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Cedric Chin Profile picture
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6 Sep, 5 tweets, 2 min read
My podcast episode with @DRMacIver is live!

We talk about ways programmers harm themselves in their careers, mistakes non-technical people make when dealing with programmers, and what it was like pushing the boundaries of property testing.

Podcast link is here: share.transistor.fm/s/43964a56
Also, possibly the best piece of fiction you'll ever read about software testing (I know, I know, but truly, it's great): archiveofourown.org/works/3673335
This episode's a little strange because I get to talk about software programming (and also culture things about software programming!) — which I don't get to do very often.

I think the bit I loved the most is what @DRMacIver has to say about dealing with programmers (~52:04).
"I think the first thing that a novice would get wrong when talking to programmers is assume they're a lot angrier at them than they actually are. Because there's a strong argument culture in programming."

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More from @ejames_c

Cedric Chin Profile picture
8 Sep
1/ Let's talk about accelerating expertise.

You want to get good. You want to get good fast. How do you do this?

In 2008 and 2009 the US Department of Defence convened two meetings on this very topic.

Here's what they found. (Hint: the answer is NOT deliberate practice). Image
2/ First: let's put ourselves in the position of a training program designer.

You are told that you need to get a bunch of novices to a good level of competency in 3 months.

It used to take them a year.

How do you do this?
3/ If you're like most people, you'd probably say "Ok, let's create a skill tree. Let's map out all the skills needed from most basic to most advanced. Then let's design a syllabus, where complex skills build on simpler skills."

In other words, you'd replicate school.
Read 24 tweets
Cedric Chin Profile picture
7 Sep
This is actually a good example of a tweet thread that contains ideas that are all correct but are not actually useful.

I can assure you, as an org designer, this is NOT how good org designers actually think about incentives.
To establish some credibility: I built a debate club in high school, which imploded.

I thought, "hmm, this seems like a useful skill to learn".

I then built the NUS Hackers, which has persisted for 8 years now, and remains the best place to hire software engineers in Singapore.
And then I went to Vietnam, built out an engineering office there, and tweaked the departments adjacent to our office, and now, 3 years later, the org has retained 75% of the people I hired, and are still run using many of the same policies/incentives I designed.
Read 20 tweets
Cedric Chin Profile picture
15 Aug
1/ One of my most persistent irritations is with the whole 'OH YOU NEED TO DO DELIBERATE PRACTICE' meme.

Ugh, no, perhaps you don't. It depends on your domain. Deliberate practice has problems. Have you even tried?

I've written about this before, but here's a thread.
2/ First: DP is a real theory, and it's one of the greatest contributions to our understanding of expertise.

It is a technical term. It does NOT mean 'practicing deliberately'. We'll define it soon.

My problems with it stem mostly from trying to apply it, and failing miserably.
3/ Ok, let's define DP. To make things a little complicated, DP is tricky to define because K Anders Ericsson has been inconsistent with definitions throughout his career (see pic, from The Science of Expertise, Hambrick et al).
Read 21 tweets
Cedric Chin Profile picture
14 Aug
1/ I've been reflecting on why I found @LiaDiBello4's extracted mental model of business so compelling.

I mean, my reaction was mostly: "ALL great businesspeople share a common mental model of business? The model is a triad of supply, demand and capital? YES THIS MUST BE RIGHT."
2/ The model, if you're wondering:
3/ I'm usually more sceptical when I encounter new ideas. Some of my friends remain sceptical about DiBello's paper.

But I think DiBello's triad just fits into everything I know and everything I've read about business. Here's what I mean ...
Read 19 tweets
Cedric Chin Profile picture
13 Aug
1/ Yesterday I talked about Cognitive Transformation Theory, a learning theory that tells us that how good you are at learning from the real world depends on how good you are at UNLEARNING mental models.

So: how do prevent yourself from stagnating?

2/ In 1993, Clark Chinn and William Brewer published a famous paper on how science students react to anomalous data — data that clashed with their mental models of the world.

They then drew on the history of science to show how common these reactions are amongst scientists.
3/ It turns out there are basically only 7 ways you can respond to inconvenient data. 6 of them allow you to preserve your existing mental models.

See if any of these are familiar to you, before we go through them in order: Image
Read 19 tweets
Cedric Chin Profile picture
12 Aug
US Military, Naturalistic Decision Making researchers: "in order to accelerate expertise, we need to design our training programs to destroy existing mental models"

Good businesspeople: "how can we distill wisdom from the air?"

Everyone else: "u need 2 do DeLiBeRaTe PrAcTiCe!"
Clarification on the 'distill wisdom from the air' bit — that's from Robert Kuok's biography, in reference to the way uneducated Chinese businessmen learn. Mostly by reflecting on experiences and observing widely.
There was a meme sometime back on “what is the deliberate practice of your domain?” With this theory of learning, we can say that the question is ill-formed, because DP can only be done in domains with clear pedagogical development, with a coach who has that pedagogy.
Read 6 tweets

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