View source for Nothing beats good process

Many people who join Wizard's ranks are used to being the smartest person in their social circle or environment. Once you join the guys who make Magic the reality comes crashing down. If you believe that from your very first day you are going to make a huge impact in any way you can imagine. No, you aren't. Over time you are going to notice that just because you are in a team of very bright people, that doesn't mean that everything is easy. That every problem is going to be a breeze to solve. More often than not you have to practice being humble because new sets introduce new problems and you have to face it. Making magic isn't easy, it's very hard.

Magic is built with a huge and complicated process that makes it work. There is a process and people have to understand it. Part of understanding that process is making mistakes, learning from them and by being humble you are not denying other people's opinions or decisions. It's complicated because what are the gears behind a company? People and people are prone to human behavior and all things that come along with it.

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I'd comment that what he said applies to any job anywhere. I could add my personal experience here. Going to college bears the same experience that he has told. If you go a famous college, maybe one of the top 10 in the world or in your country, there is competition to get in already. Once you are in, expect your peers to be at a certain level of intelligence that is above average. After all, you and them have passed the admission process. Now comes the bruise of reality and the inferiority complex. Some people may feel intimidated, even threatened, that everyone else is better than them. And there is the opposite: people who feel that they are above average and refuse to see reality for what it is. They wear their egos in a defensive manner, treating others as being inferior to them. Both extremes are bad and both are possible.

More important than the college's reputation it's the process to learn. There is a time period that people spend in college and from the first day till your last day there is a process. There is a whole life experience that takes place during that time and the process is more important than the fact that you have the best teachers or above average peers. It's not the fact that a professor is a Nobel prize winner that makes him or her outstanding. It's his or her process that took years, decades, to reach that level. I can guarantee from a personal experience that going to the best college in a certain field doesn't mean that everyone there is brilliant at all. In fact, you are going to experience it yourself or see others failing in exams, struggling with homework or even life itself. Do not be fooled by the college's name or reputation and expect that place to be heaven, the Garden of Eden or an Ivory Tower where there isn't blood, no pain, no suffering or any form of social stigma. No, the best university or college in the world is not another dimension or a different planet. It's nothing more than a subset of the world's society.

I can't name any specific scientific experiment now, but just because you hired 10 mathematicians from the highest level, that won't give you instant solutions to any mathematical problem. This is not how it works. Some mathematical problems take centuries to be solved and there aren't shortcuts. This is just how life is. This is reality. If you look at psychology, medicine, statistics, social sciences, etc. Every field has evolved over time and that is how humanity has been making progress. Never forget that humanity itself and its history is a long term process.