[jakecrouch]

It's worth noting that this basically gives you competitive tips - how to be more effective at solving a problem after it's been given to you. I think it's much more valuable to be good at recognizing important problems that others don't believe are important.

[krn]

"Excellent Sheep"[1] by William Deresiewicz is a great read on this topic.

Also, his "Solitude and Leadership"[2] talk at West Point in 2009, which probably inspired to write the book.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Excellent-Sheep-Miseducation-American...

[2] https://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/

[johnchristopher]

How do you deal with being the company's Cassandra (I am in that predicament at the moment) ?

[jakecrouch]

It's nowhere near as bad or pervasive as the competition to get into student debt. But I'm not really sure what psychotherapy would work. Maybe convince people to read about mimetic theory.

[sriku]

This. Problem finding is a harder problem than problem solving .. heh. That said, whether or not others believe it to be important is only a matter of whether the problem is important for your career.

Problem finding requires the backing of curiosity and curiosity has no teeth without well developed knowledge and skill. i.e. Problem finding is effective in areas that you've spent considerable brain time on. So the path to top class problem finding is a long hard road that demands patience. Those who find it easy to solve problems that are given to them often are not motivated to travel this road (at least in the instances I have seen), while those who have to struggle a bit but not too much manage to stay on the road.

Sometimes I find myself being cynical about all the emphasis on "problem solving" in hiring especially with puzzles .. like problems are always handed to you in well defined mathematical form in the real world. I'm looking for folks who have the courage to ask "why is this problem important?"