How to Hire • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Hire

#31

Post by larrys » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 8:07 PM UTC

tom_b wrote: post #5

“Experienced” people often have higher personal burn rates and sometimes you’ll need to pay them more, but remember that great companies are not usually created by experienced people (with the exception of a few roles where it really matters a lot.) Scary statement for me to read. I'm getting older and worry that the above thinking will eventually cut off cool and even just new opportunities for me. Also hard to audi…

"but remember that great companies are not usually created by experienced people"

What he is saying is that startup shot in the dark companies are not created by experienced people I am guessing. But then again from what I can tell the one company that the author created essentially failed. Now his job is to invest and give advice to others.

Anyone who thinks experience doesn't matter in the real world has (for lack of a more graceful way to put this) a screw lose somewhere.

I've also yet to run into anyone who has ever told me that they were better at what they did when they were younger than when they got older and had more experience. To be sure experience can also jade you and prevent you from taking chances and be a negative in some cases but that's no reason to not hire the most experience people you can. The fact is that some of the best people out there have nothing to do with the "startup" community.

Re: How to Hire

#32

Post by farmdawgnation » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 8:12 PM UTC

ohazi wrote: post #22

> Whenever possible (and it’s almost always possible), have someone do a day or two of work with you before you hire her; you can do this at night or on the weekends. No. Absolutely not. If a candidate really is as good as you think he/she is, they already likely has a full time job that they're perfectly happy with (as you already well know): > Often, to get great people, you have to poach. They’re never looking for…

Sorry, but speaking as a software engineer who does have a bit of talent, I disagree with you in saying that this type of audition exercise is below me. We complain and complain and complain as an industry about how the interview process that The Big Boys still use (which is essentially just a pop quiz of vocabulary terms at its core) is broken. Why is this not a better alternative?

You wouldn't pitch this as "hey, I'm still not sure about you so I'm going to ask you to do X to prove your worth" - though it seems that's the interpretation you're getting from this. It's less a question of raw skill than it is a question of how all the different subtleties that factor into effective teamwork would play out when you're working on something together. There are so many vectors that are in play when it comes to actually working with someone tells you so much more than just an interview will.

Re: How to Hire

#33

Post by ihodes » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 8:13 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #25

So much interesting stuff here. For the past couple years, this has been most of my (non-billable) role at Matasano, and we've gotten steadily better at this stuff. So, my thoughts: ›››››› Spend more time ›››››› Have a mission ›››››› Always be recruiting These three are of a kind for me. I recommend that you think about hiring the way Patrick McKenzie things about conversion optimization: as a form of marketing that…

I don't think I've ever done this on 5+ years on HN, but thanks, Thomas, for this comment. Definitely one of the best & most helpful ones I've ready here in a long time. It really lines up with old-school advice from the seemingly forgotten Drucker (and his ilk), whom I'd suggest to anyone reading this comment (The Effective Executive).

EDIT: I really think it's key to emphasize not just hiring people you like. Some of the best people I've worked with I wouldn't hang out with on a Sunday. As long as you're able to be productive together, the rest is moot. A company isn't about creating a friend group.

Re: How to Hire

#34

Post by boomzilla » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 8:18 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #12

bcrescimanno wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ageism should scare you--and it should scare the author of this post. The inevitable forward progress of time means that literally every, single one of us will be on the wrong end of this equation at some point. The (possible) saving grace is that a lot of people who came up in the 2000s tech scene are now on the "other side of 30" and becoming quite "experienced" themselves. Hopefully, that group's attitude will cha…

On the flip side, as an old friend once said, "Do you have ten years of experience, or one year of experience ten times?" Highly experienced people can be priceless because they have dealt with similar situations before (and it's not the technology, it's the situations). But if they didn't learn from their experiences, it doesn't help. And imho a majority of the old hands are still doing things wrong - sometimes due…

When doing tech interviews, I always prefer to interview experienced people. I find that digging into a project that they did before was all I need to figure out if the candidate is worth going forwards with. My big red flag is when the candidates have "leading project X generating Y revenue or Z customer engagement" in their resumes, but are not able to articulate the system/product architecture, or tell me what the biggest technical challenge encountered.

