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We Only Hire the Best

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Re: We Only Hire the Best

#121

Post by LargeWu »

bthallplz wrote: post #103
andybak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This man speaks the truth. :-) I think it's a lost battle but I used to rage whenever I saw a company talk about their 'Vision'. Unless you're a poet, religious mystic or philosopher king - then you're being pretentious and grandiose.

Assuming that I am a cash-strapped philosopher king with a grand vision for my business, how might I sway people to take the vision seriously and work towards the fulfillment of the vision?

I'm assuming the vision you're trying to sell is to make the philosopher king wealthy. (Your stated vision is probably irrelevant.) You need to make your employees' incentives align with that proposition.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#122

Post by beat »

This makes me think of an observation an old colleague of mine made to one of the revolving-door CTOs at our former employer. He said there are three things you can offer to get good engineers... high pay, an interesting problem, and a great work environment. If you can't offer at least two, you really need to excel at the last one.

Problem with former employer was a lousy work environment for uninteresting work...

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#123

Post by compactmani »

arethuza wrote: post #99
joncrocks wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter-point is that without something to sell, the sales people wouldn't make any money. They don't make the company any money, they're middle-men. The value comes from the product. I would argue it's equally hard to objectively measure the value of a salesperson, but as there's already specific figures one can latch onto, it's easy to think it's easy.

"The counter-point is that without something to sell" Never met a salesperson who was deterred from selling something by the trivial detail that it doesn't actually exist. ;-)

This is consistent with my impression of how sales work. You sell a feature, product, capability, etc that won't be ready for at least 6 months (for example). Then you kindly encourage an engineer to build it.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#124

Post by bphogan »

dsr_ wrote: post #86
dccoolgai wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And almost always these places pay their conference-calling-bullshitters top dollar. But it's like the apocalypse if you try to get more money for the people that actually do things.

The thing about salespeople is that you can objectively determine their value over any given time period. That's how they should be paid: a very small base salary that wouldn't cover their mortgage, coupled with a clear and unambiguous bonus structure that gives them a reasonable amount of money when they hit the targets that make the company profitable. Salespeople "actually do things". The problems come when you ma…

When you tie someone's compensation to performance, you don't always get the results you're looking for.

It seems to promote short-term gains over long term goals.

See IMSAI in the 1970s for a great example of needing to hit goals at all costs.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#125

Post by beat »

vonmoltke wrote: post #104
joncrocks wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter-point is that without something to sell, the sales people wouldn't make any money. They don't make the company any money, they're middle-men. The value comes from the product. I would argue it's equally hard to objectively measure the value of a salesperson, but as there's already specific figures one can latch onto, it's easy to think it's easy.

> The counter-point is that without something to sell, the sales people wouldn't make any money. > They don't make the company any money, they're middle-men. The value comes from the product. It is supposed to be a symbiotic relationship. Sales staff can't make money if they have nothing to sell, and engineers can't build product if they have no customers. The sales staff is just as critical as the product developmen…

Sales staff are out there, talking to customers. Since no product is truly complete, they are the best source of information about what customers actually want.

Too many programmers are smugly crossing their arms, saying they know what's best for customers without ever talking to them. Programmers are generally far more responsible than sales people for poor product quality.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#126

Post by leroy_masochist »

Karunamon wrote: post #106
leroy_masochist wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We don't hire assholes!" ... "Our company is founded on an engineering mindset in which the best ideas always win and people are encouraged to candidly speak their minds!"

Those... are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to have a culture in which people are not shut down for saying "This course of action sucks because X" without there being a lot of profanity and other between-the-lines nastiness in that previous sentence. Of course, some people find being told "no" to be asshole move. 🤷 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yeah, that's the problem. I agree with you 100% in theory, but unfortunately the definition of "asshole" is highly subjective. So, you get a lot of, "what do you mean I'm an asshole, I provided plenty of empirically sound reasons why your idea sucks, it has nothing to do with you personally"

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#128

Post by gotchange »

asb wrote: post #11

Corp: "We only hire the very best" Programmer: "What's the salary?" Corp: "Market average. Also, we're looking for people who aren't just motivated by money"

Corp: "We only hire the very best but we're willing to pay the very least possible"

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#129

Post by aplusbi »

jazzyk wrote: post #62
asb wrote: post #11

Corp: "We only hire the very best" Programmer: "What's the salary?" Corp: "Market average. Also, we're looking for people who aren't just motivated by money"

Did we mention the perks like our "unlimited vacation policy"?

I worked at a company with "unlimited vacation" and I took on average 5 weeks of vacation per year - so it does sometimes actually work.
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