3 ms·

This is The Way™! I've heard this alternatively described as "slope" (for drive, which incorporates the curiosity, lack of ego, excitability) and "intercept" fo

by gen220 3y ago

This is The Way™! I've heard this alternatively described as "slope" (for drive, which incorporates the curiosity, lack of ego, excitability) and "intercept" for "aptitude". Implication is that if you're high-slope, you'll eventually become high-intercept. If you're a startup, you want to bias towards a mix of high slope, low intercept and positive slope, high intercept. I think it's also worth pointing out that people can have negative slopes (due to social reasons, ego reasons), and that slope is not invariant over a person's career but often changes. Ideally, you want to find people whose slope is positively-impacted by the environment of the company – a great hire is only a great hire if it's a great mutual-fit, in that way.

CharlieDigital 3y ago
Both can definitely change over time and that change can be influenced by a variety of factors including the types of projects, company culture, "vibes" with the rest of the team, and so on. I think the industry really wants an objective, formulaic way of identifying these individuals, but the reality is that a lot of it does still come down to subjective factors since there's so much variability along so many different facets. What I can say personally is that I've had pretty good success hiring, but I wouldn't claim that my "intuition" can be systematically applied by anyone to achieve the same success.