Re: Can Dave be cloned?

[Matt Hargett <matt () use net>]

Jason Lewis wrote:
> I work for one of Dave's former employers and I deal with lots of smart 
> people.  But, most seem to be "book" smart, not "real life experience" 
> smart.  When you are troubleshooting weird network problems, the
> solution is never in the book.

Either extreme isn't good, in my opinion. People who are too book smart 
tend to only be able to think in solution spaces they already know. You 
get people applying algorithms into contexts that don't make sense, etc.
On the flip side, people who are street smart, but not book smart will 
reinvent the linker, loader, and everything else because they just don't 
know what's out there. Sometimes they'll stumble into a design pattern, 
but in my experience they generally make a very complicated system or 
algorithm to do something that has been solved for decades in a much 
better way. As a result, they tend to get NIH syndrome and be very 
xenophobic to "book" smarts, which further limits their usefulness.

I think finding the balance can be very useful. Working with people who 
are at either extreme has never worked very well for me. Again, I've 
found that by pairing one personality with the other yields pretty great 
results compared to other things I've tried.

BTW, most college graduates that I know don't have the problems of which 
you guys are speaking. I am pretty sure they aren't representative of 
most, though ;>
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