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I’ve seen projects DOA and entire product lines and services slowly die once the engineering talent leaves. Cheap talent can be used for maintenance but new pro

I’ve seen projects DOA and entire product lines and services slowly die once the engineering talent leaves. Cheap talent can be used for maintenance but new products and major revisions need a certain creative drive to envision the future and push through corporate entropy.

jltsiren 3y ago
Is it talent, or is it experience and a sense of ownership? Projects and products can fail when key people leave, because the organization no longer knows what it's doing. When the knowledge is gone, new people will have a hard time rediscovering it on their own. But they can have more success with new projects, because it's their project and they understand it.
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  For greenfield projects, voracious and relentless talent is integral to building great products. Talent is general aptitude coupled with fast learning within the general domain. Experience can often be detrimental as the person may be too biased to see what they are missing. I have experienced this bias first hand at AWS. Experience can be blinding as it doesn’t let you explore new ideas.
  - jltsiren 3y ago
    I didn't mean experience in general but experience with the specific project. If an organization loses everyone with that experience in a project, it's no longer their project. If they want to continue working on it, they must spend a lot of effort to understand it. I have more experience in the academia and with volunteer projects than in industry. Based on what I have seen, while talent does exist, it's rare. Success comes mostly from having the right mix of people working on the right project in the right environment. There are far more successful people and successful projects than truly talented people.
- notimetorelax 3y ago
  The word talent is being used in two senses here. The original meaning - an employee, you’re using it to mean an inherent ability. The article is about the top performing employees.

jltsiren 3y ago

Is it talent, or is it experience and a sense of ownership? Projects and products can fail when key people leave, because the organization no longer knows what it's doing. When the knowledge is gone, new people will have a hard time rediscovering it on their own. But they can have more success with new projects, because it's their project and they understand it.

PartiallyTyped 3y ago
For greenfield projects, voracious and relentless talent is integral to building great products. Talent is general aptitude coupled with fast learning within the general domain. Experience can often be detrimental as the person may be too biased to see what they are missing. I have experienced this bias first hand at AWS. Experience can be blinding as it doesn’t let you explore new ideas.
- jltsiren 3y ago
  I didn't mean experience in general but experience with the specific project. If an organization loses everyone with that experience in a project, it's no longer their project. If they want to continue working on it, they must spend a lot of effort to understand it. I have more experience in the academia and with volunteer projects than in industry. Based on what I have seen, while talent does exist, it's rare. Success comes mostly from having the right mix of people working on the right project in the right environment. There are far more successful people and successful projects than truly talented people.
notimetorelax 3y ago
The word talent is being used in two senses here. The original meaning - an employee, you’re using it to mean an inherent ability. The article is about the top performing employees.