Talent

Tyler Cowen & Daniel Gross

15 annotations • Jan 2023 – Feb 2023 • data

Chapter 1

It is the people who work intently on pleasing a narrow fan base, but pleasing them intensely, who end up with the skills and networks to market the product to broader audiences. So very often, if you are looking for a start-up that will hit it big, do something counterintuitive by seeking out people aiming, at least at first, to please smaller and weirder audiences.
One of his blog commentators, Alastair, described him as follows: "Tyler is contrarian in method. His superfast reading speed, various professional roles, constant podcasting and networking, obsessive learning, perpetual travel, and sheer stamina enable him to take in many more and different inputs, which allows him to have many more and different outputs. But it's what's in between where he shines. He sees the world as an economist, philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, anthropologist, liberal and conservative, globalist and nationalist, foreigner and native, art critic and artist, employer/administrator and employee, grant provider and grant recipient, interviewer and interviewee, teacher and student. There is almost no one who views the world like Tyler because almost no one has a comparable number or variety of inputs or mental models. Even if his conclusions were conventional, his reasoning and perspectives wouldn't be."
Still, we share a stubborn curiosity, a love for ideas, and the willingness to persist in hacking away at tough problems
Status-seekers focus on maximizing attention from the perceived elite. Idea-seekers, on the other hand, want to advance knowledge and stimulate curiosity, speaking to the entire room and holding the attention of the group. Intrigue is their reserve currency, and conjectures are often framed as questions, not statements.
Most of all, we oppose and seek to revise the bureaucratic approach to talent search, which is poorly serving the American economy—and many American and global citizens. The bureaucratic approach, as we define it, seeks to minimize error and loss, and it prizes consensus above all else. It demands that everyone play by a set of overly rigid rules, that individualism be hidden or maybe even stamped out, and that there is never any hurry, so another set of procedures can be applied, virtually without end. At the end of all this you have a hiring process full of "kludge" and "sludge," to cite two terms coming into fashion in political science, and you will attract candidates of comparable temperament
Excess credentialism, one of the worst instantiations of the bureaucratic approach to hiring, is also a problem of talent search

Chapter 2

Nature has equipped most humans with the ability to sniff out phoniness and perfunctory interest
He is looking for a specific approach to their critique, as much as the substance of their response. He gets especially worried when they ramble on vaguely rather than providing a focused approach to feedback, or when they choose to unload their gripes on the broader world of tech (a common response that suggests a lack of focus). He seeks specificity and frankness that focus on how Pioneer's tournaments can be improved.
Most importantly, be alert for the distinction between those who are stuck in their past and those who learned from it but are moving forward and seeking to expand the sphere of people they can impress
The brilliant Alan Turing did not himself seem convinced of his own articulateness or quickness on his feet, and yet he was one of the leading mathematicians, computer scientists, logicians, and cryptographers of his time. He was very good at processing information at levels that did not correspond to the skills we use to generate charming casual conversations
There are some people who, when they speak, no matter what the topic, seem to draw you into their own worldview, almost like an act of magic, like you are stepping into a movie, TV show, computer game, or graphic novel of their making. This can be a sign of their energy and creativity.
Alternatively, some people will confidently answer the question with a totally ordinary, orthodox belief, convinced they have stated something highly unusual. Those individuals may be good hires for their reliability and conformity, but don't expect them to shake up any internal systems that need reforming
With the question, you have created a nonthreatening way of eliciting where the person really stands in the world—where and how they fit in—and which values he or she assigns high weight to

Chapter 4

There is a difference between individual intelligence and how an individual contributes to the productivity of a broader group.
Economists have known for a long time there are no extra gains to be had from investing by running after positive qualities but neglecting price. The key instead is to find undervalued companies, and that means companies with hidden virtues. The importance of hidden virtues holds for quality hires as well, whether the dimension in question is smarts or something else.