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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

#41

Post by throwawaybbq1 »

mellosouls wrote: post #20
pavlov wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “do you want to have a beer/coffee/social interaction with the person outside of work” Unfiltered and unanalyzed, this is a bad metric because it essentially brings out the lowest-level mental evaluation of whether the person fits your tribe or not. It’s easily subtly biased against women, introverts, other ethnicities, etc. — not because you hate them but because your lizard-brain doesn’t automatically associate t…

I think both extremes are problematic; while you (rightly) cover the cliquey/othering/representation side, the counter is the introduction of people to the team who - at best - cannot or will not socially integrate, and at worst are positively frictional and demoralizing. You see this happen a lot when (say) poor management look too much at cost or box-ticking over team morale and competence. "Can they do the job?" a…

Working with someone professionally is not the same as a beer buddy. In fact, I value having colleagues who are distinct enough from me that I would feel a bit uncomfortable having them over/hanging out (e.g. political views, humor, world view), as long as they are 100% professional and technically excellent. Btw .. a lot of technically excellent people do not drink (religion or just choice), and a bunch of people would likely be classified on the ASD scale. Your colleagues DO NOT need to be your buddies.

I recall when I was in a team that was super buddy-buddy and everyone would hang out and go drinking, everyone shared the same view, etc. When we had a major crisis in the office, things devolved into a shouting match in a manner that may be okay with buddies but not in a professional environment.

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

#43

Post by watwut »

hkpack wrote: post #13
siva7 wrote: post #5

Don't underestimate how much work a junior causes so it's a valid risk. Most importantly, hire for someone you like on personal level and could go on for a drink. One of my past managers said i shouldn't have to be "friends" with any of my reports and only look for their output qualities. I disagree with this. Having a good connection with your teammates will make your life as a manager so much easier and if you can…

> One of my past managers said i shouldn't have to be "friends" with any of my reports and only look for their output qualities. There are many reasons for this, but at least consider this: when team will grow, you will not be able to be friends with everyone, and those not included will feel that they are treated differently. Then the trust will start to erode, because the only way to be included is to be "friends"…

> when team will grow, you will not be able to be friends with everyone, and those not included will feel that they are treated differently.

I will fix this: the other people will NOTICE that they are being treated differently. It wont be merely feeling and the feeling itself is not the issue. The reality of them being treated differently is what is the issue.

I think that it is possible for leader to be friends with people under. But, you gotta be really careful about not being unfair too much. The moment one makes "be my friend" hiring or other condition, it is clearly not the case.

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

#44

Post by nitwit005 »

Keep basic probability in mind. No one is going to have a good answer to every question.

I'm serious about that. Look at other answers suggesting giving everyone a veto. Let's say you give five people time to ask two questions each. Even the best candidates are going to randomly fail because someone will veto them for getting one of their two questions wrong.

Would you be okay hiring the first candidate? If not, plan out what you're okay with.

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

#45

Post by mwilliamson »

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…

To expand on listening to your gut instinct: I find taking a "trust but verify" approach useful. Take the time to dig into what your instinct is telling you, try to match it up in words to your hiring criteria (which should go beyond technical stuff, including capturing whether or not you'd want to work with the person), and compare against other candidates to check you're being consistent. For instance, you don't want to unfairly penalise someone for being loquacious just because their interview was right before lunch and you were getting hungry, whereas you enjoyed interviewing the similarly talkative candidate that happened to be interviewed just after lunch.

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

#46

Post by mhitza »

In my opinion hiring a motivated junior is a good decision. Onboarding new developers is the harder part of the process, regardless of experience level. If you are just in a new established startup, the risk might be that the whole development process is still unstable and tasks you might assign to them are going to hit a bunch of unknowns/undocumented parts for the hire and you.

When I was a junior hire I think it took me somewhere close to a year to get fully competent for the role that I was hired (not needing oversight for my work anymore) and the platform we were developing. When picked up later in my career on other projects, it could take me somewhere from 3-6 months to operate at full capacity.

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

#47

Post by catchnear4321 »

Hunger. You can’t teach it. You can’t train it. You might be able to rehabilitate it if the individual is in a low spot.

Consider all of the work now. Not just the “work.” Team lead. Is your team ok? Your team does the “work,” you are part of the team, but don’t forget that keeping a team running smoothly is also work.

Update your availability calculations in your head. You were estimating 70% of your day was going to be actual work, with 30% towards meetings etc? Time to reduce that 70%. It’s ok, that’s why you are growing a team - to get more done - but it isn’t free.

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

#48

Post by blowski »

mwilliamson wrote: post #45
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…

To expand on listening to your gut instinct: I find taking a "trust but verify" approach useful. Take the time to dig into what your instinct is telling you, try to match it up in words to your hiring criteria (which should go beyond technical stuff, including capturing whether or not you'd want to work with the person), and compare against other candidates to check you're being consistent. For instance, you don't wa…

Yes, unconscious bias is a huge risk in my “trust your got instinct” approach to hiring. For example, I bristle at the name “Daryl” because I went to school with someone with that name and I remember him laughing at me. Maybe this is why I’ve never hired someone called Daryl.

So I agree you need to articulate and challenge your reasons, even if only to yourself. Periodically review the ones you’re rejecting and ask others if there’s a pattern, then deliberately spend time with people represented by that pattern.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t come naturally to me and I have to work hard at it.

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

#49

Post by blowski »

intelVISA wrote: post #38
gambiting wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I had this problem recently trying to hire people good at and willing to work with a big Angular v1 codebase.

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

#50

Post by nitwit005 »

saidinesh5 wrote: post #17

Here's a long story, tldr: It will be a bumpy ride but can be very worth it under the right circumstances. A couple of years ago, I worked at a small company where the management asked me to Interview someone for a Junior role. They were a recent graduate. They did not do that well in the technical interview. Failed to answer some very basic questions, even when given the option to google the answers. So my review fo…

It's good to have the experience of being wrong when hiring. It's easy to be confident that you can evaluate people, until you run a test.
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