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You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

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Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#111

Post by giancarlostoro »

Centigonal wrote: post #37

There is no such thing as "the best engineers." Some engineers are definitely better than others, but once you pass the bar of "really smart, great work ethic," the tech tree diverges pretty dramatically. Some engineers (like Notch) are amazing at quickly putting out vast quantities of mediocre code, prototyping ideas, maintaining a clear product vision, and bringing something into reality quickly. Other engineers (l…

It's all about personality and attitude, anyone can learn to become a better engineer than they were yesterday. The issue is, do they have the resources to do so, are there incentives? Are you making sure they're fully equipped to give you their best? That includes everything from offering training to even benefits, overworked engineers will make mistakes sooner or later.

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#112

Post by ospehlivano »

arandr0x wrote: post #57
ospehlivano wrote: post #54

The irony: while you're waiting 4 months for the perfect engineer, your competitor shipped with a good-enough one who's now senior-level from the experience.

That's definitely a valuable take, but it's worth noting that not everyone will make better decisions just by sitting through enough fires, and it's also possible that your good enough person will fail to notice some larger risk or market shift that the person you could've waited for would have, because they'd have seen it before. Hiring decisions tend to be a hindsight is 20/20 proposition.

Exactly - you never know either way. You hire the senior, might be useless. You hire the mid-level, might be great. At least with the faster hire you're making progress while finding out.

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#113

Post by rachofsunshine »

nathell wrote: post #91
Centigonal wrote: post #37

There is no such thing as "the best engineers." Some engineers are definitely better than others, but once you pass the bar of "really smart, great work ethic," the tech tree diverges pretty dramatically. Some engineers (like Notch) are amazing at quickly putting out vast quantities of mediocre code, prototyping ideas, maintaining a clear product vision, and bringing something into reality quickly. Other engineers (l…

Yep. Existence of "the best engineers" would imply existence of The One True Metric by which you can judge the person in all context; but that's at best an oversimplification. The actual metrics (not necessarily easily quantifiable) are the desired traits you put in your job description; they don't correlate perfectly.

There is some truth to this, but I would argue (with a considerable amount of data on both assessments and hiring behaviors) that it is less true than people might like to hope it is.

I very intentionally did not write anything about finding engineers who are just good at the things you care about and not at other stuff, because every bit of data I have says there is a considerable component of general engineering skill underlying most eng roles. No, it isn't totally one dimensional, but (in a principal-component-analysis sense) it is fairly low-dimensional.

There really are just better and worse engineers in the sense that eng A is better than eng B for virtually every job. But that's precisely why recognizing the competitiveness of hiring is important - the more you insist on narrowing your pool, especially in ways others also narrow theirs, the less likely you are to find the rare unknown great engineer.

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#114

Post by jaggederest »

William_BB wrote: post #83
jackdawed wrote: post #33

I interviewed with an early stage pre-seed startup with a very young team, like 25-27. I was interviewed by someone way more junior than me. According to the recruiter, in 3 months, I've made it the furthest and he told me this startup was churning through top tier candidates left and right. After my interview, I immediately knew why. The team was so junior they didn't know how to evaluate senior talent. They didn't…

This is so interesting to hear. From what I've seen, probably half of recent yc startups have founders below 30. I wonder how senior talent views being interviewed by people who are essentially junior/mid developers. I'm in my 20s with good credentials and have quite a few friends in the startup world. I would never feel comfortable interviewing someone with 10+ years of industry experience.

> I would never feel comfortable interviewing someone with 10+ years of industry experience.

I would say that's probably overcompensating. I've got about 20 years of startup experience at this point, and one of the things that frustrates me the most is a kind of zero-sum mindset, where you "pass" an interview or not.

In the best cases, interviewing is a conversation, a path to better understanding for both parties. The idea that you're "not qualified" is just as silly, in my opinion, as the idea that an hour-long interview lets someone pass judgement. We can both gain, and maybe I'm exactly what you're looking for, in terms of someone who brings skills or perspective you don't have. Maybe it's obvious that I'd be an awful fit. But either way, I believe everyone has something valuable to bring to the conversation.

Some of the best times I've been involved in interviewing, we've had even an intern talk to someone. If they're helpful, clear, and kind, that can be a huge signal. It's kind of a cliche, back in the day, that you ask the office manager how the candidate treated them, but it's absolutely true that if you treat people "below you" in the hierarchy poorly, that's a red flag, to me.

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#116

Post by glimshe »

Centigonal wrote: post #37

There is no such thing as "the best engineers." Some engineers are definitely better than others, but once you pass the bar of "really smart, great work ethic," the tech tree diverges pretty dramatically. Some engineers (like Notch) are amazing at quickly putting out vast quantities of mediocre code, prototyping ideas, maintaining a clear product vision, and bringing something into reality quickly. Other engineers (l…

Sometimes I'm just happy to avoid the worst engineers. They do exist. Bad work ethic, poor foundational skills, hard to work with. I feel that if I can weed them out, I've done 75% of my job as a hiring manager.

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#117

Post by y-curious »

edude03 wrote: post #39
onesandofgrain wrote: post #8

Companies that say they only want the "the best engineers" or "we only hire A-students" and "top of the cake-engineers" I've usually found to be a breeding-ground for a somewhat toxic work-environment.

add "we're a meritocracy"

Add:

- we work hard and play hard!

- we are full time in office because we are all aligned on a vision

- generous equity in a promising startup [series A $5M raised by a recent Stanford GSB grad] [salary for 10 YOE in Bay Area is $180k]

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#118

Post by bityard »

guywithahat wrote: post #103
fitzn wrote: post #13

> The best engineers make more than your entire payroll. They have opinions on tech debt and timelines. They have remote jobs, if they want them. They don’t go “oh, well, this is your third company, so I guess I’ll defer to you on all product decisions”. They care about comp, a trait you consider disqualifying. They can care about work-life balance, because they’re not desperate enough to feel the need not to. And ho…

The only addendum to this I'd add is the best engineers rarely have to go through the hiring process in a meaningful way, it's usually someone recognizes them from a previous job and vouches heavily for them. I say this because if you're going through the hiring process like a chump, I'd leave the ego at the door and not talk about compensation or try to demand remote work on a desirable position.

Yes. The more experienced you are, the more your network does all of your job searching for you in the background. (Of course, this assumes you are actively building and maintaining your network.)

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#119

Post by ospehlivano »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #97
ospehlivano wrote: post #54

The irony: while you're waiting 4 months for the perfect engineer, your competitor shipped with a good-enough one who's now senior-level from the experience.

Um. No. You don't become a senior engineer in 4 months.

Fair point about 4 months, I was thinking longer term there. But the original post was about finding the 'best' engineers, not necessarily senior ones. Either way, you can't know what's best for your situation until they're actually working.

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#120

Post by littlestymaar »

binary132 wrote: post #76
Centigonal wrote: post #37

There is no such thing as "the best engineers." Some engineers are definitely better than others, but once you pass the bar of "really smart, great work ethic," the tech tree diverges pretty dramatically. Some engineers (like Notch) are amazing at quickly putting out vast quantities of mediocre code, prototyping ideas, maintaining a clear product vision, and bringing something into reality quickly. Other engineers (l…

That sounds like you’re talking about distinctions within “the best” to me.

Except if you put any of the above names in an environment that doesn't suit them, they will likely be mediocre at best, and even damaging at worse.

The “best candidate” depends a lot on your existing organization.

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