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Specialization vs. Intelligence

Earlier this week, I mentioned additional curiosity about the whole recruiting process beyond just hierarchical hiring. In that post, we looked at what Jonathan Rosenberg had to say in his book How Google Works, and wouldn't you know, he also has more to say about the recruiting process!

Specifically, he talked about this idea of "specialization vs. intelligence." In other words, it is this thought that maybe recruiting a person specialized in a very specific area is not as "good" as hiring somebody who may not have expertise in a certain area but has a curiosity and a thirst to want to learn anything and everything.

It's an interesting thought, and like most business matters, I don't think there's a black-and-white answer to this question. Rosenberg also didn't define a hard answer to this question. But I think where he and I align is that we would probably tend toward intelligence instead of specialization. Let's talk about why.
Rosenberg's Case

Being largely ingrained in a technical company, Rosenberg's case for intelligence naturally is hinged upon technology. Specifically, he refers to the fact that the technology that builds "Widget U" today will be obsolete tomorrow. The 24-time period is obviously just a metaphor, but it still holds true: technology languages evolve over time, and somebody super specialized in Java, Ruby, or C++ today may find that those languages today may fall to the wayside in a decade along with the languages of old like BASIC or COBOL. Do some companies still support legacy applications using those old technologies? Sure, but they are becoming few and far between. Rosenberg contends, then, that hiring a mega genius in Java might not be as good as hiring somebody who is decent in Java but super willing to learn new languages in the future.

Rosenberg also refers to something he affectionately refers to as "the LAX test". LAX is commonly known as one of the worst airports in the world, so Rosenberg encourages people to ask themselves of a candidate, would you want to spend 8 hours stuck at LAX with this person? Rosenberg notes that it even goes beyond whether or not the person is a jerk. He notes that the person should be able to hold a compelling conversation, even if they do not share the same views as you.

Curiously enough, while Rosenberg never explicitly favors specialization over intelligence, he does note that there are some people within Google that were hired despite the fact that they aren't the nicest people to be around. Perhaps I'm imposing my own experience onto his, but I've found that those people he describes in his book tend to be very specialized in something. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it, but it does seem to indicate that Rosenberg does encourage specialization in a very few exceptional cases.

 My Case

 I'm not going to beat around the bush: I pretty much fully align to everything Rosenberg has to share. I have grown up with and worked with people that were extremely intelligent in one very specialized area but absolute failures in other areas, especially in the social department. Now, I'll never proclaim to be a social bug myself, but I can recognize exceptionally rude or socially awkward people from a mile away. And being specialized in an area of knowledge doesn't excuse that kind of behavior.

 I can't know if it was an accurate portrayal, but a good example of this was Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. In the film, Zuckerberg is portrayed to be an absolute genius in terms of computer programming, but his social skills are lacking, to say the least. Eisenberg's portrayal of Zuckerberg lends to this idea that Zuckerberg was totally unaware of his social proclivities, too, which I have found to be the case with other people. In other words, "smart" people tend to think they're smart in everything and delude themselves into believing they have the Midas touch with everything.

 (And we all know that's not true, especially those of you who have been keeping up with this blog!)

 Like I shared earlier, I definitely don't think this is a black-and-white issue. If you're looking for an object-oriented developer, do you hire an extremely eager guy with zero experience with any code? Probably not. But there needs to be a balance. Finding that balance will look different for every organization and position.
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