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Mining diamonds is hard work.

People are poor judges of value in other people, and don't want to spend that much time on it. So how would you "know" someone is a diamond-in-the-rough, and not just rough? That would require a lot more knowledge, perhaps a referral in the team of someone who has already identified them as good talent. Or you could just hire all the roughs and fire the ones that don't turn out to be diamonds.

It is like hiring someone with a criminal record. Ya, great value! But wait, what if they go back to their old ways? Biases are optimizations based on experience (or perhaps cultural influences); they are not perfect, but they often have groundings in reality. The best companies are able to work through all the pros and cons rationally, and known when the risks are worth it.




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