 10x, even 100x more valua

I tend to put it this way: If you are entrepreneurially/leadership- minded and can develop a talent for identifying talent, you can be 10x, even 100x more valuable than any engineer because you become a force multiplier who recognizes real talent and empowers it - and the best part is that everyone else is dragging their knuckles on the ground and obsessed with pretentious gate-keeping. The opportunity level is wide-open.

majormajor 3y ago
If you want to make money off of being better at hiring than Google et al you need two things: 1) the product idea for something to build that you can sell profitably 2) the hiring skill Neither of those are trivial to develop. I do tend the think the second isn't that hard to develop for specific situations (FAANG interviews are really aimed at hiring people who they could swap around to large different sorts of teams or roles and get along with, and be productive with, a huge swath of the company, though IME in practice that doesn't happen terribly often these days). But if you're doing it for someone else's company, your upside is capped by the upside of the company you're working for. And your reward is too - you're not going to command 10x the pay from a CEO you report to who doesn't themselves understand the difficulty of the hiring you're doing compared to "just copy Google" (or why they wouldn't have good results with the latter).
borroka 3y ago
A talent for identifying talent needs to be supported with numbers and effect sizes. The relative absence of numbers from the conversation is what allows many directors of football/soccer (those who recommend the purchase or sell of players) to boast about their stature as talent scouts. Indeed, it is not surprising that directors of soccer focus on successes and tend to gloss over the many blunders made. Which makes it difficult, as in many other fields, to distinguish the role of luck and ability in successes and failures. Almost always, in my experience, those with the most money and at least an average "eye" succeed in doing the best that can be done: everything else is a game of chance. A more sophisticated and technically oriented person would say that the most that can be done is to increase the odds of success, but then we are all left to the whims of fate: the young soccer player who many thought would be a sure bet will turn out to be one among many, and the average player at age 16 will have the growth spurt in the next two years that will make his body more conducive to stellar success (but was the growth spurt predictable?). What I can say is that there have been several attempts to create a special agency for the identification and management of talent in the technology industry, but none has turned out to be more than a higher-level contracting firm.

majormajor 3y ago

If you want to make money off of being better at hiring than Google et al you need two things: 1) the product idea for something to build that you can sell profitably 2) the hiring skill Neither of those are trivial to develop. I do tend the think the second isn't that hard to develop for specific situations (FAANG interviews are really aimed at hiring people who they could swap around to large different sorts of teams or roles and get along with, and be productive with, a huge swath of the company, though IME in practice that doesn't happen terribly often these days). But if you're doing it for someone else's company, your upside is capped by the upside of the company you're working for. And your reward is too - you're not going to command 10x the pay from a CEO you report to who doesn't themselves understand the difficulty of the hiring you're doing compared to "just copy Google" (or why they wouldn't have good results with the latter).

borroka 3y ago

A talent for identifying talent needs to be supported with numbers and effect sizes. The relative absence of numbers from the conversation is what allows many directors of football/soccer (those who recommend the purchase or sell of players) to boast about their stature as talent scouts. Indeed, it is not surprising that directors of soccer focus on successes and tend to gloss over the many blunders made. Which makes it difficult, as in many other fields, to distinguish the role of luck and ability in successes and failures. Almost always, in my experience, those with the most money and at least an average "eye" succeed in doing the best that can be done: everything else is a game of chance. A more sophisticated and technically oriented person would say that the most that can be done is to increase the odds of success, but then we are all left to the whims of fate: the young soccer player who many thought would be a sure bet will turn out to be one among many, and the average player at age 16 will have the growth spurt in the next two years that will make his body more conducive to stellar success (but was the growth spurt predictable?). What I can say is that there have been several attempts to create a special agency for the identification and management of talent in the technology industry, but none has turned out to be more than a higher-level contracting firm.