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VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

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Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But can they be a force of nature? Another YC company: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sof/3933816318.html

This is priceless.

They've been posting ads like this fairly constantly for months and months now, if not over a year.

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#142
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good news for the candidate is this type of behavior is a great leading indicator of what working for the company will be like.

Is it, though? Every company in the Bay Area I've ever worked for (and a few that weren't in the bay area) has hit multiple items on the parent's list. Even the ones who have their shit together and were a blast to work at gave horrible interviews. Interviews are hard.

Even the ones who have their shit together and were a blast to work at gave horrible interviews.

Fundamental attribution error. It was luck that they turned out to be a compatible work situation.

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#143
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it, though? Every company in the Bay Area I've ever worked for (and a few that weren't in the bay area) has hit multiple items on the parent's list. Even the ones who have their shit together and were a blast to work at gave horrible interviews. Interviews are hard.

Even the ones who have their shit together and were a blast to work at gave horrible interviews. Fundamental attribution error. It was luck that they turned out to be a compatible work situation.

Are you saying that my personality is the reason other people can't conduct an interview? I agree I don't interview well, but that has nothing to do with a third party I've never met being able to show up on time.

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#144
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the ones who have their shit together and were a blast to work at gave horrible interviews. Fundamental attribution error. It was luck that they turned out to be a compatible work situation.

Are you saying that my personality is the reason other people can't conduct an interview? I agree I don't interview well, but that has nothing to do with a third party I've never met being able to show up on time.

It was not a personal comment. The fundamental attribution error is that it turned out to be a compatible working relationship despite bad interviewing on the company's part. Aside from giving you an interview, nothing the company did during the recruiting process put the right person in the seat. It was just luck that it worked out, and just as often, if not more, it doesn't.

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#145
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> According to me anybody who claims to lead a group must be the best among that group, in the job that group performs. I think this is an error. Taking your best coder and then spending their time on not-coding is wasteful of their talents. Furthermore, insofar as you create competition to hold that position, you're creating a destructive work environment. Software development is a cooperative activity that can't be…

>>Taking your best coder and then spending their time on not-coding is wasteful of their talents. Or the way I look at it, such a guy in a leader ship position can mentor young passionate folks to be just like him. >>Furthermore, insofar as you create competition to hold that position Having competent guys compete for a position is far better than promoting a total idiot to lead such guys. >>you're creating a destruc…

Most demotivating part of my day is when I spend time with my higher ups, explaining them some very basics things like SQL or regular expressions or about network call latency which most of the times they have no clue of.

Why are you doing this? Most "higher ups" I've worked under have nearly zero interest in highly-technical explanations of what I'm working on. Interacting with managers should be an exercise in plain English.

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#146
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> According to me anybody who claims to lead a group must be the best among that group, in the job that group performs. I think this is an error. Taking your best coder and then spending their time on not-coding is wasteful of their talents. Furthermore, insofar as you create competition to hold that position, you're creating a destructive work environment. Software development is a cooperative activity that can't be…

> Furthermore, insofar as you create competition to hold that position, you're creating a destructive work environment. Software development is a cooperative activity that can't be efficiently partitioned. Seen way too many of these kinds of management structures. The management decides to appoint the crony as the lead, because picking the best developer is "wasteful" and creates a "destructive work environment". The…

What about my remarks is equivalent to "I suggest you pick cronies instead"?

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#147
post #51

Speaking on behalf of a LOT of people - F 500friends and the under-30 horse they rode in on.

Brian,

In our original job post, we had specified that the ideal candidate would, "not have more than 12 years of MANAGEMENT experience." We UNDERSTAND that this could be misunderstood to indicate that we do not value experienced people. As you can see from the seniority in our team however, this is far from the truth. The intent here was to indicate that we are looking for a "hands-on" VP of Engineering. Someone who has coded in the last decade and can solve issues themselves (rather than asking their engineering manager to then delegate it to a developer :).

Don't take my word for it, check out the people who work at my company - 500friends.com/team. 50%+ are 30+, and 25%+ are 38+

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#148

It actually makes sense. It's not about age. Middle management has an expiration date. If you've been a middle manager for 15 years, that's bad bad bad. (Being an IC for 15 years is respectable; but once you move into management, you should make director in 5 years and VP in no less than 10.) Programming has an ageism problem largely because it's run by career managers (who think all of us want to be them-- and we do…

You can be fairly confident there some startups out there founding by 20 somethings, populated by 20 somethings, who think having someone over 30, or certainly over 40, on their team or even in their office would be akin to the plague. They would probably place them in the same camp as their parents. I totally understand why coders like Agile, hey I like it because hacking code is the fun part :) Its also kind of a g…

Hello sir. 500friends founder/CEO here.

It's not that people with 12+ years of experience are not as good. We were trying to screen out candidates (many of them who are smart) but have been "managers" for so long that they can't get their hands dirty and solve issues themselves (something you have to do at a very small team).

Don't take my word for it, 26% of people on our team are older than 38. If you're bored, check out their bios at 500friends.com/team

Admittedly however, this was not clear in our post, and it has since been edited.

Thanks!!

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#149

One way to interpret this is that the Agile Manifesto was published in 2001, so although it's possible you managed agile teams before 2001 it's unlikely, or if you've been successfully managing agile teams since before the manifesto and you're interested in a startup... what's wrong w/ you (seriously... if you're crushing it w/ agile for 12 years and now enterprises are all scrum-happy and you aren't making boatloads…

500friends founder/CEO here.

It's not that people with 12+ years of experience are not as good. We were trying to screen out candidates (many of them who are smart) but have been "managers" for so long that they can't get their hands dirty and solve issues themselves (something you have to do at a very small team).

Don't take my word for it, 26% of people on our team are older than 38. If you're bored, check out some of their bios at 500friends.com/team

Admittedly however, this was not clear in our post, and it has since been edited.

Thanks!!

Re: VP of Engineering - "best of the best" = no more than 12 years experience?

#150
post #5

The only reasoning I can come up with that could possibly support this is maybe they have the idea in mind that those with more than 12 years experience would be less able to adapt to newer ways of thinking?

500friends founder/CEO here.

It's not that people with 12+ years of experience are not as good. We were trying to screen out candidates (many of them who are smart) but have been "managers" for so long that they can't get their hands dirty and solve issues themselves (something you have to do at a very small team).

Don't take my word for it, 26% of people on our team are older than 38. If you're bored, check out some of their bios at 500friends.com/team

Admittedly however, this was not clear in our post, and it has since been edited.

Thanks!!

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