3 ms·

Acquire as little information as possible This is an often overlooked opportunity. Learn as little as you absolutely need so you don't get mired in the dogma.

Acquire as little information as possible This is an often overlooked opportunity. Learn as little as you absolutely need so you don't get mired in the dogma. Some of the best solutions for problems come from people who have not yet become indoctrinated in the "standard" methodology. They approach problems with a fresh perspective and can come up with new solutions that everyone else who's been there a while missed. This opportunity is short lived, since everyone inevitably learns all the standard ways, so it is very apt for when you join a new company.

tome 13y ago
This is absolutely true, but none of the (few) companies I've worked for were interested in a fresh perspective (with the exception of the company I was hired to bring a fresh perspective to). Entrenched mindsets dominated, unfortunately.
- molbioguy 13y ago
  Agreed. I've always experienced pressure to conform, too. But I know some of my best contributions came when I didn't do things the standard way. Of course, going at things differently is risky, since you have no cover if things fail; however, if you find the right solution, it's very satisfying and can elevate your status quickly.
dalke 13y ago
"Some of the best solutions for problems come from people who have not yet become indoctrinated in the "standard" methodology." Is that really true, or a hypothesis? How was it tested, and what are the numbers? For example, do 5% of the solutions come from people in their first year and the other 95% come from those with between 1 year and 40 years? Or is it more like 80% and 20%? Knowing those numbers helps determine strategy. The former suggests that novel solutions are hard, and inspiration is only weakly connected to experience, while the latter suggests that people should move to new fields every year or two, in order to take advantage of this effect. For that matter, if the numbers are 1% and 99% then it implies that while 'some of the best solutions' come from new people, the overwhelming majority do not, in which case your observation, while still true, has a different interpretation. In my own research, I came up with a novel and useful implementation for a multiple-graph maximum common subgraph isomorphism. It's a problem that I worked on when I first entered this field, when I was in my late 20s, but with 10+ years of experience in the field I was able to come up with a faster, more efficient and more general purpose method. (FWIW, it's based on the observation that in practice, for the types of graphs I work with, a certain NP-hard method - pairwise subgraph isomorphism - is actually very fast. New people to the field assume 'NP-hard' means 'avoid at all costs', so avoid use this method.) Is my story anecdotal? Absolutely. Which is why I'm curious to see the evidence you used to form your statement.
- DRMacIver 13y ago
  I think "best solutions come from new people" is an over-simplification of what actually happens. New people force you to re-examine your assumptions and blind spots. Sometimes this is useful, sometimes it isn't. This doesn't mean that new people solve more problems, but sometimes an influx of new people can help the experts to solve more problems because they realise something they assumed to be true/OK wasn't.
- molbioguy 13y ago
  My statement is based on personal experiences -- it's an observation and not an authoritative fact; I don't have formal studies to back this up. A really great solution from a new perspective is admittedly rare when you take into account all tasks. However, when there's a problem that's been giving a group some difficulty, I've had many occasions where the new person who was coming from a different background, provided a key advance. It was usually along the lines of something we all thought was either too simple to try, "known" to not work, or just went against all the standard methods we had been taught (like the anecdotal example you provided). In the context of the article, having minimal knowledge (just enough to understand the problem), also affords you with the opportunity to learn more on your own and develop your own views before someone tells you how to think. While I can't back it up with level of evidence you're asking for, in my experience it's still a good strategy to go with. I realize this is drifting away from the original topic. Sorry about that.
  - dalke 13y ago
    As I pointed out though, without some sense of what "many" means, it's not possible to make an effective planning decision based on this hypothesis. For example, what's the bias error? How many new problems are solved daily by people with expertise in the field, which would take someone without that expertise a long time? This is also different than the class of problems I think you're referring to, which are cases where the experts in the fields are already stymied. Even then, you might not notice the ones where someone with 15 years of experience figures it out, because you expect that to happen, while if an intern solves it then it's notable. At the point where the group is stuck, dead in the water on a problem, then it's definitely useful to have others look on it, if only because there isn't much to lose by doing so.

tome 13y ago

This is absolutely true, but none of the (few) companies I've worked for were interested in a fresh perspective (with the exception of the company I was hired to bring a fresh perspective to). Entrenched mindsets dominated, unfortunately.

molbioguy 13y ago
Agreed. I've always experienced pressure to conform, too. But I know some of my best contributions came when I didn't do things the standard way. Of course, going at things differently is risky, since you have no cover if things fail; however, if you find the right solution, it's very satisfying and can elevate your status quickly.

dalke 13y ago

"Some of the best solutions for problems come from people who have not yet become indoctrinated in the "standard" methodology." Is that really true, or a hypothesis? How was it tested, and what are the numbers? For example, do 5% of the solutions come from people in their first year and the other 95% come from those with between 1 year and 40 years? Or is it more like 80% and 20%? Knowing those numbers helps determine strategy. The former suggests that novel solutions are hard, and inspiration is only weakly connected to experience, while the latter suggests that people should move to new fields every year or two, in order to take advantage of this effect. For that matter, if the numbers are 1% and 99% then it implies that while 'some of the best solutions' come from new people, the overwhelming majority do not, in which case your observation, while still true, has a different interpretation. In my own research, I came up with a novel and useful implementation for a multiple-graph maximum common subgraph isomorphism. It's a problem that I worked on when I first entered this field, when I was in my late 20s, but with 10+ years of experience in the field I was able to come up with a faster, more efficient and more general purpose method. (FWIW, it's based on the observation that in practice, for the types of graphs I work with, a certain NP-hard method - pairwise subgraph isomorphism - is actually very fast. New people to the field assume 'NP-hard' means 'avoid at all costs', so avoid use this method.) Is my story anecdotal? Absolutely. Which is why I'm curious to see the evidence you used to form your statement.

DRMacIver 13y ago
I think "best solutions come from new people" is an over-simplification of what actually happens. New people force you to re-examine your assumptions and blind spots. Sometimes this is useful, sometimes it isn't. This doesn't mean that new people solve more problems, but sometimes an influx of new people can help the experts to solve more problems because they realise something they assumed to be true/OK wasn't.
molbioguy 13y ago
My statement is based on personal experiences -- it's an observation and not an authoritative fact; I don't have formal studies to back this up. A really great solution from a new perspective is admittedly rare when you take into account all tasks. However, when there's a problem that's been giving a group some difficulty, I've had many occasions where the new person who was coming from a different background, provided a key advance. It was usually along the lines of something we all thought was either too simple to try, "known" to not work, or just went against all the standard methods we had been taught (like the anecdotal example you provided). In the context of the article, having minimal knowledge (just enough to understand the problem), also affords you with the opportunity to learn more on your own and develop your own views before someone tells you how to think. While I can't back it up with level of evidence you're asking for, in my experience it's still a good strategy to go with. I realize this is drifting away from the original topic. Sorry about that.
- dalke 13y ago
  As I pointed out though, without some sense of what "many" means, it's not possible to make an effective planning decision based on this hypothesis. For example, what's the bias error? How many new problems are solved daily by people with expertise in the field, which would take someone without that expertise a long time? This is also different than the class of problems I think you're referring to, which are cases where the experts in the fields are already stymied. Even then, you might not notice the ones where someone with 15 years of experience figures it out, because you expect that to happen, while if an intern solves it then it's notable. At the point where the group is stuck, dead in the water on a problem, then it's definitely useful to have others look on it, if only because there isn't much to lose by doing so.