http://blog.dilbert.com/post/153775344216/the-trump-talent-stack
and good way of thinking -- what is clickpart's talent stack?
Clickpart (our company) talent stack is a combination of us. For a company, it's the synergy of its people - how they collaborate, how they solve problems, how they learn from each other (enhancing each other talent stack and the company as a whole)
You (just guessing here) - Great with people, sales, and strategy, cold calls, get things done for cheap
Me - product, engineering (mobile, backend, frontend, scripting, server operation, tech support, etc) , design (ok), user experience design, business operation (so so), financial savvy
When I was at Avanade/Accenture, we always talk about "core strengths" - I guess it' similar to talent stack. Core strengths is what the company is good at and what it should focus on...Well for consulting company, it's the people, and they were very focused on developing our technology skills, and people skills.. 1-2 week a year, The entire company just go to las vegas to party & to learn from hundreds of guest speakers and workshops...and throughout the year we also have certifications goals, e-learning goals....
Mark Zuckerberg started off with decent programming skills, and lots of elbow grease to get things done. For him to turn into the company today, he hired amazing people. I remember asking "how the f*** was he able to hire Sheryl?" Google was a hot company and he managed to do that. Because Mark surrounded by really smart people, and HIRED really smart people, he was able to build up his "talent stack".. he may not be as good as Sheryl when it comes to Sales & Operations, but he learned from Sheryl, and built up his own talent stack to manage across the organization.
When I ran Tango Labs, I hired some pretty good engineers.. One was a PhD from Texas A&M, and another Great Web Eng from Microsoft & Yahoo, several others. My designer was fresh out of school, but he had talent & drive..and I hired him and connected him with my friends on Design team to help develop his skills. I almost hired a guy from Google. I sold him so much and asked my manager to help sell..in the end he didn't take it. (I think the challenge we had there wasn't big enough for him -- often times with top engineers) There was a great web eng from Yahoo. I gave an offer to her, declined and took another job. 6 months later, asked me for a job without any interview, and offer again and declined. --- I swore never make another offer again. There was another one that asked $150K just 2 years after his Masters. I declined..it was too high. Another guy I thought he was really good...offered him $180K, and he declined and went to microsoft for higher.
If I learned anything...all the money in the world couldn't get the best engineers. It was frustrating. I heard a saying goes, "If you have a challenging problem, you will attract the best". This is a reminder the two failures of hiring: 1) You're trying to hire too early 2) You did attract the best, but you failed to challenge them.
I ran so true for Tango. Many of our ex-Tango people went to FB, Google, Uber, LinkedIn... So we did hire the best. The problem was we didn't give problems hard enough...It was the lack of engineering leadership to re-think some of the problems we faced..instead it was just maintaining legacy systems.
Talent stack is an interesting discussion. What skill should you acquire? When should you acquire a skill? Is it too early to acquire that skill? Can you afford to acquire that skill at the cost? How will you use those skills to grow your business?
