Hi, I'm Vaish, the author of Optima & Outliers and the co-founder of Clout. The same underlying observation underpins both of these efforts: human capital markets remain the last frontier of significant inefficiency.

Financial markets have been systematized and optimized to the millisecond. But the systems we use to discover, evaluate, and allocate talent remain surprisingly primitive. The reason — human capital is both an asset and an agent, which makes it much less legible than other assets.

When faced with this fuzziness, we tend to gravitate toward extremes: either reducing people to their credentials and measurable outputs, or throwing up our hands and declaring talent an ineffable mystery.

O&O is an attempt at applied rationality to the domain of talent, careers and recruitment.

If you have feedback on the newsletter or want to know more about what we do at Clout, you can get in touch with me by writing to vaishnav@cloutcareers.com

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I write about meta politics, social psychology and human capital. Also host the Moral Mayhem podcast with Regan Arntz-Gray. Follow me on Twitter at @vaishsg7