The skill of surgeons varies tremendously, with bottom quartile surgeons having over 4x as many complications as the best surgeons in the same hospital. And surgeons are keenly aware of who is good & who is bad - their rankings of others are very accurate. nejm.org
And huge performance gaps are everywhere in organizations.
I have a paper that shows the difference in quality among managers in the game industry accounted for 22%(!!) of variation in game revenue; the best managers could boost any team they lead. papers.ssrn.com
I have a paper that shows the difference in quality among managers in the game industry accounted for 22%(!!) of variation in game revenue; the best managers could boost any team they lead. papers.ssrn.com
Interestingly, the most famous performance gap - that good programmers are 10x better than bad ones - has less public data in support. While it is likely true that differences are large (though in what skills?), the only direct experiment comparing coders was published in 1968!
Another medical example: Having a good doctor assigned to a pregnant woman (one with 1 standard deviation higher test scores) drops the odds of giving birth to an unhealthy child by 6.3% compared to an average doc. Partly as good docs know where to focus hbs.edu
But medical skill is not always revealed by academic ability. Skill differences among radiologists accounted for 44% of the differences in diagnoses but was not correlated to rank of the doctor's med school.
Fascinatingly, low-skilled doctors over-diagnose to avoid being wrong!
Fascinatingly, low-skilled doctors over-diagnose to avoid being wrong!
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