How much do people differ in productivity? What the evidence says. - 80,000 Hours

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We did a survey of academic research about how much people differ in productivity. This is a quick summary of what we found.

People sometimes point out that performance is ‘power law’ distributed, e.g. they’ll point out that the top 10% of scientists get 5x more citations over their career than the other 90% of scientists, or that the top 1% of startup founders get 80% of the equity value. But is this true? And if so, what does it imply? I think these differences in performance can be really important, and their significance is often not properly appreciated. But it’s also often oversold. To better understand how much people predictively differ in productivity, Max Daniel of Coefficient Givin

How much do people differ in productivity? What the evidence says. - 80,000 Hours

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