On 04/22/2014 04:30 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
The biggest hindrance I see to the meritocracy game is that ultimately
we will want people with a wide variety of merits (i.e., who exercise
skills well-matched to a variety of circumstances).
I've often felt uneasy when I've interviewed people for various
positions. I've certainly felt uneasy when I've had to choose who to
lay off. Luckily, I've never had to fire anyone for cause. One thing
that strikes me as common to all of my experiences is the lack of a way
to understand such variety, which is part of why I was briefly involved
with the HR consortium.
On that note, I ran across this article recently:
My Big Company Code Interview
http://www.drdobbs.com/tools/my-big-company-code-interview/240166992
And it reminded me of something someone said to me while interviewing
_me_ something like a decade ago. He said: "I like hiring
simulationists because they're mercenaries. They'll learn and do
anything to get the job done." I took that as a compliment and believe
he (the CTO) argued for offering me the job. But they did not offer me
a job because the people who did the algorithm work (who also
interviewed me) thought I was too mercenary. I didn't give the math its
due respect, I think. Perhaps they even thought I was simply stupid. A
case where my use of the humility topos went awry. ;-) I learned this
from the hiring manager who eventually became a friend. Like the author
of the above article, the whole experience was useful and interesting...
which is why I continually apply for interesting looking jobs even when
I have no compelling reason to.
Anyway, it's not just variety, or wide variety. It's also appropriate
variety, I suppose. Sometimes you need someone steeped in traditional
stovepiped discipline. Sometimes you need gadflies like me. Sometimes
you need measured "cross-pollinators". Etc. But until/unless we adopt
some form of _language_ (English word for the horrifying neologism
"ontology") for talking about these things, we'll stay in the
buzzword-laden ambiguity of business land.
--
⇒⇐ glen
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