Recruiters and investors think talent counts for more than determination | Hacker News Reader

Recruiters and investors think talent counts for more than determination

economist.com

23 pointse15ctr0n24 comments

Actually, both look for signals of accomplishment and both are willing to take whatever signals you can provide to that effect.

Didn't go to a top-tier school? That's ok, let's talk about what you've built. You haven't built anything? That's ok, let's talk about what you've done? You haven't done anything you feel proud talking about? All that together is not ok.

You have to have something

I'd argue that talent is actually some minor ability/sense of passion/direction augmented by the compound effect of sustained effort (determination).

If you're shooting for exceptional results, you need both. A natural can be incentivized to work harder. A striver cannot be incentivized to be smarter.

It might be wrong, but if you're looking for an IPO-able company, I'd pick the natural every time.

There is no such thing as a natural in tech. Take for example John Carmack who you would consider a natural. He writes an extreme amount of code, he is known for writing his own libraries from scratch. I think that there are natural factors that come into play but with coding the vast majority of talent comes from drive.

Sure, but the ability to stay focused enough to write high-quality code for hours on end is a talent in and of itself. I know many programmers who I think I am equal to if we both sit down fully rested and program for a few hours, but they can keep churning out good stuff for a long time after I'm tired and checking Hacker News because I lost focus.

Are you sure that's not just the adderall? Asking mostly as a joke, but I know a few people who use it specifically for these purposes.

ADHD/ADD seems to be common in our industry, a side effect being 'hyperfocus' or what we (as an industry) refer to as 'flow'.

For me, amphetamines actually allow me to productively switch my focus. 8+ hours of hyperfocus, while making me seem like a ninja unicorn rockstar, is just not sustainable and burnout is a real problem.

Peter Thiel talked about this in Zero to One.

http://blakemasters.com/post/24578683805/peter-thiels-cs183-... This segues to the pure celebrity version, best epitomized by Lady Gaga. Born This Way is her recent hit album and song. On one level, the whole thing is obviously completely fictional. It’s probably safe to say that she was not, in fact, born like this. The big piece must be nurture. But on another level, maybe it is nature. What sort of people would actually do this to themselves?

Yes, it's the choices people make and the drive they have that produces the talent. But isn't John Carmack's ability to push himself to that degree an outlier statistic in itself? Maybe he really was born that way.

Exactly, the solution for this problem is to be really determined to make recruiters and investors think you're more naturally talented than you are:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprezzatura

John Carmack doesn't constantly tweet/complain about how many hours he puts in and how hard he's working, so people think it comes easily to him. When you're talking to a non-technical person, the most important thing is projecting a casual air of competence, not trying to impress them by how much you suffered for your craft.

>I think that there are natural factors that come into play

Isn't that what people mean when they talk about a natural? I always thought it meant that given the same drive/effort, they are able to go far beyond the average.

Recruiters and investors aren't making a decision based on talent or determination - they make a decision based on whatever proxies to those values that they can glean from a candidate. Proxies for talent are much more difficult to fake than proxies for determination.

Furthermore, determination is something that the candidate can choose to turn off or to turn towards different ends.

Anyhow, my point is that there are excellent reasons to select for talent, even if hard work and determination is a more valuable personality trait for those who have it.

Man this bothers me so much.

Some of my friends and even myself have gotten rejected in interviews , after answering all the questions , clearing all the tasks just because I presume we were not the geniuses they were looking for.

It's not enough to be good. You gotta be eye poppingly prodigiously awesome sauce at what you do.

You can be determined , driven whatever , they don't want you because you're at risk of turning out to be a B-Player.

This is almost a form of cognitive elitism.

I think these people are Waiting for Superman. Watch their ads after they decline to offer you - it'll run until they just take it down without filling the position.

In the end, it's still just a job. Hopefully, it's fun and all but I can attest that it's possible to take it all too seriously.

Not defending this trend, and I also fall into the non-geniuses category, but it kinda makes sense that just "determinations" sometimes won't get too far and it makes more business sense to find someone "smarter" to solve a problem, and also less risky for the employer

Paul Graham wighted in on this, saying that in his experience by far the most important trait in successful founders is determination. http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html

I can understand why. You measure talent by looking for a proven track record, maybe not in the marketplace, but at least in results verified by others. College grades, awards, projects all point to a talented candidate.

On the other hand, determination without talent-indicating accomplishment points to an applicant that doesn't have his head in the right space and that isn't likely to succeed. I've met plenty of people with "do or die" attitudes that neither did nor died. 5 years down the road they're still looking for someone to just give them that chance they know that's all they need to start rocking and rolling.

On the other hand, talent also does not mean that his head is in the right space.

It's a form of lamp posting, for sure, but people lamp post because building flashlights is often too much hassle for them, even if you'd prefer they do it that way.

So... capitalists make the exact same Fundamental Attribution Error as everyone else?

Only much, much moreso.

Any study that asks people what they would do is basically worthless.

You do it so you can compare what they say they would do to what they actually do. Think Bradley effect. You can survey people and ask them if they'd be less likely to vote for a minority candidate, and then you can look at the voting results. Afterwards, when you do your regression analysis, you can say that statistically speaking, the only explanation for the gap (between people who say race doesn't affect their vote and the votes a minority candidate actually received) is that voters factored in race.

But yeah I mean, you can't take what people self-report as evidence. There are tons of problems with that, social desirability bias, etc. etc.

Source?

A survey.

Or, you know, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-report_study

What If I'm a genius of working hard?

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