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We Only Hire the Best

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Re: We Only Hire the Best

#151

Post by mdpopescu »

venomsnake wrote: post #97
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" Programmer: "Too bad, I consider myself mediocre, bye"

Can't upvote this high enough. Yep, I also consider myself mediocre. (My "world" has people like Eric Lippert, Anders Hejlsberg and Jon Skeet in it - there's no way in hell I can say I'm among the best with a straight face.) I am safely in the middle :)

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#152

Post by vonmoltke »

cortesoft wrote: post #83
leroy_masochist wrote: post #12

One other aspect of "we only hire the best" that wasn't explored by this article is the practice -- especially common among unicorn companies -- of purposely casting a far wider net than needed, so that their hiring yield on applicants is dauntingly low. The recruiting process is deliberately set up to yield a lot of false negatives -- i.e., applicants who are qualified on both skill and fit who are rejected for some…

Well, lots of people have to be rejected for a the not-bullshit reason that there are only n jobs available at the company and n+x people applied. Even if they are all great, x number of people are going to be rejected.

If this were the case, there would not be so much whining from these same companies about talent shortages.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#153

Post by jazzyk »

beat wrote: post #125
vonmoltke wrote: post #104

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. 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.

True.

But there are also many cases when sales people force the product development team to implement the most idiotic "feature", because "we think the client is ready to sign the check and this is really important to them". The bad side of commission-based compensation is that they want to close the sale, no matter how harmful (in the long term) it can be.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#154

Post by notacoward »

"We only hire the best, because nobody else has a hope of surviving the mess that our previous 'best' made."

Seriously, I think WOHTB is an indication that the company doesn't know the difference between selection and training. They want the technical equivalent of Navy SEALs (which is already a questionable goal) so they put in an equivalent of BUD/S, but that's a training program and they're using it for selection. Anybody capable of getting past that is either a faker or doesn't need it, and since the second group will also have little patience for it all you're left with is the fakers. Not a strategy for success. I don't mind, though, because their failure makes things easier for the rest of us.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#155

Post by anandjoseph »

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"

Goldman sachs makes a loud claim of hiring the best tech talent[1].

The Paysa [2] Companyrank shows who actually hires the very best. Companyrank[3] paints a very different picture.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-tech-cohead-duet-on-r...

[2] https://www.paysa.com/

[3]https://www.paysa.com/company-rank#!companies=Google:::Goldm...

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#156

Post by nickpsecurity »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #108
leroy_masochist wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We want people who are motivated by the mission .

So does ISIS.

And you see what results they get in the U.S. markets. Maybe more rational management and pay of experienced professionals would've helped them. They said they weren't mission-oriented and lacked "culture fit," though. So, their numbers are all over the place, goals aren't being met, and competition is all over their territory.

Now ISIS and other startups in that sector can feel free to continue being idiots. The locals need to avoid making the same mistakes, though. ;)

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#157

Post by logfromblammo »

joncrocks wrote: post #91
dsr_ wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Supply and demand are two sides to the same coin.

Sales and marketing generate demand. Engineering and manufacturing generates supply. Both must exist for a product to be meaningful in the market.

The labor theory of value, you see, is bunk. The product is worth only what the buyer will pay for it. And much of the time, a salescritter can convince someone to pay so much more for a product above cost that the difference pays for the salesperson's work, and still leaves some left over for R&D, or other nice things.

Don't get me wrong. I still hate smarmy, schmoozing salesfolk with the passion of one ten-thousandth of a sun. But they aren't entirely useless. They do add value to a company in their own right. It is as a value multiplier, though. There still has to be some value added before you can multiply it.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#158

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

FireBeyond wrote: post #118
LargeWu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the mission is feeding starving children, or curing cancer, or public service, then yes, I want people who are motivated by the mission. But usually the mission, the real mission, is to make the founders exceptionally wealthy, and forgive me if that doesn't get me out of bed in the morning.

"We want to change the world, by finding a more efficient way to bike courier organic Nicaraguan coffee beans to your doorstep in the Mission or SoMa."

My god, this is genius. Let me throw investment money at you. Just be sure not to pay the programmers more than $11/hour.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#159

Post by bretpiatt »

Places that truly hire the best are not doing it through job postings. The the company / department leadership are actively involved spending time networking to curate a queue of candidates for hard to hire roles.

The second thing high performing companies do is have entry level roles where you can mass hire to see who rises to perform as "the best" where you can then promote out of that pool into your "hard to hire" roles where you cannot afford an average or below average player on the team.

You'll also need to pay the best at market rates for "best" not market rates for "average". "Pay" breaks down into what I call 'the money/fun dial' -- the dial goes from 0% money / 100% fun to 100% money / 0% fun. At 0% money those activities are called hobbies and everyone has a list of activities they enjoy doing each day they either spend money on or at best break even. At 100% money / 0% fun this is effectively "selling your soul" -- these are the jobs that leave you no time or energy to have hobbies, non-work relationships, or a family. With my company we aim for 50%/50% on the dial -- we pay well, allow folks to work hard on meaningful projects, and give them time for hobbies/friends/family. I view life as a marathon and if you turn the dial up or run a company culture with the dial turned up beyond 50% on money people will work for you until they burn out or make enough to find a long term home.

Re: We Only Hire the Best

#160

Post by st3v3r »

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…

Except those things they "actually do" tend to make my life miserable, as they overpromise to the client and then expect engineering to save their ass. It's never sales that has to sacrifice their time to meet deadlines.

If we had a just world, any salesperson who did that would be forced to forfeit their commission to the engineering staff who's saving their ass.

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