This guy will have trouble hiring best engineers
You don't want to hire "the best engineers"
161–170 of 326 posts
Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"
#162There 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…
100% agree that there's a lot of diversity in what makes the engineers good. My only quibble is with the conclusion: "identify the specific skills for which you need exceptional talent". Any of these people would be great for your company. When you're small, you can be flexible... if you can get any of those archetypal great engineers, get them and adjust your workflow to work productively with them.
There are likely still some more universal aspects of good engineers.
Curiosity, resourcefulness, empathy, being user-centric are all things to never stop developing.
Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"
#163A good rule of thumb as a founder and someone that's worked in big tech;
Big tech rules out any red flags. This means any engineers that get a passing grade across all interviews are in. Anyone that fails one of the multiple interviews is out, despite possible strengths.
Small tech should hire on the green flags. This means you can tradeoff weaknesses if they can do a job that needs to be done.
Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great talent knows how to scale mediocre talent, but you should do so after building that initial core team.
Why ever hire mediocre talent?
The world isn't full of A players. Too many B players won't listen to grow even if they have the abilities. All you can do is help them discover their potential and that it's worth.
Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"
#165There 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.
Yes, essential to protect the broader team from low performance and toxic colleagues. The trick is to get the disruptive folks off the team quickly without causing the productive folks to doubt their job security.
Clear communication and transparent accountability are the way.
Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"
#166It brings Steve Jobs' quote to mind: "It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do" Companies who generically look for "the best engineers" think their problems will be solved if they can just hire someone smart and tell them what to do. They say they want "the best engineers" but then their job descriptions and interview processes screa…
> We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do
> Companies who generically look for "the best engineers"
> The best engineers will tell you why your architecture is wrong, why your code sucks, why your timeline is unrealistic, and why your product decisions make no technical sense. If you're not ready for that level of pushback, you don't actually want the best engineers.
People often conflate phrases like "but what about", "how do we handle", "okay, but" or so on as "no". But these are not "no" phrases by engineers. These are "I'm thinking out loud" phrases.
If you surround yourself with yesmen you've surrounded yourself with people who don't care about the company, they just care about their own survival within it. Unless you're perfect, you need people that are unafraid to challenge management when they think management is wrong. You need people to be able to make mistakes because hindsight is a million times clearer than foresight.
Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"
#167[flagged]
Dang, the cope is rarely this obvious. Don't take out your commute on the rest of us, we're harmless!
This! Most people don't even realize how much we sacrifice just to get to the office - even if your commute is only 30 minutes (which sounds amazing for a developed country like the US) - it still adds up to 240 hours per year - equivalent to 6 weeks of work time. Now, if your employer is honest with you - they are paying these costs, in most cases - it comes out of your pocket.
Software developers have been building large projects successfully without ever seeing each other for decades. Somehow Linux kernel, Apache projects, Postgres, Mozilla, Emacs, or Neovim hackers do not need to be in the same office every day, yet they've been around for decades and they definitely have some of the best programmers involved. Complex software can be successfully developed without daily in-person interaction.
If you're striving to become a great software developer - do plan to switch to work fully remotely at some point of your life if not today. Because great software developers understand the value of time - they can build some amazing shit in six weeks, instead of spending that time on the road.
Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"
#168There 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…
What are you talking about? Clearly they are all cracked engineers and anyone not cracked is cooked like this take.
/s
God i hate the tech world these days.
Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"
#169Of course, running a business is not like saving the planet. Tech companies are companies that make money by means of tech - it doesn't matter how sausage is made but that you are compensated for sausages delivered.
Which is why personal hobby projects are awesome!! No one is going to make a bank building an example of Federation standard issue phaser pistol as close to forms and functions as issued, but it'll be awesome nevertheless and regardless of quality. But it won't make a bank. But it'll be absolutely awesome.
Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the post is getting at the idea that pedigree is not a reliable predictor of talent, but because it's a convenient and standard one, everyone uses it (which in turns reduces its usefulness). It's harder for a recruiter to fully experience the perils of hiring mediocre people, but they're definitely at ground zero for "what's on a resume is mostly not representative of actual talent".
Hire people on the way up. Hire people who are going to do their best work ever, for you, after having partially but not fully mastered everything you want, via their previous jobs. It's easy to evaluate a resume. It's harder -- but not impossible -- to assess potential. Working inside a big tech company for six years, I saw that PM hires were done almost entirely on pedigree: find me another Stanford grad. These ten…
Do you have any advice for how to suss out someone's hunger, drive, and scrappiness during the hiring process?