Re: How to Hire

#35

Post by anmalhot » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 8:18 PM UTC

CraigJPerry wrote: post #9

I'd love if more companies adopted auditioning over the traditional interview process. It was counter intuitive to me at first but it's potentially a cheaper way to hire. There's less downtime for the hiring team - everyone can more or less continue what they're working on. It's a better quality of interview too - candidates have a more realistic platform to show their worth.

Auditioning sounds great, atleast from a college graduate's perspective. Make the new graduates work on problems. A percentage of new generation of coders end up learning that whiteboard tests work perfectly fine and are the de facto standard.

Re: How to Hire

#36

Post by mason55 » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 8:19 PM UTC

CraigJPerry wrote: post #9

I'd love if more companies adopted auditioning over the traditional interview process. It was counter intuitive to me at first but it's potentially a cheaper way to hire. There's less downtime for the hiring team - everyone can more or less continue what they're working on. It's a better quality of interview too - candidates have a more realistic platform to show their worth.

For me the issue is coming up with the tasks to farm out. Do most companies have lots of discrete tasks that don't require domain knowledge?

Everyone says it takes 3 months to a year before a developer is really up to speed and hits their peak contribution levels. How does that square with this new philosophy of interviewing-by-contracting?

Re: How to Hire

#37

Post by ig1 » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 8:21 PM UTC

larrys wrote: post #30

tptacek wrote: post #25

So much interesting stuff here. For the past couple years, this has been most of my (non-billable) role at Matasano, and we've gotten steadily better at this stuff. So, my thoughts: ›››››› Spend more time ›››››› Have a mission ›››››› Always be recruiting These three are of a kind for me. I recommend that you think about hiring the way Patrick McKenzie things about conversion optimization: as a form of marketing that…

"The absolute cheapest benefit you can offer an employee is their title, and if they have a rational reason for wanting a better title, why on earth would you refuse to give up some title to get a good candidate on board?" Well one reason [1] might be that by giving the a "big" title it will enhance their resume in the eyes of another company that is looking to poach. Doesn't matter if it works out or not at the new…

Anytime your reasoning is "we shouldn't do it because it will make them attractive to other companies" you're probably wrong.

You want a company full of super-stars that everyone wants to poach. Otherwise you're just like the companies that prohibit employees from have linkedin profiles or don't give employees training because that makes them more poachable. Crazy.

Re: How to Hire

#38

Post by nawitus » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 8:23 PM UTC

Yet another article on hiring without empirical data. And as everyone knows, "gut feeling" doesn't actually turn out to be correct that often in recruiting (otherwise we would have solved the problem already).

Re: How to Hire

#39

Post by msoad » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 8:28 PM UTC

farmdawgnation wrote: post #32

ohazi wrote: post #22

> Whenever possible (and it’s almost always possible), have someone do a day or two of work with you before you hire her; you can do this at night or on the weekends. No. Absolutely not. If a candidate really is as good as you think he/she is, they already likely has a full time job that they're perfectly happy with (as you already well know): > Often, to get great people, you have to poach. They’re never looking for…

Sorry, but speaking as a software engineer who does have a bit of talent, I disagree with you in saying that this type of audition exercise is below me. We complain and complain and complain as an industry about how the interview process that The Big Boys still use (which is essentially just a pop quiz of vocabulary terms at its core) is broken. Why is this not a better alternative? You wouldn't pitch this as "hey, I…

If you are referring to Google by "Big Boys", some of their teams are doing trial period work. My friend got hired in Google after three trial days.

Re: How to Hire

#40

Post by RK » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 8:34 PM UTC

Don’t limit your search to candidates in your area. This is especially true if you’re in the bay area; lots of people want to move here.

At first I thought I misread this paragraph, because I'm so used to people advocating remote hires at this point. I was expecting it to say "Don’t limit your search...lots of people don't want to move here."