Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Saturday, September 8. 2018

Skill Stacks


Dilbert creator Scott Adams on his daily podcasts frequently refers to peoples' "skill stacks."  He seems to feel that the height of one's skill stack can be more valuable in achieving life goals than the quality of the skills.  That is, a low stack of A-level skills is often less effective than a tall stack of B-level skills. Obviously, there are unique exceptions at the ends of the bell curves.


Scott Adams admires Trump for having a tall stack of B-level skills.  Scott Adams on Trump etc. yesterday.  Quite clever and amusing about underling behavior. He is right. Everybody thinks his/her boss is an idiot. So did I before I quit having bosses. Now, when my boss is an idiot, it is me.


When I am asked to evaluate a person, I evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. It's basic. 


On that podcast, he advertises his weed-smoking. It doesn't seem to hurt his brain much but he is not the average person.

Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss in Psychology, and Dr. Bliss at 14:53 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

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"Everybody thinks his/her boss is an idiot."

Indeed.

One thing about a military career is that each time you're promoted, you effectively "become your boss", as I came to learn in my years of service.
#1 JJM on 2018-09-08 18:33 (Reply)
“A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes is better than a master of one.”

Not a new observation, but a good one.
#2 Martin on 2018-09-08 21:22 (Reply)
"Skill stacks"; I see Adams' point; if you know some about a great number of topics, you can see solutions to problems that are not obvious who knows everything about a very few topics.

I'm a computer guy. I'm not an expert in networking, but I know a little about it. I'm not a SQL expert, but I can get by. I can teach the basic and intermediate levels of Word, Excel, Access and Project, without being an expert at any of them. My knowledge is a mile wide, but only an inch deep.

But I'm frequently the guy they look for when they have a problem that ties into many of those skills, where (for example) the expert in Word can't do a mailmerge because his data is in SQL or Access rather than Excel.
#3 Ken Mitchell (Link) on 2018-09-08 23:22 (Reply)

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