Am I the only one annoyed by the whole A player, B player, C player mini-meme?
It's really, really hard to tell the difference between an A player and a B player unless you've worked with them or have known them a long-time. Even then, their contribution can be highly distorted by situation, perception, and personal bias (e.g. Moneyball).
So the advice only works in those few situations where you know someone is a B-player... in which case the advice really reduces down to the obvious: don't hire shitty people.
Agreed - i call it Inches vs seven league boots - it's easy to tell the difference between someone who makes regular marginal improvements (inches forwards) and someone who adds nothing, but impossible to tell the difference between a loser and a game changed until they change the game.
This always strikes me as great advice that runs slap bang into (her husbands) Blub Paradox. How can you tell someone is better or smarter than you?
I have worked out its about openness - in most modern corporate worlds fudging it till you get it is common and fear tends to rule - if they find out I don't know I will be fired.
But allow or force openness and suddenly there is an explosion of "we'll I don't know either let's experiment"
Take off the pressure of delivering arbitrary tasks and instead allow a coder to sculpt - cut away the bits not needed to reveal the hidden statue as it were and you have the makings of a team of A performers - even if thy looked b style before
It's really, really hard to tell the difference between an A player and a B player unless you've worked with them or have known them a long-time. Even then, their contribution can be highly distorted by situation, perception, and personal bias (e.g. Moneyball).
So the advice only works in those few situations where you know someone is a B-player... in which case the advice really reduces down to the obvious: don't hire shitty people.