Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
We read @nayafia article on talent distributions and organizations adaptations to them on @yak governance chat today and I have Some Thoughts. https://nadia.xyz/top-talent
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
The basic idea that there are three types of orgs that adapt to the three types of talent distributions (normal, Pareto, bimodal) seems empirically correct to me, though you can argue about nature vs nurture and how learnable the underlying outlier type is. But there’s a couple of subtleties.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
First, while the basic typology of linchpin, A-player, and average player is fine, I think the “10xer” literally applies to the A-player type. High percentile person on a Pareto. The linchpin type is incommensurable with others. Sui generis.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
The ambiguity exists because the term is now a meme pointing to linchpins as well. I think there are 2 types of linchpins: a) neurodiverse types with a savant talent (“think different”) b) high-agency permissionless types who’ve somehow broken out of reality distortion field of org (“see different”)
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
In my experience type a) (eg: true aspergers ) often struggle and crash-and-burn, and are very poorly socialized. Orgs do adapt to them IF they are sufficiently priceless (heh) But most actual 10xers are “see different” types within a domain. They are high but not savant intelligences with perspective leverage
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
They have unlocked high agency usually through a mix of imagination and a kind of red-pill organization enlightenment moment (similar to but not the same as my sociopath archetype in Gervais principle).
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
A reference point: Type A’s literal 10x types are “smart, and gets things done” types but linchpin/memetic-10xers are what Steve Yegge calls “done and gets thing smart” types. They own the domain in a way beyond the authority of CEO. http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-things-smart.html
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Another reference point. In his definitive biography of Feynman, Beat of a Different Drum, Jagdish Mehra points out a difference between Feynman and Julian as Schwinger, who shared the 1965 Nobel along with Sin-Ito Tomonaga… https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1965/ceremony-speech/
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp
Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Iirc the book quotes another physicist saying something like: Schwinger was smart in a way you’d say if I was 10x smarter I’d be able to do what he did, but Feynman was smart in a way that looked like magic and you couldn’t think like him even if 10x smarter. (someone look up exact words?)
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