1/ Ask any technology company CEO in any location in the world and they will tell you their biggest challenge is finding the right talent.

Not just engineering or technology development or programming. Also design, product dev, scale, UX, UI and QA.

Why is that?

2/ There is not shortage of resumes or people looking for work. The key word is right talent with right skill set.

Top of my list are the 10xers.

Talent that is an order of magnitude better than nearest competitor.

These guys are rare. If you find them hang on to them.

3/ In 25 year of teaching as an adjunct and 29 years of testing, hiring and recruiting technology talent I have found 19 such individuals out of a pool of a few thousand candidates.

They are fire and forget missiles. You point them in the direction of a problem and its done.

4/ The best way of finding and hiring 10xers is to teach CS students.

That is how I found mine. Your relationship as an instructor gives you an edge in recruiting. You have also had a preview of how good these kids are, what they want and can afford to make better offers.

5/ The crude discovery rate for 10xers is about 1 in 1,000.

Some are damaged goods.

Difficult to work with. Too focused on solving 60% of the problem but not finishing or wrapping up. Motivational and work ethic issues. I have already excluded them from the rate above.

6/ Then we have the regulars. People like you and me.

Not really gifted but still blessed. We are rank and file of the industry. We want interesting problems to solve, decent wages, respectable work environment and good people to work with.

Finding these guys is also hard work.

7/ Why?

I have been thinking about this for a while and I have a thesis.

Anecdotal only, not based on hard science, data or research.

Math teachers. Good and bad math teachers. Math teachers decide if you are going to love the subject or hate it.

They are the bridge builders

8/ I do numbers for a living because of two middle and high school teachers who made me fall in love with the subject.

Numbers led me to computer science. Where a handful of similarly gifted instructors made me fall in love with the field.

Math is the bridge to CS talent.

9/ In my immediate family are two sharp children both with a gift for mathematics. They are naturals but hate it and will neither opt for mathematics or CS.

Why? Bad math teachers. Not necessarily bad teachers but teachers who have turned them off the subject.

10/ Only a small part of our population has a gift for numbers.

Not all of them end up liking the subject because they were not blessed with great math teachers.

The two kids above are heading to the creative side, because they don't like numbers or maths.

11/ How do you know a child has the gift?

Frequent assessment. Not just for CS, math is a core living skill. We need it to survive in the world. If a child is struggling with the subject, it will become a handicap later in life. Early intervention can help fix issues.

12/ 5 years of working with special needs children has taught me that part of getting math right is helping a child discover the magic behind numbers. Follow that by practice and sprinkle a bit of love and care and a child can own that magic for the rest of his or her life.

13/ If we want to build a thriving commune of technology companies, we have to start with getting math right.

We don't need empty palaces masquerading as universities.

We need math teachers who can help children discover the magic behind numbers.

Not traumatize them for life.

14/ There is more to this discussion but it starts with numbers education.

It's the first step in the talent funnel.

Similar challenges with CS teachers. I was blessed with 3 great CS professors. Without them I would have ditched the field.

But that's a different thread.