Indeed. This is why instead of going to the doctor I merely seek out a smart, kind, driven friend and ask their advice.
This advice is quite silly outside of early stage start-ups, and when we are looking at big tech companies we should probably note the vicious head-hunting that is carried out to steal teams with relevant experience in useful flavours of AI or cloud development.
But since we are talking about early stage start-ups: the problem there is that people who have relevant experience and a strong track record are often unaffordable for an organisation that has to pay mostly in promises. Conversely people who seem to have a lot of experience but are suspiciously cheap and available aren't necessarily always better than an enthusiastic newbie.
Don't fool yourself though: lack of experience absolutely kills start-ups. I've witnessed it a few times. But you're trading off experience for runway, and short runways are similarly dangerous.
I'd say it's the other way around. Aside for a few specific areas where experience is what you really need, this framework is pretty spot on for most roles even in a mature company and matches my experience.
Having domain knowledge is always a nice bonus that reduces the ramp up time, but finding someone with agency and smarts who's not a jerk is the priority.
YoE imho exists to make the job of average recruiters easier and I'm very happy to ignore it for the upside of getting to scoop up talent others would filter out early.
I think we may be discussing different things. YoE is indeed a pretty poor metric as it's commonly used because frequently transferability of experience is overrated and there is the whole one year ten times thing. But novice startup teams fail more; starting with a sales guy who actually has contacts makes a big difference; a novice engineer will absolutely make terrible calls about architecture.
I agree that too much attention gets paid to it, and that the benefits of experience top out at some point and that you absolutely want the highly effective kid over the mediocre old timer. But you'd rather have that same kid after they've made their more expensive mistakes somewhere else.
Yeah I’m gonna say, it might be a choice, but it seems like you’re handicapping yourself. I was so distracted by the (inconsistent!!) lack of caps that I couldn’t really engage with the piece. You do you and all that, but you’re definitely going to lose some readers this way.
Funnily enough I think this post could be more humble, and apply some Chesterton's fence testing to itself.
YoE is an implicit expectation of the employee's position along a manufacturing style 'experience curve'. Over time, similarly driven/competent agents become better at achieving the same objective with fewer resources (eating up internal drive, time taken etc). Chess is probably a good example, the child prodigies still need those years of reps to become champs.
Also in more complex orgs, most employees are competent/driven and exist in a mutual delicate balance; so new hires should be picked carefully not to disrupt that balance. And the tacit knowledge to balance people and interests is primarily gained through reps/experience.
Hiring people based on years of experience, skills, or have you done this before is much easier than effectively assessing who the smart generalists are.
I think most people would agree with the premise of your point. Applying it to hiring is more challenging in practice. But agree that it should be the goal.
I think experience might not matter if the founders have sufficient experience in their chosen fields or have already hired other experts in said fields that can mentor/train new hires. Otherwise it very much matters, especially if you need the job done.
I couldn’t agree more and in fact those three characters are what I try to hire for (even though I had never saw them as clearly as you explained them, so thank you!) and what I believe hiring should be about.
Yet it is not how the world works.
I don’t doubt Bezos would hire for that, but his HR and line managers?
My experience is that hiring is all about minimizing risk and mostly is about finding the cog that perfectly matches the whole that the previous cog created when he left the machine.
Technical competence minimize risk on two level:
- should the hire be wrong, you can always said that he had the credentials bc had done the job before;
- often people are promoted bc of technical skills and their power is based on that. Hiring for non-technical experience implies saying that those are more important, which is a problem for the ego.
I enjoyed this post and think you're onto something.
One reason I think most companies don't put a premium on experience is that a highly experienced person is in effect one who will need to be retrained. The more specialized experience a person has, the more strong beliefs they will have about certain things ("This is how we did it at my old company," "That approach won't work," etc.).
A smart generalist doesn't come with that baggage.
I think it's weird to conclude that YoE aren't valued based on this argument. YoE isn't really a candidate for a company's stated values, so its absence on lists like those proves nothing.
I agree with this but I think all of them drive, intelligence and morals are multifaceted and everyone has some of it. It’s about the mix. Like if you suck at grinding like me you become a retail investor, despite having morals and some intelligence. Like researchers and quants have medium drive I would say
Indeed. This is why instead of going to the doctor I merely seek out a smart, kind, driven friend and ask their advice.
This advice is quite silly outside of early stage start-ups, and when we are looking at big tech companies we should probably note the vicious head-hunting that is carried out to steal teams with relevant experience in useful flavours of AI or cloud development.
