Re:Having no experience can be better than having the wrong ...
by cxr on Tuesday July 26, 2022 @05:10PM
(#32244061)
This is a good analogy but inadequate. What Dan is saying goes beyond that. In the scenario you're describing, it is rational to prefer those recruits—for exactly those reasons. The behavior that Dan describes involves a heap of irrationality.
Dan's piece that he linked (about "Mike") really is important to understand the thing that he's referring to.
<http://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/>
(Kudos on being able to yes-and the post, though. Huge swaths of HN's user base somehow lacks this ability and shows the proof any time some of Dan's writing shows up here.)
Re:Having no experience can be better than having the wrong ...
by anonymoushn on Tuesday July 26, 2022 @11:50PM
(#32246673)
> Huge swaths of HN's user base somehow lacks this ability and shows the proof any time some of Dan's writing shows up here.
I've found this comment section to be a bit shocking, to be honest. I thought a message like "Trendy hiring managers will discriminate against you if you work for Walgreens or a bank or use a Microsoft stack, compared to if you have no professional experience" would be simple enough to be successfully transmitted to readers.
At basic training, our drill instructors often said that recruits with no experience shooting weapons were easier to train than other recruits who had experience because it was much easier to teach best practices to someone who was a "blank slate" than it was to retrain best practices to someone who learned improper methods.
I haven't exactly seen this idea like-for-like in the "corporate" world, but I believe the general premise is accurate.