Another suggestion (a variant on #2 which explains why the shortage is worse than one would expect given how many smart people there are out there): there is a shortage of reliably diagnosable talented people. Hiring requires multiple factors of which ‘having talent’ is only one, you must also be able to signal in some way your overall appropriateness and safety.
One of the impressions I get from descriptions of the interview process at Google & Facebook (and previously, Microsoft) is that they were more worried about hiring a flawed candidate than rejecting a talented candidate. The reasoning being that these places are ‘o-ring production’ sorts of places, where a single person could wreak a lot of havoc, by either commission or omission; so despite their shortage of talent, they’re forced to be paranoid in their hiring process and biased towards rejection.
Mere money doesn’t solve their problem: they can offer tons of money towards random candidates, but not to the ones which are visibly/reliably talented (which are a small subset of the talented).
Mere money doesn’t solve their problem: they can offer tons of money towards random candidates, but not to the ones which are visibly/reliably talented (which are a small subset of the talented).
A way around that might be to make it known that big salaries are available, but not up front, only by proven merit after being given a job. Does this already happen?
This actually seems very common in office jobs where you find many workers with million dollar salaries.
Wall Street firms, strategy consultancies, and law firms all use models in which salaries expand massively with time, with high attrition along the way: the “up-or-out” model.
Even academia gives tenured positions (which have enormous value to workers) only after trial periods as postdocs and assistant professors.
Main Street corporate executives have to climb the ranks.
Yes. And you might also worry that high pay gives impostor candidates a very strong incentive to try to masquerade as talented—that your applicant pool might be worse if you offer 300k per year than 200k per year.
Another suggestion (a variant on #2 which explains why the shortage is worse than one would expect given how many smart people there are out there): there is a shortage of reliably diagnosable talented people. Hiring requires multiple factors of which ‘having talent’ is only one, you must also be able to signal in some way your overall appropriateness and safety.
One of the impressions I get from descriptions of the interview process at Google & Facebook (and previously, Microsoft) is that they were more worried about hiring a flawed candidate than rejecting a talented candidate. The reasoning being that these places are ‘o-ring production’ sorts of places, where a single person could wreak a lot of havoc, by either commission or omission; so despite their shortage of talent, they’re forced to be paranoid in their hiring process and biased towards rejection.
Mere money doesn’t solve their problem: they can offer tons of money towards random candidates, but not to the ones which are visibly/reliably talented (which are a small subset of the talented).
A way around that might be to make it known that big salaries are available, but not up front, only by proven merit after being given a job. Does this already happen?
This actually seems very common in office jobs where you find many workers with million dollar salaries. Wall Street firms, strategy consultancies, and law firms all use models in which salaries expand massively with time, with high attrition along the way: the “up-or-out” model.
Even academia gives tenured positions (which have enormous value to workers) only after trial periods as postdocs and assistant professors.
Main Street corporate executives have to climb the ranks.
I think the financial industry is like this. Sure, the starting salaries are decent, but it’s nothing compared to what you get if you make partner.
Sounds like a startup! :)
Yes. And you might also worry that high pay gives impostor candidates a very strong incentive to try to masquerade as talented—that your applicant pool might be worse if you offer 300k per year than 200k per year.