[oblique63]

Yeah, but I think the over-arching idea that the OP was getting at, was "what if we can breed these 'superstars'?"

That would certainly seem feasible if you interview for personality traits, interests and learning skills, more than actual/concrete knowledge and working skills. And of course, this would be a lot more cost-effective as well. In that case, I would say that the key would lie in paying more attention to human psychology/intelligence research than to tech blogs/circles to find out more about 'superstars'.

[btilly]

To a point that is possible. However there are key lessons that don't really sink in until after you have made certain mistakes and have seen the consequences. For instance I understood the value of forcing variable declarations, and of having multiple layers of safeguards after a typo in a variable name caused me to take down Bloomberg's ftp server about 15 years ago.

Judging from ability and personality, it was clear at that point that I had potential. And I received some excellent mentoring. But potential and mentoring do not ensure a smooth path to success.

[oblique63]

While that's true, it still seems a bit orthogonal to the point, because the argument being made is essentially about efficiency, not necessarily effectiveness. If we think about all the people that have had such experience changing epiphanies, then take the subset of those who might actually be able to communicate these valuable experiences across in a programming interview, suddenly your selection pool becomes rather small. Which is oddly reminiscent of the current 'talent shortage' issue. Thus, approaching the problem from a different angle which considers this concept of 'experience' to be more of a byproduct of a certain set of traits than a trait itself, you suddenly open up your list of possible candidates to something a lot more workable.

Because after all, there is nothing preventing people selected for personality traits to reach these same epiphanies that 'experienced' people have (regardless of mentorship), it's just a matter of whether or not you as an employer would be willing to accept this 'risk'. Given the current state of affairs with regards to 'talent', I could see many finding the risk permissible. Not to mention the fact that the set of 'smart people with potential' is not mutually exclusive with the set of 'smart people with experience'; of course, selecting purely from the set of people that meet both criteria would still fall under the realm of chasing unicorns, but the point is that the two are not exclusive.

[btilly]

The point that was made was that smart people with potential are cheaper to hire and easy to train. My point is that smart people with potential and training are great, but aren't actually as good as smart people with potential and experience.

The trick is, of course, that smart people with both potential and experience tend to be easy to identify..and very expensive.

[oblique63]

Well yes, but the fact that they are expensive is a byproduct of their rarity (which results in us talking about cheaper engineers), and that can be symptomatic of a system with an efficiency problem. The argument then is about confirming that it is.

[btilly]

Expensive, yes. But expensive compared to value produced?

Every decent programmer has stories of a time they put in 10 hours of work to save a highly paid person 20 hours/month for the rest of time. I say stories because there are many such. On my resume I list a number of cases where I added X millions/year to the bottom line of small-medium companies. It is not a complete list. What value should an efficient market put on a programmer who does that repeatedly?

For those willing to work as an employee in the Los Angeles area, the value the market places is significantly under $200k/year. Now you tell me, is that expensive relative to value?

[oblique63]

Expense wasn't even remotely the issue I was addressing; the expense of such 'experts' makes sense within the scope of our system. It is the rarity that seems out of place.

[mbillie1]

> That would certainly seem feasible if you interview for personality traits, interests and learning skills, more than actual/concrete knowledge and working skills.

That's a good chunk of the way we (ThoughtWorks) interview, along with general smarts and good company fit. It's easier to teach a very smart person [language x, skillset y] than it is to teach a random person who knows [language x, skillset y] how to be very smart.

[porker]

> And of course, this would be a lot more cost-effective as well

Only if you can retain them, once they get smart and realise how good they are. Gratitude (and staying with the company who invested in you) aren't popular these days.