Modern Wisdom: #482 - Tyler Cowen - The Secret To Finding Great Talent

Or say it turned out that, in fact, women were on average worse at some other workplace activity. Still, likely many women would be better at that activity than most of the men, and you would gain from spotting and enabling those women. So even if you think “women are worse at [fill in the blank],” it is still a mistake to dismiss female talent. Th

So missing out on the next big thing is a surefire way to lose money. By no means do venture capital or tech dominate our economy, but we can glean from them some useful ways to look beyond credentials and find hidden sources of transformative talent.

We are both “fallibilists,” to use a term that has been revived by Irish tech entrepreneur and Stripe CEO Patrick Collison. That means we’re also going to tell you about things you might think you know but that aren’t true. For instance, for a large swath of jobs, intelligence and IQ are far less important than many smart people believe.

Talented people don’t need to work for you; they have plenty of options. You should ask yourself a more pointed version of the question: Why would someone join your company as its 20th engineer when she could go work at Google for more money and more prestige? Here are some bad answers: “Your stock options will be worth more here than elsewhere.” “