But since we are talking about early stage start-ups: the problem there is that people who have relevant experience and a strong track record are often unaffordable for an organisation that has to pay mostly in promises. Conversely people who seem to have a lot of experience but are suspiciously cheap and available aren't necessarily always better than an enthusiastic newbie.
Don't fool yourself though: lack of experience absolutely kills start-ups. I've witnessed it a few times. But you're trading off experience for runway, and short runways are similarly dangerous.
I'd say it's the other way around. Aside for a few specific areas where experience is what you really need, this framework is pretty spot on for most roles even in a mature company and matches my experience.
Having domain knowledge is always a nice bonus that reduces the ramp up time, but finding someone with agency and smarts who's not a jerk is the priority.
YoE imho exists to make the job of average recruiters easier and I'm very happy to ignore it for the upside of getting to scoop up talent others would filter out early.
I think we may be discussing different things. YoE is indeed a pretty poor metric as it's commonly used because frequently transferability of experience is overrated and there is the whole one year ten times thing. But novice startup teams fail more; starting with a sales guy who actually has contacts makes a big difference; a novice engineer will absolutely make terrible calls about architecture.
I agree that too much attention gets paid to it, and that the benefits of experience top out at some point and that you absolutely want the highly effective kid over the mediocre old timer. But you'd rather have that same kid after they've made their more expensive mistakes somewhere else.
Fair point, agree with that.
What happened to capitalization?
i'm illiterate
Yeah I’m gonna say, it might be a choice, but it seems like you’re handicapping yourself. I was so distracted by the (inconsistent!!) lack of caps that I couldn’t really engage with the piece. You do you and all that, but you’re definitely going to lose some readers this way.
i would reply but i can’t read
👍 👍
If you are the job seeker, how do to demonstrate those three qualities if not experience?
Funnily enough I think this post could be more humble, and apply some Chesterton's fence testing to itself.
YoE is an implicit expectation of the employee's position along a manufacturing style 'experience curve'. Over time, similarly driven/competent agents become better at achieving the same objective with fewer resources (eating up internal drive, time taken etc). Chess is probably a good example, the child prodigies still need those years of reps to become champs.
Also in more complex orgs, most employees are competent/driven and exist in a mutual delicate balance; so new hires should be picked carefully not to disrupt that balance. And the tacit knowledge to balance people and interests is primarily gained through reps/experience.
valid, this is geared pretty heavily towards early stage startup hiring
basically every company that makes it in the end starts w/ very little emphasis on experience, and only once established starts leaning on that more
Hiring people based on years of experience, skills, or have you done this before is much easier than effectively assessing who the smart generalists are.
I think most people would agree with the premise of your point. Applying it to hiring is more challenging in practice. But agree that it should be the goal.
I think experience might not matter if the founders have sufficient experience in their chosen fields or have already hired other experts in said fields that can mentor/train new hires. Otherwise it very much matters, especially if you need the job done.
I couldn’t agree more and in fact those three characters are what I try to hire for (even though I had never saw them as clearly as you explained them, so thank you!) and what I believe hiring should be about.
Yet it is not how the world works.
I don’t doubt Bezos would hire for that, but his HR and line managers?
My experience is that hiring is all about minimizing risk and mostly is about finding the cog that perfectly matches the whole that the previous cog created when he left the machine.
Technical competence minimize risk on two level:
- should the hire be wrong, you can always said that he had the credentials bc had done the job before;
- often people are promoted bc of technical skills and their power is based on that. Hiring for non-technical experience implies saying that those are more important, which is a problem for the ego.
I enjoyed this post and think you're onto something.
One reason I think most companies don't put a premium on experience is that a highly experienced person is in effect one who will need to be retrained. The more specialized experience a person has, the more strong beliefs they will have about certain things ("This is how we did it at my old company," "That approach won't work," etc.).
A smart generalist doesn't come with that baggage.
The CEO of Snapchat said the same thing on The Diary of a CEO podcast.
I believe his were: intelligent, creative (agency-ish) and kind (character).
Funny how these seem to transfer universally across hiring.
I think it's weird to conclude that YoE aren't valued based on this argument. YoE isn't really a candidate for a company's stated values, so its absence on lists like those proves nothing.
I agree with this but I think all of them drive, intelligence and morals are multifaceted and everyone has some of it. It’s about the mix. Like if you suck at grinding like me you become a retail investor, despite having morals and some intelligence. Like researchers and quants have medium drive I would say
nice post. Drive, Integrity, Curiosity.