This fear of not hiring the very best explains why everyone in the Valley seems to be interviewing candidates like crazy but nobody is hiring. When I interview I try to tease out potential, and look for signals that show the candidate will work hard and learn fast. Then someone comes in and says, "Well I hazed him and he couldn't implement a red-black tree on a whiteboard. No hire." This mad pickiness causes the mythical "shortage of engineers" meme to spread.
We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else
61–70 of 373 posts
Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else
#62Also: Give the "not-the-best" people a chance to develop. The CEO of one of my past clients, a consulting company, always said: "You can teach everyone to be a great programmer". And he put his money where his mouth was: He hired people with no programming experience (even with no university education) and personally trained them for several months . Also, senior people in the company were encouraged to also help the…
I would add one proviso, that training can only occur where a company already has someone capable of teaching. A raw recruit may do well if they are trained, but someone has to train them. Most startups seem looking to hire skills rather than people. They want to bring in skills nobody already on board has. Without any form of mentor, the raw recruit will always fail.
My big issue: Startup hiring kids to do work that should be in the hands of lawyers. I've seen interns redlining contracts and social media directors heading compliance teams. Some expertise cannot be developed in-house.
Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else
#63Also: Give the "not-the-best" people a chance to develop. The CEO of one of my past clients, a consulting company, always said: "You can teach everyone to be a great programmer". And he put his money where his mouth was: He hired people with no programming experience (even with no university education) and personally trained them for several months . Also, senior people in the company were encouraged to also help the…
That's awesome. You should credit him by name. I want to keep tabs on that guy.
I will ask him if he wants me to credit him by name, and get back to you...
Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else
#64My team does take-home project, a small problem to solve that should take at most a couple hours. It's the same problem for every candidate so we're judging them on common work. It's not real work, it's made up. In interviewing discussions in places like HN, there is enough pushback against this idea, which is a bit surprising to me. I thought a few hours work was reasonable when I was interviewing. But my point is t…
You allude to a bigger problem: anyone outside the industry who looks at the hiring process for developers would be put off. I know anecdotally that the industry is struggling to get students interested in software development as a career, and good developers are loathe to leave their jobs. I don't blame either group. Would I want my kids to spend their careers being put through the wringer of multiple high-stakes in…
Reading HN is really weird for me. Everyone is talking about how the industry is struggling to find new people. Meanwhile, being in Central Europe, I almost can't find a junior position to even apply to!
I am a 2nd year CS student looking for a web-dev job to get experience and learn new stuff and every ad I see requires a couple of years in the industry + knowledge of a huge amount of frameworks. From my viewpoint, there is no real need for beginner devs. Companies are looking for really experienced AND cheap programmers.
Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else
#65There's a very big time cost to hiring just the best. If you're afraid of even one bad hire, then a growing company must be willing to have all their managers and top employees commit 20+% of their time to hiring. Then you ask "Is the 1-2 standard deviation in performance improvement worth it?" If the answer is yes, then it's worth it. And... Interviews are awful. Seeing how someone work is even better. This is one r…
It's not just a time cost. The graph near the top of Jeff's article shows "Ran Out of Cash" as the #2 cause of startup failures, ahead of anything else hiring-related. I say anything else because hiring the best means paying for the best. If you hire nobody else, then salary costs rise. Attrition probably does too, because the best are often among the first to jump elsewhere.
Every startup needs a few of the best. You should definitely seek out and pay for those few. After that, even a startup has jobs that don't require the best. Hire for potential, attitude, chemistry. Hire for special knowledge when you have to (though you should try to avoid it). But don't demand that every hire be among the proven elite.
Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else
#66Also: Give the "not-the-best" people a chance to develop. The CEO of one of my past clients, a consulting company, always said: "You can teach everyone to be a great programmer". And he put his money where his mouth was: He hired people with no programming experience (even with no university education) and personally trained them for several months . Also, senior people in the company were encouraged to also help the…
Also, have a look at "Developer's Journey" by Tim Bourguignon - There he tries to find out how to train/mentor/coach people to become great developers. And also what developers can do themselves to improve.
Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else
#67Also: Give the "not-the-best" people a chance to develop. The CEO of one of my past clients, a consulting company, always said: "You can teach everyone to be a great programmer". And he put his money where his mouth was: He hired people with no programming experience (even with no university education) and personally trained them for several months . Also, senior people in the company were encouraged to also help the…
A really good strategy which is unfornately not very common. For one part because of the topic of the article, but for the second part because many companies seem to think that their employees will be hired away by their competitors at the first opportunity, which basically says that they do not trust themselves to be good enough to retain their employees .. but if these companies do not trust themselves how can their customers trust them?
Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else
#68Also: Give the "not-the-best" people a chance to develop. The CEO of one of my past clients, a consulting company, always said: "You can teach everyone to be a great programmer". And he put his money where his mouth was: He hired people with no programming experience (even with no university education) and personally trained them for several months . Also, senior people in the company were encouraged to also help the…
The article wasn't particularly great but the title sticks in my mind: a little slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept.
Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else
#69When every company hires only "the best" (top 1%), what are the rest of us (99%) suppose to do?
Re: We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else
#70To put this in context, "Hire the Best" means: adopt an incredibly risk tolerant nature, initiate an incredibly risky business venture, and then tolerate zero risk in your hiring decisions.