Quite a while ago I heard about this lecture by John Ousterhout — creator of Tcl and general computer science luminary — and it’s been rattling around in my head ever since. It’s a part of his weekend thought series, or so I understand, and the main point was quite straightforward (but also quite thought-provoking):
A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept.
By way of reminder, picture two lines on a graph. One starts way up high on the y-axis — that’s your y-intercept, your starting advantage. The other starts near zero but has a steeper slope.
Given enough time, that steeper line will always overtake the one that started higher.
Ousterhout was comparing two theoretical individuals: one born with advantage and access and the other born only with the motivation to keep learning. (It’s basically the tortoise and the hare, if that makes it easier to picture — Aesop knew what he was talking about with that whole “sobriety, zeal and perseverance can prevail over indolence” thing.)
I’ve seen this play out my entire career.
When I joined Amazon back in ‘99, I was a UNIX Administrator with zero retail experience. I didn’t know pricing algorithms. That mispriced iPod incident I wrote about? The one where I built the ASIN Spike Report in a single day? That wasn’t because I knew everything about pricing or anomaly detection going in.
It was because I saw a problem, attacked it, and shipped something that solved it.
My y-intercept was basically zero in that domain, but my passion drove my learning. Within a few short years, we built Amazon’s pricing engine. (The “we” there is important…I worked with highly motivated learners on that project and every one since.)
But here’s the thing — and this is the vicious corollary — people with high y-intercepts can get complacent. Lots of initial knowledge, impressive credentials, years of experience…and then what? Technologies change. Business models evolve. And if their slope is flat? They get overtaken by more dedicated learners.
It’s not age. It’s appetite.
So if you take nothing else from this, take this: don’t be intimidated by people who know more than you right now. Don’t skip opportunities because you feel like you’re starting from zero.
Focus on the slope.
Learn one thing today. Do it again tomorrow. And the day after that.
Eventually, you’ll look back and realize you’ve traveled farther than you ever thought possible — not because you started with some massive advantage, but because you kept moving.
That’s the power of a little bit of slope.