The Death of Expertise

Having equal rights does not mean having equal talents, equal abilities, or equal knowledge. It assuredly does not mean that “everyone’s opinion about anything is as good as anyone else’s.” And yet, this is now enshrined as the credo of a fair number of people despite being obvious nonsense.

Tom Nichols makes a point that we in technology have known / identified for a long time. As the cost of knowledge transfer approaches zero, everyone thinks they know everything and can make expert level decisions. “I know about JSON and I heard Google uses MapReduce, let’s use MongoDB!”

We insist on repeating the mistakes of the past because we don’t value expertise (knowledge + experience).

How winners win: John Boyd and the four qualities of victorious organizations

I’ve read “Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War” and it has changed how I look at problems. Finding my own OODA loop has been instrumental at improving my success in my work. His four qualities might help improve yours.

Is this what it’s supposed to feel like?

“I just got an email from an engineering prospect who has decided to turn down our offer. We put so much time and effort and passion into recruiting him. He decided he wants to go off and start his own company right now.

I think more and more startup CEOs (and hiring managers) are figuring this out. At least, I’m telling every one I meet – for technical talent, you are not competing against the other startups in your neighborhood. Or even ones doing the same thing. Or startups in general. You’re competing against the awesome developer doing their own thing.

The cost of booting a startup is trending to zero. In the 90’s/early 2000s, you’d need massive capital investment (servers, networking, etc.). I can spin up a Heroku server for free (or a series of AWS for nearly-free). I have super-powerful development environments (Ruby/Rails, Clojure/Lighttable, whatever) that are free or nearly so. Great infrastructure (Postgres, Unicorn, whatever) – free!

All I need is a product idea and a vision and I can bootstrap my company. I can charge money on day one without needing a business checking account, LLC, and all that.

What does this mean for you? As a startup founder, you are competing against a person owning 100% and running the show as they see fit. This is a completely different power dynamic and one that is going to be the new normal. You really need to have your stuff completely together in order to get the best people. It’s very hard, but possible (I advise founders how to do that all the time).

I’d also caution against “this person needs to be passionate about my idea or we won’t” hire them. I see that all the time, too. Look, it’s your baby; it’s going to be very difficult to get them to love it as much as you do. Figure out what this person wants out of life (their career, whatever) that you can provide that they alone cannot (work from home, presenting/attending conferences, learning new technologies, mentoring, leading a team, education, building their personal brand, whatever). THAT’S how you get them. Constant tending to their needs and giving them opportunities to further their growth is how you KEEP them.

What value are YOU bringing to the table other than an idea and some cash?