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You'd think if professional sports could figure out how important this is we could too, but for some reason there's a tendency to give it lip service then put a

You'd think if professional sports could figure out how important this is we could too, but for some reason there's a tendency to give it lip service then put absolutely no effort into doing a good job. Scouting and screenings are done by people that companies treat like dirt, we incentivize them only for body count, interviews are done by low experience employees and employees who don't even like interviewing. We don't know how to identify and cultivate talent in this industry yet, it's clearly dysfunctional and deprioritized.

philwelch 3y ago
In professional sports you are selecting one of the few hundred or thousand best people in the world. Its not even remotely the same impact.
- tracerbulletx 3y ago
  Every successful athletic team makes player scouting and development a core function, not only the elite levels. In the US that means minor league baseball teams, university teams from volleyball and fencing, to football and basketball. Pro cycling teams that pay almost nothing and aren't competitive world wide.. It's not just the elite teams that make this top priority. They ALL know that the most driven talented players they can get at their level is what will make them win.
  - philwelch 3y ago
    Most of your examples are talent pipelines for the top leagues. Regardless I think you made my point for me at the end: > They ALL know that the most driven talented players they can get at their level is what will make them win. This is not how normal employment works. Sports are competitive by nature so the difference between a 60th percentile player and the best player is the difference between winning and losing. But for most businesses, the difference between the best frontend developer and the 60th percentile frontend developer is close to zero.
    - tracerbulletx 3y ago
      The difference is being Stripe where part of the reason they won was that they are considered extremely excellent at developer experience and technical execution. Or Netflix where they beat all of the legacy companies to a great platform doing something no one had done before, and retained the advantage to the point where they seem like they're going to make it through the die off of streaming platforms.
      - philwelch 3y ago
        Neither of those examples is particularly convincing. Stripe succeeded because it tackled a famously difficult and annoying set of business problems; the technology is important and they're reputed to be top rate, but that's not why they've succeeded as a business. Netflix has no technical moat either; there are half a dozen streaming services that, on a technical level, are completely interchangeable with Netflix. The only difference between them is their respective content catalogues, and while Netflix probably has some advantage in being able to drive content decisions with customer data, that only gets you so far.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nradov 3y ago
In professional sports there are objective metrics and performances are largely in public. In knowledge work there are no reliable metrics that apply on an individual level and you have to rely on candidates themselves (plus perhaps some unreliable references) to understand work history. It's a fundamentally harder problem.
- tracerbulletx 3y ago
  I agree it is much harder, but no less important. Engineering orgs at most companies are no where close to even being good at identifying success or talent in their existing employees.
- Solvency 3y ago
  And yet those sports teams still spend millions of dollars and expertise on it (recruiting). So what's techs excuse? It's harder so we don't bother?
  - LargeTomato 3y ago
    We can watch players play previous games. We can see their progression as a player over time. For tech, it's hard to know if someone is good in just a couple hours of interviewing.
    - azemetre 3y ago
      Why could you use someone's previous work or portfolio?
      - nradov 3y ago
        The best developers don't have any portfolio that they can share. It's all locked up in former employers' code repositories.
  - nradov 3y ago
    It's not an excuse. Everyone in tech acknowledges that effective recruiting is important. But beyond doing basic stuff right like not ghosting candidates, that knowledge isn't actionable. No one has found a reliable, repeatable, scalable solution. If you can figure that out then you'll be a billionaire.
x0x0 3y ago
> We don't know how to identify and cultivate talent in this industry yet, it's clearly dysfunctional and deprioritized. Do you even watch professional sports? Professional sports is not great at identifying or cultivating or recruiting, and the incentives there are far simpler, and the performance metrics generally easier. Take the NBA. A handful of teams are famous for cultivating talent, but mostly because the modal nba team is terrible at it. Even the best regularly completely mess up. The team of folks that put together the Warriors -- a franchise that dominated the nba for a decade -- completely blew a #2 draft pick, who is close to being out of the league. They gave Jordan Poole a huge contract and then were forced to trade him because he decided to stop playing defense and start taking terrible shots. He's busy being a tank commander in Washington. Hell, Michael Jordan -- my take for the greatest of all time, and, at worst, the 3rd best basketball player ever -- famously didn't go #1, and that's with one of the best college coaches of all time (Bobby Knight) telling anyone who would listen that he was an extraordinary basketball player. Hakeem went first (ok, that's not a disaster) and a complete bust went second (complete disaster). Lots of GMs struggle with really basic roster construction issues (Russel Westbrook on the Lakers). etc. iirc, only 4 of 30 coaches (Pop, Spo, Steve Kerr, Malone) have held their jobs for more than 4 years. edit: It's very common for top-25 all time players to not be drafted first, or often, even all that high. Steph Curry, with a decent shot at top 10 all time: #7. Jokic: 41st (!!! -- essentially every team passed on him). Giannis: 15th. Luka: 3rd, after winning euroleague mvp at 18 (yes, I'd confident he'll end top 25). etc.

