One of Ousterhout's examples of this principle is something that comes up frequently on HN:<p><i>"Before I came back to academia a couple of years ago I was out doing startups. What I noticed is that when people hire they are almost always hire based on experience. They're looking for somebody's resume trying to find the person who has already done the job they want them to do three times over. That's basically hiring based on Y-intercept.<p>Personally I don't think that's a very good way to hire. The people who are doing the same thing over and over again often get burnt out and typically the reason they're doing the same thing over and over again is they've maxed out. They can't do anything more than that. And, in fact, typically what happens when you level off is you level off slightly above your level of competence. So in fact you're not actually doing the current job all that well.<p>So what I would always hire on is based on aptitude, not on experience. You know, is this person ready to do the job? They may never have done it before and have no experience in this area, but are they a smart person who can figure things out? Are they a quick learner? And I've found that's a much better way to get really effective people."</i>
Good points. I would add to his last point though that hiring at least one person with a high y-intercept can increase the slope of your other hires significantly. (It's a lot easier to learn something quickly if you have someone around who already knows a lot about it.) And people who both know a lot and learn quickly are expensive and rare, so I expect the optimal hiring process would look for a large percentage of relatively inexperienced fast learners, along with a small (but non-zero) percentage of more experienced people, even if they aren't likely to develop as quickly. (Perhaps consultants would fit well in that role too.)
Ah, Ousterhout. Guess he's at Stanford now; he was a prof at Berkeley when I was there. He had an amazing knack for presenting CS in an entertaining (and, at times, hilarious) manner.<p>Best professor I ever had.
It's a bit of a false dilemma to choose between experience or aptitude.<p>In the start-up period, though, aptitude is a better strategic choice in that you need people who can grow as quickly as the venture.<p>Later, you need the people with experience, even if they're a bit slow. They're the ones that have been bitten by the edge cases, the deadlocks, the XSS openings - and know to avoid them.
I happen to disagree regarding the hiring. I prefer to put more emphasis on the system itself, and not the developers, who should be replaceable. (I say this as a developer myself, who prefers to be replaceable.)<p>When a developer forgets to test their code before pushing it to production, we often blame the developer. But the real problem is lack of automated testing, lack of processes, and too much responsibility for the developer.<p>With a good system in place, you hire people who have all the prerequisite knowledge (the languages, patterns, experience with similar solutions to the ones they'll do, and preferably good team spirit that matches your culture). The rest can be learned on the job. But once again, focus on your onboarding materials!<p>In short -- you should always look to be optimizing the system. THAT is your "slope" if you will. Except it's not a slope, it's an exponent! Because it builds on itself week after week. And you don't risk that one developer somewhere messing up your code.<p>We say: people live lives, companies create products.
Said another way: You are perfect exactly as you are, because in this moment, there is no other way you can possibly be.<p>However, in this moment, perfect as you are, you can still resolve to practice.<p>- Paraphrased from "The Practicing Mind"
Let's race 10 miles. I run each mile in 5:59 and you run each mile in 6:00. You get a mile head start.<p>Whoops—this fable is only true "eventually", if the slopes remain the same as t→∞.
Why do Quora articles continue to make the front page when we can't read them? I'm greeted with <a href="http://i.imgur.com/WTeSt8s.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/WTeSt8s.png</a> No, I won't sign in with Google, nor Facebook.<p>How do the people upvoting this read the article? Do they sign in? What possible benefit is there to signing in? They're basically holding content hostage.<p>When I defended Scribd, people came out in droves to point out how wrong it was to hold unique content hostage. I'll admit, it made me rethink my position. But it's strange to see that Quora doesn't get the same stick.<p>EDIT: If the HN homepage had a popup saying "Login with Google or Facebook to read all of HN," would you tolerate it?
Link without the annoying Quora-login pop-over: <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-profound-life-lessons-from-Stanford-Professor-John-Ousterhout?share=1" rel="nofollow">https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-profound-life-lesson...</a>