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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"

#261

Post by swiftcoder »

eschneider wrote: post #193
klas_segeljakt wrote: post #88

It 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…

>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. Then they'll help you figure out how to get where the company needs to be, on a feasible timeline, with the resources available.

> Then they'll help you figure out how to get where the company needs to be, on a feasible timeline, with the resources available.

Only if you actually listen to them. A lot of CEOs seem to forget this step

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

#262

Post by swiftcoder »

throwway120385 wrote: post #69
zuppy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's more like short term gain vs long term gain. experienced engineers can design an architecture that will allow you to scale cheaper and faster in the future, at the high initial cost. it will be cheaper to maintain, better for security. depends at what point your business is at the moment of hiring and what you plan to do with the product. do you need volume or quality (both variants are right)?

If your business is going to cease to exist in 4 months, who cares about scalability? Pay the interest when it comes due and when you can afford it. If someone is serious about building a company they will be okay with that.

Yes, this is a very important aspect. An early stage startup needs zero-to-one engineers. People who build fast, aren't afraid to break things, and don't mind YOLO'ing a year of their career on a gamble.

If you find product/market fit before you run out of money... that's when you need to hire engineers who are in it for the long hall. People who focus on reliability and scaling. People who might stick around for 5 years to see if your startup becomes a unicorn.

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

#263

Post by bombela »

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.

As a senior (in age and experience), it is sometimes not pleasant.

The junior interviewer might be really smart and extremely motivated, but ready to argue about something very specific while missing the forest for the tree.

Years ago, I was interviewed by two young guys at meta. They asked me to solve on a white board a problem to which the obvious and expected solution was a binary search. Which I did.

I wrote a generic binary search function, and then used it in another function. I stepped through the code of each functions line by line as attempt to prove correctness.

They wouldn't have it. They argued I could only prove it was working by stepping through both functions together. While I argued the literal point of using (pure) functions was to simplify by composing and abstraction.

Things got quite heated up. Especially with one of dude. I just left right there and then.

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

#264

Post by feoren »

ilc wrote: post #16

Why do we go to work? - Sense of value and worth to society? Go volunteer. - Wanting to help make someone else's dreams come true? Probably not. - They pay us! Ummmnnn. I may or may not be a top engineer. But, in large part for most people the big reason is: They get paid.

Yes, I work for a sense of value and worth to society, and I would accept being paid less if it meant a greater sense of worth. Think about it this way: I have about 40 productive hours per week (young kids, otherwise it'd be more). I could spend 30 hours at a worthless, pointless job that pays well, making enough money for my family, and then 10 hours volunteering on something I care about that makes a difference; or I could spend 40 hours at a job that pays only 3/4 of the former but also achieves my goal of producing valuable things for society. I get paid the same per productive hour, and the latter is much healthier for my psyche.

I currently make around the 20th percentile for my level of experience. I do look for higher paying jobs, but they're all at stupid boring companies doing fintech, adtech, or trying ineffectually to position themselves as middlemen in whatever the latest tech trends are. I don't love my job, but at least I'm making real things that actually help the world.

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

#265

Post by desolate_muffin »

sokoloff wrote: post #239
goopypoop wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean outside their job description?

Most job descriptions contain some version of "other duties as assigned", IMO with good reason. No job description can realistically capture every responsibility ; this language helps prevent bad-faith disputes when new tasks or responsibilities arise that aren’t explicitly mentioned but are 5 millimeters away from those mentioned and entirely reasonable to be considered as in-scope for an existing employee.

I think also it's the reality in most engineering roles that you will often have to pivot to new technologies, help out on unfamiliar projects using different technologies (e.g., work on the front-end for a bit when you're a backend engineer), etc. Some engineers aren't comfortable with this and it shows. This is how I understood the original comment, anyway.

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

#266

Post by alexchantavy »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #204
Centigonal wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer talk about this right at the start of No Rules Rules . Netflix had to lay off a big chunk of of their staff because of a funding crunch early in their history. Despite the negative emotional toll that took on everyone, productivity actually improved. The authors reference a Will Felps experiment[1] that showed that introducing just one pessimistic, lazy, or mean actor into a group of prof…

Anecdotal comment here, Netflix had the best interview process of any company I’ve applied to in my ~20 year career. Very challenging, but no tricky questions, it felt collaborative and low pressure (comparatively at least) and everyone seemed like someone I would enjoy as a coworker.

What kind of process was it?

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

#267

Post by ilc »

feoren wrote: post #264
ilc wrote: post #16

Why do we go to work? - Sense of value and worth to society? Go volunteer. - Wanting to help make someone else's dreams come true? Probably not. - They pay us! Ummmnnn. I may or may not be a top engineer. But, in large part for most people the big reason is: They get paid.

Yes, I work for a sense of value and worth to society, and I would accept being paid less if it meant a greater sense of worth. Think about it this way: I have about 40 productive hours per week (young kids, otherwise it'd be more). I could spend 30 hours at a worthless, pointless job that pays well, making enough money for my family, and then 10 hours volunteering on something I care about that makes a difference; o…

You are trying to derive emotional value from your job. I did that for a long time.

I don't anymore. I learned it actually made me worse at the job, and didn't allow me to contribute to the things I DEEPLY care about, because I'm actually just pushing work.

It is not an easy lesson. But I'll take the money, and derive my value to society elsewhere. Alot easier that way.

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

#268

Post by mixmastamyk »

rachofsunshine wrote: post #241
mixmastamyk wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offers here, local or remote. Hoping Section 174 fix helps.

To where are you local, what are your desiderata, and what does your resume look like? I can take a look privately if you'd like, or publicly here if you want broader opinions / to serve as a data point for others.

SoCal... I'll email ya, thanks!

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

#269

Post by jama211 »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #171
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…

You're missing the most important kind of great engineer: the guy who's got adequate technical skills but fantastic executive functioning skills. A lot of bright engineers target the "fun" problem or will otherwise get distracted, leaving a lot of simpler tasks ignored. Every team needs the dev who opens up Jira, opens a sorted list of tickets, and just knocks them down one by one, all day every day. Without them, th…

I know that guy, he’s me. Gotten me further than some brilliant but eccentric developers I know.

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

#270

Post by jama211 »

tikhonj wrote: post #201
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the most important kind of great engineer: the guy who's got adequate technical skills but fantastic executive functioning skills. A lot of bright engineers target the "fun" problem or will otherwise get distracted, leaving a lot of simpler tasks ignored. Every team needs the dev who opens up Jira, opens a sorted list of tickets, and just knocks them down one by one, all day every day. Without them, th…

Eh, with good leadership who knows how to support different people with different motivations, you really don't. But good leaders are even harder to find and hire than good engineers. And they probably won't use Jira. Or tickets.

The worst managers I’ve ever had didn’t use Jira, because they didn’t use much of anything at all, and everyone was confused about when and where their next task would come from. The answer was usually “they’ll message you at any time with a random request and demand a deadline at the same time”.

Jira helps turn terrible managers into mediocre ones, it at least forces them to write down what needs to be done and let’s me prove I’ve done the work back to them later when they inevitably forget.

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