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Ask HN: Tips for a new team lead who is hiring

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Re: Ask HN: Tips for a new team lead who is hiring

#31

Post by blowski »

orwin wrote: post #25
blowski wrote: post #15

I've been interviewing software engineers for around 15 years. In total, I think I've interviewed around 600 people in a range of roles. My main advice is to listen to your gut instinct. Things that mildly annoy or worry you in the interview will probably come to dominate your working relationship with them. Don't assume you can fix someone's flaws after they join. Get other people to give their gut instinct too, and…

My 'agent' found me the perfect job, so I wouldn't avoid recruitment consultant. But you have to ask the question : how long have you worked with him/her (the first job I landed with her was not a good fit).

I’ve also had good experiences with agents, but only when I learned how. Early on I was burned by pump-and-dump agents - they send you below-par candidates, bullshit both of you, pressure you into saying yes, and then walk away with their commission. They dominate the market because they send everybody as fast as they can, and have the lowest fees. So if it’s your first hiring experience the odds are that you’re working with such an agent, whatever they tell you.

Find an agent who takes a long-term view of the relationship by showing them you will be hiring many people over the years. Get them to send you their best candidates - respond to their messages quickly and with useful feedback. Nurture the relationship by also sending good engineers and employers their way. They are often more expensive and send fewer candidates, but the ones they do send are stronger.

Re: Ask HN: Tips for a new team lead who is hiring

#32

Post by gambiting »

blowski wrote: post #15

I've been interviewing software engineers for around 15 years. In total, I think I've interviewed around 600 people in a range of roles. My main advice is to listen to your gut instinct. Things that mildly annoy or worry you in the interview will probably come to dominate your working relationship with them. Don't assume you can fix someone's flaws after they join. Get other people to give their gut instinct too, and…

My problem is that we're trying to hire for a very niche position, where we get maybe 3-4 candidates A YEAR. So we don't really have the comfort of waiting a bit longer to interview those 30 candidates - we have to look at whether the people that come in could maybe work in the position we have.

Re: Ask HN: Tips for a new team lead who is hiring

#33

Post by jacknews »

apstyx wrote: post #9

* ensure that the person can acknowledge mistakes and handles criticism/feedback in a positive manner. obviously that needs to be communicated in a fair and responsible manner * do you want to have a beer/coffee/social interaction with the person outside of work? does not mean you will but you will need to build a relationship with the person * make sure you know what you are expecting from the hire, write that down,…

"(no capital letters, speed has a price :D)"

purely on this point, having two cases does seem quite unnecessary and burdensome

you have to learn the alphabet twice, for one thing

and in fact, much punctuation is also superfluous

just put each 'thought' on it's own line, for example

no need for fancy untypeable punctuation like the recently popular —

Re: Ask HN: Tips for a new team lead who is hiring

#34

Post by cr3ative »

Technical stuff aside, hire someone you can work with, and others can work with. Don't tolerate "brilliant jerks" as Netflix put it. They're absolute poison to an organsation.

I'd vastly prefer a less-qualified person who is eager to learn more, work effectively and collaborate than someone extremely qualified who spends all day being snippy to others.

Re: Ask HN: Tips for a new team lead who is hiring

#35

Post by blowski »

gambiting wrote: post #32
blowski wrote: post #15

I've been interviewing software engineers for around 15 years. In total, I think I've interviewed around 600 people in a range of roles. My main advice is to listen to your gut instinct. Things that mildly annoy or worry you in the interview will probably come to dominate your working relationship with them. Don't assume you can fix someone's flaws after they join. Get other people to give their gut instinct too, and…

My problem is that we're trying to hire for a very niche position, where we get maybe 3-4 candidates A YEAR. So we don't really have the comfort of waiting a bit longer to interview those 30 candidates - we have to look at whether the people that come in could maybe work in the position we have.

Yes, hiring for a niche position is hard because you don’t have the luxury of choosing between many candidates.

It seems like there are three approaches:

1. Pay above market rate. Retention can be expensive with this strategy because you get into an arms race with the competition, but if you’ve got the budget, it’s the quickest.

2. Hire for attitude and re-train. Probably the slowest route to success as it can take years to build up true expertise, so it depends how much expertise you need and how quickly as to whether this is viable.

3. Hire for the niche skills and accept some other trade-off. I had limited budget to hire a strong MySQL DBA, and hired someone that wanted limited and extremely flexible working hours and could afford a paycut.

How do you handle it?

Re: Ask HN: Tips for a new team lead who is hiring

#37

Post by intelVISA »

A bit tangential perhaps but a key thing in interviews is always dig a little on the 'why' of a question. Most can rote learn the 'what' but you want people who know 'why' whether they're junior or senior.

It may seem obvious but I've seen some otherwise good candidates get undone after an initially reasonable "you mention working with X, what is X" exposes only a superifical understanding of "why X"?

e.g. candidate mentions upgrading a service from JSON to gRPC/binary, why..?

Most will claim "it's faster" but you want to know why it's faster. I've found digging a little is great for finding good juniors but also 10YOE who can't explain UDP vs TCP to a level that matches their background. It also exposes insight to their underlying ability to reason which is, ultimately, what I'm looking for.

We're in an age where, increasingly, knowing the what is automated but knowing the why is still crucial - if only to interrogate the LLM on its decisions.

Re: Ask HN: Tips for a new team lead who is hiring

#38

Post by intelVISA »

gambiting wrote: post #32
blowski wrote: post #15

I've been interviewing software engineers for around 15 years. In total, I think I've interviewed around 600 people in a range of roles. My main advice is to listen to your gut instinct. Things that mildly annoy or worry you in the interview will probably come to dominate your working relationship with them. Don't assume you can fix someone's flaws after they join. Get other people to give their gut instinct too, and…

My problem is that we're trying to hire for a very niche position, where we get maybe 3-4 candidates A YEAR. So we don't really have the comfort of waiting a bit longer to interview those 30 candidates - we have to look at whether the people that come in could maybe work in the position we have.

Wild, what area is that? Maybe it's a pipeline/intake/compensation issue?

Re: Ask HN: Tips for a new team lead who is hiring

#39

Post by throwawaybbq1 »

I'll tell you one thing I got taught in management training that rung true to me, and had I known this earlier, would have saved a ton of grief. Your technical team will be gauging the candidates technical competence. You need to focus on other things .. most important being grit, ability to be a team player/collegiality and communication.
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