philwelch 3y ago

In professional sports you are selecting one of the few hundred or thousand best people in the world. Its not even remotely the same impact.

tracerbulletx 3y ago
Every successful athletic team makes player scouting and development a core function, not only the elite levels. In the US that means minor league baseball teams, university teams from volleyball and fencing, to football and basketball. Pro cycling teams that pay almost nothing and aren't competitive world wide.. It's not just the elite teams that make this top priority. They ALL know that the most driven talented players they can get at their level is what will make them win.
- philwelch 3y ago
  Most of your examples are talent pipelines for the top leagues. Regardless I think you made my point for me at the end: > They ALL know that the most driven talented players they can get at their level is what will make them win. This is not how normal employment works. Sports are competitive by nature so the difference between a 60th percentile player and the best player is the difference between winning and losing. But for most businesses, the difference between the best frontend developer and the 60th percentile frontend developer is close to zero.
  - tracerbulletx 3y ago
    The difference is being Stripe where part of the reason they won was that they are considered extremely excellent at developer experience and technical execution. Or Netflix where they beat all of the legacy companies to a great platform doing something no one had done before, and retained the advantage to the point where they seem like they're going to make it through the die off of streaming platforms.
    - philwelch 3y ago
      Neither of those examples is particularly convincing. Stripe succeeded because it tackled a famously difficult and annoying set of business problems; the technology is important and they're reputed to be top rate, but that's not why they've succeeded as a business. Netflix has no technical moat either; there are half a dozen streaming services that, on a technical level, are completely interchangeable with Netflix. The only difference between them is their respective content catalogues, and while Netflix probably has some advantage in being able to drive content decisions with customer data, that only gets you so far.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nradov 3y ago

In professional sports there are objective metrics and performances are largely in public. In knowledge work there are no reliable metrics that apply on an individual level and you have to rely on candidates themselves (plus perhaps some unreliable references) to understand work history. It's a fundamentally harder problem.

tracerbulletx 3y ago
I agree it is much harder, but no less important. Engineering orgs at most companies are no where close to even being good at identifying success or talent in their existing employees.
Solvency 3y ago
And yet those sports teams still spend millions of dollars and expertise on it (recruiting). So what's techs excuse? It's harder so we don't bother?
- LargeTomato 3y ago
  We can watch players play previous games. We can see their progression as a player over time. For tech, it's hard to know if someone is good in just a couple hours of interviewing.
  - azemetre 3y ago
    Why could you use someone's previous work or portfolio?
    - nradov 3y ago
      The best developers don't have any portfolio that they can share. It's all locked up in former employers' code repositories.
- nradov 3y ago
  It's not an excuse. Everyone in tech acknowledges that effective recruiting is important. But beyond doing basic stuff right like not ghosting candidates, that knowledge isn't actionable. No one has found a reliable, repeatable, scalable solution. If you can figure that out then you'll be a billionaire.

x0x0 3y ago

> We don't know how to identify and cultivate talent in this industry yet, it's clearly dysfunctional and deprioritized. Do you even watch professional sports? Professional sports is not great at identifying or cultivating or recruiting, and the incentives there are far simpler, and the performance metrics generally easier. Take the NBA. A handful of teams are famous for cultivating talent, but mostly because the modal nba team is terrible at it. Even the best regularly completely mess up. The team of folks that put together the Warriors -- a franchise that dominated the nba for a decade -- completely blew a #2 draft pick, who is close to being out of the league. They gave Jordan Poole a huge contract and then were forced to trade him because he decided to stop playing defense and start taking terrible shots. He's busy being a tank commander in Washington. Hell, Michael Jordan -- my take for the greatest of all time, and, at worst, the 3rd best basketball player ever -- famously didn't go #1, and that's with one of the best college coaches of all time (Bobby Knight) telling anyone who would listen that he was an extraordinary basketball player. Hakeem went first (ok, that's not a disaster) and a complete bust went second (complete disaster). Lots of GMs struggle with really basic roster construction issues (Russel Westbrook on the Lakers). etc. iirc, only 4 of 30 coaches (Pop, Spo, Steve Kerr, Malone) have held their jobs for more than 4 years. edit: It's very common for top-25 all time players to not be drafted first, or often, even all that high. Steph Curry, with a decent shot at top 10 all time: #7. Jokic: 41st (!!! -- essentially every team passed on him). Giannis: 15th. Luka: 3rd, after winning euroleague mvp at 18 (yes, I'd confident he'll end top 25). etc.