from Hacker News

Explaining tech's notion of talent scarcity

by dcreager on 4/25/23, 6:20 PM with 38 comments

• by wootland on 4/25/23, 6:49 PM

  This doesn't say much about "talent scarcity", it's more along the lines of how different managerial styles map to different talent "markets".

  In reality, there is no talent scarcity, there's just poor management that has optimized for executive salaries and middle-managerial busy work. Paying your managers/executives more than your engineers, forcing wfo, open office plans, agile... all chase away top talent of which there is plenty. The shortage is actually of healthy, creative, non-toxic, fairly compensated work places. Deliver that and the talent is easy to hire and retain.

• by GalenErso on 4/25/23, 6:37 PM

  A similar debate exists within the professional military community about the appropriate place to give special operations forces within the broader force. There is a concern, especially in the United States, where special forces have accrued a growing share of resources and personnel since the beginning of the global war on terror, that such growth is draining regular forces of all their top personnel and thus hollowing the regular units they rely on.

  https://cco.ndu.edu/News/Article/1020184/the-limits-of-speci...

  https://ndupress.ndu.edu/JFQ/Joint-Force-Quarterly-108/Artic...

  https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/gahsnv/does_hav...

• by timfsu on 4/25/23, 6:55 PM

  One of the interesting things in this article is how OKRs are great for a "Pareto-distribution" culture, where performance can be measured across employees, but not a "linchpin" culture, where employees are exceptionally good at a small handful of things and not necessarily great at doing whatever the company needs. I've frequently seen those two types of cultures clash at the seams between technology and business.

• by auggierose on 4/25/23, 7:01 PM

  I don't get it. How are the distribution graphs connected to the text? What is distributed over? I guess the people of the company? What is the y-axis? The amount of talent in a person? The amount of special talent in a person? I hate pseudo-scientific explanations like that.

• by musicale on 4/25/23, 11:46 PM

  Tech's notion of talent scarcity:

  1. "We can't find enough cheap labor to work at our awful jobs."

  2. "We're doing everything we can possibly do attract talent (except for raising wages, which is of course impossible.)"

  3. "Never mind, we don't need human workers anyway."

• by vavooom on 4/25/23, 6:42 PM

  A competent overview of the relative ‘bins’ of labor used to power large firms around the world. The use of distributions really tickles my brain and helps understand not only where I work but also why some people love the places the work (because it fits into their style and desired work environment too).

• by syngrog66 on 4/25/23, 7:04 PM

  I see companies ignoring or actively scaring away talent left and right.

• by rektide on 4/25/23, 11:38 PM

  This has been sitting with me for a couple hours now. The impact was semi subtle at first but has really grown as I keep reflecting how much better it fits my personal view.

  The Bimodal model really reflects a lived truth, that explains things differently than Normal or Pareto curves. Some people aren't just higher output but are fulcrums of the business, are core drivers.

• by sleepytimetea on 4/25/23, 6:33 PM

  Our malicious website filters prevent access to this domain - is it legit ?