31–40 of 178 posts
Or, hire the best, and make a team out of them. Or hire people with high potential and push them to reach it. Or, hire people who can get the job done. One thing for sure: if you have mind-numbing processes, "the best" will leave, and others will not reach their potential.
Hiring the best doesn't scale. Building teams does. The problem as with hiring the best is that almost no one knows how to build good teams. You will probably spend way more time resolving conflicts and dealing with politics than you'd like and in the end the software product will still be a steaming pile of technical debt.
I wish I could triple like this! Hire the best is lazy thinking. * I have been on teams that were not considered the best until they had success, then everyone on the team was a "star". * I have worked places where they only hire "superstars"-- and were pretty serious about paying for good talent and being picky-- and still failed for all kinds of organizational reasons. Teams with more role players, or more cohesion…
At a former (large, organizationally deficient) company, there was this small team of 5 people with very different specialties (and personalities). They were a "strike team" of sorts, tasked with helping out at a technical level different projects that were in trouble. They were excellent. They saved my team's integration of a camera co-processor in an SoC. But finally a re-org came around and some high-level manager…
Patrick: This is the final roster? You're kidding me, right? You're missing some of the best players.
Brooks: I'm not looking for the best players, Craig. I'm looking for the right ones.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, these "don't do [hip thing], do [contrarian but normal/common sense] thing" articles (or the reverse of them) are becoming a bit tired. You should have good team-building and organizational skills and good technical hiring skills.
Everybody thinks they're doing the common-sense thing and not being contrarian, even if it's the hip thing.
Moneyball and Six Thinking Hats are excellent approaches to for people and roles. But they aren't enough. The key driver of top-tier teams is excellent ongoing safe communication. To build communications, use team goals (e.g. OKRs & KPIs), team ways of working (e.g. TEAM FOCUS), and team positions (e.g. scorecards). My notes about these are open source: https://joelparkerhenderson.github.io/ Edit to explain abbreviat…
Is "TEAM FOCUS" an initialism, or is it there for EMPHASIS?
I wish I could triple like this! Hire the best is lazy thinking. * I have been on teams that were not considered the best until they had success, then everyone on the team was a "star". * I have worked places where they only hire "superstars"-- and were pretty serious about paying for good talent and being picky-- and still failed for all kinds of organizational reasons. Teams with more role players, or more cohesion…
Yes, it's very important to realize that this is how people think; most of our decisions are subconscious, and the frame/bias that informs everything else about our perception is determined rapidly, within seconds of evaluating a situation or becoming acquainted.
If you bear the tokens of success (i.e., if you "look" successful), people will assume that means you know what you are doing, and if you don't, people will assume you don't. There is a pronounced halo effect on association. Anchor yourself against something generally considered successful and your perceived intelligence will go up precipitously.
Entrepreneurs especially need to take this lesson to heart. You will be a daydreamer and a slacker who can't handle having a boss right up until your company appears successful, and then you'll be a visionary that everyone is falling over themselves to try to imitate.
"As you sow, so shall you reap". But few have the patience to sow nowadays. We rather buy ready-made in the grocery store.
I wish I could triple like this! Hire the best is lazy thinking. * I have been on teams that were not considered the best until they had success, then everyone on the team was a "star". * I have worked places where they only hire "superstars"-- and were pretty serious about paying for good talent and being picky-- and still failed for all kinds of organizational reasons. Teams with more role players, or more cohesion…
The football team would be half quarterbacks, the hockey team mostly goalies and so on.