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Comment by Xcelerate | Hacker News Reader

> The next biggest factor is genetics

I think it depends where you’re at in the progression curve. I’ve always thought that most people can reach the top 1% of just about anything with hard work. Beyond that, it comes down to other factors: genetics, environment, luck, etc.

I ran track in college and reached roughly the top percentile of my age and gender (i.e., the level of a typical D1 athlete), but there is absolutely no way I would ever have come remotely close to a 12:37 5k. You could have started the training from birth under a team of experts, and it simply just would not have happened.

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In basically any other field of endeavor, this is fine though, most things people do aren’t judged as though there can only be one best person in the world at it.

Yes but no.

The problem is that many very important things in life are winner takes all. If you are 99.99% as good as the next candidate, you get no job. If your bid is 99.99% as good as the other one, you likely don't get the deal. If you're 99.99% as good as the other guy, you don't get the medal, the fame or the recognition.

Little differences can have hugely significant consequences. And sometimes the difference is just luck, but still the same huge consequences.

>If you are 99.99% as good as the next candidate, you get no job.

For the vast, vast majority of jobs, this is simply false. You will get an equivalent job elsewhere. But yes, if you're applying to be Prime Minister, this is definitely the case.

>If your bid is 99.99% as good as the other one, you likely don't get the deal.

This is very often false as well, when you look at the metric of whether you'll get work/income, rather than this specific unit of work. There are some industries where you're competing for a few massive winner-takes-all bids, but there are many where this isn't the case. And oftentimes in the former industries, bids are made by consortia and there will be plenty of sub-contracting.

>If you're 99.99% as good as the other guy, you don't get the medal, the fame or the recognition.

This is definitely true in sports, music and some other fields.

I would say, unless you're a founder and are seeking to have massive disruptive impact in some field, this does not apply to anyone who visits HN. Good and great programmers, engineers, researchers and managers will always be well off and have a reasonable amount of recognition/impact, and the exceptional ones will not take such a disproportionately large chunk of the pie to leave the rest in the dust.

Except when performance is directly measured (like a running race) this doesn’t really apply.

You can get a job over someone with higher skills for a raft of reasons. Connections, personality match with the interviewers, experience, you dressed better, communicated better, etc.

You can of course miss out on a job for similar reasons.

The world can’t perfectly evaluate your skill set, and even if you were somehow evaluated purely on skill I think it would be unrealistic to expect even a 5-10% gap to be detectable for programming/design type skills (and nobody is ever really hiring based purely on skill)

Your example isn't a very good one. If you are 99.99% as good as the next candidate you get no job? How about you get a different job because you're still a top performer. Most (all?) jobs don't have only a single role to be filled across the entire world.

Sure you might not get THE singular highest paid/best position to do what you do really well, but you can certainly still get the 2nd or 3rd or be among the top 100/1000 well paid people who do X.

I stand by the previous commenter, in the vast majority of cases you're still going to have some significant benefit from being near the top even if you aren't "the best".

fair enough

This is a weird way of thinking. Turn it around and think as a hiring manager. There’s only one best programmer in the world, but I’ve got five open slots for software engineers so I clearly can’t hire the number one five times. I don’t even want the best programmer in the world. I want 5 stable, sensible people who can do the job. That’s how the whole economy works. You don’t want the best head of cabbage in the world, you want a head of cabbage meeting your criteria and at an affordable price. Selling good cabbage makes money. Growing the best cabbage in the world gets you a blue ribbon worth exactly nothing.

Best is a hollow and worthless title. If you want to make money you get good at doing the job. Do it better every day and in every way. That’s where there’s economic value. The only time best matters is for the Olympic gold, and even that’s not made of gold. Olympic athletes are poor as shit. If you want actual gold learn to do a job well and forget best.

>Little differences can have hugely significant consequences. And sometimes the difference is just luck, but still the same huge consequences.

Those differences compound too with one success leading to further success.

It is delusional to think that even the top 0.01% of interviewers can detect the difference in candidates that accurately.

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