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Bob Wilder's avatar

When I worked, my boss and I had a discussion about employee performance. Part of his job was to periodically rank (or assign ‘goodness’ numbers) to each employee, and he was struggling to explain differences.

The trouble is that there is never just one axis (or knob…). There might be 25 or 30 different components for an employee’s contribution. 15 technical ones; 8 interpersonal ones; maybe 5 character qualities; in addition to external factors like you talked about.

Chess is hard, and I think the same applies. There is a scale for experience/expertise with how each piece maneuvers, then you can add in the expertise for two-piece interactions; as well as creativity; a brain fog scale that acts as a multiplier for everything perhaps ….

No game touches all those axes or knobs; so some jaggedness is expected.

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David's avatar

A story about luck: I was playing in a tournament and the opening went poorly. I had a totally hopeless position.

My opponent seemed a little weirdly disengaged and also like he wasn’t sure how to make progress (which should have been easy) and so I offered a draw.

He accepted. In the hallway afterwards I asked why and he said “my wife left me this morning and I’m having trouble focusing.”

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