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How to Hire

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: How to Hire

#71

Post by badman_ting »

RK wrote: post #40

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."

No, the author explicitly recommends against remote work. It's with a caveat of "early on", but in most places that will harden into a general unwritten "no remote workers" policy, as the organization grows and people are afraid to try something different than what has worked so far.

This post is pretty heavy on the "company culture" stuff -- more or less, the idea that you should want to go drinking with your co-workers. People who believe in this don't tend to believe in remote work. I should mention I completely disagree with all this, but I am biased.

Re: How to Hire

#72

Post by bambax »

tptacek wrote: post #66
bambax wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Get your hands dirty (...) the 37signals motto was "don't hire until you've done the job yourself" Maybe you can hire people this way, for jobs you're already familiar with, or for very low qualification jobs (janitor, maybe, although there are probably tricks of the trade that are non-obvious, even to a "smart"(!) person). But if you were trained as, say, a programmer, how do you implement this advice to hire a do…

You're stretching the word "hire".

The OP seems to believe that any "smart" person can learn any job in hours.

This is Enron thinking ("the smartest guys in the room"). Less controversially, this is what Marissa Mayer designing the new Yahoo! logo seems to think. It is wrong.

It would have been better for Mrs Mayer, Yahoo! --and the rest of the world-- if she had hired a real designer before attempting to do the job herself.

Re: How to Hire

#73

Post by nawitus »

j_baker wrote: post #45
nawitus wrote: post #38

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).

Do you have any empirical data to back your point up? Or are you basing your thoughts about gut feelings on gut feelings?

You don't need specific empirical data to back up the point of saying that claims without empirical data are not reliable enough. We have the scientific revolution to back that point up.

Re: How to Hire

#74

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

crdoconnor wrote: post #58
7Figures2Commas wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can understand the desire for this, but in the current environment, it's almost guaranteed to backfire, as the best developers simply won't put up with it. An awful lot of developers are willing to put up with inane algorithm tests. If I was hiring, I'd be skeptical of any developer who would prefer five hours of whiteboarding to some sort of trial arrangement, or even a sufficiently complete take-home coding tes…

>If I was hiring, I'd be skeptical of any developer who would prefer five hours of whiteboarding to some sort of trial arrangement, In theory I would prefer the trial arrangement, but in practice, if I'm employed, it's not an option unless I'm totally and absolutely convinced that you run the perfect company for me. Which you probably do not. If I'm unemployed and searching for a job (which sometimes happens: I like…

> ...it's not an option unless I'm totally and absolutely convinced that you run the perfect company for me...Which you probably do not.

If you're employed and seeking employment elsewhere, for whatever reason, why would you even waste your time interviewing with a company that you didn't think had the potential to be a very good fit?

Re: How to Hire

#75

Post by geebee »

jroseattle wrote: post #55
beat wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am right in the middle of this right now. In my 40s, looking for a job at the moment. My interviews have been decent to downright bizarre. The trend of the interview approach is very curious to me. I've been looking at a variety of lead engineer/architect positions to development manager. Many of these positions come with some immediate needs, i.e. addressing large systems as part of a business expansion. I find my…

I understand how you feel. I went on some intensely technical interviews a few years back (late 30s). Many of the questions were the sort of thing you'd expect on an undergraduate data structures and algorithms class, though there were a few brain teasers thrown in there for good measure.

My interviewers were young, and at lunch, I tried to talk to them a bit about the business problems they were trying to solve. Their knowledge about this seemed very thin. I pressed a bit, and finally was told that this is what the "product managers" are for.

In short, I realized that they were asking me about these CS-related questions, at least in part, because this is the bubble of their work life.

One interviewer seemed unengaged in the discussion, waiting for a pause. Then he asked "how would you swap two integers without creating a third integer?" At lunch, in between two 3-4 hour blocks of technical interviews.

I'm done with these interviews. Well, ok, if my family was looking at foreclosure and going without health insurance, I'd subject myself to them again. But it is a priority of mine not do do another one of these interviews again.

It's not that I won't do a technical interview per se - there's a wide range of what counts as a technical interview, and not all of them are equally unpleasant. But I will view it as a personal...letdown if I find myself at the whiteboard showing how to add a branch to a binary tree ever again in my life. Or, to put it another way, I don't want to reload data structures and algorithms into "exam ready" memory in my own head again. I know where to find these things when I need them.

The reason I say letdown is that I most definitely do see my own personal role in this. If I fail to establish enough of a personal reputation for competence that people are asking me to do this, then that is, at least in part, my "fault". However, it does come with the territory - as far as creative fields go, software development is an area where the programmer's contributions are fairly obscured (unless they are working on open source projects).

Re: How to Hire

#76

Post by lawnchair_larry »

farmdawgnation wrote: post #68
ohazi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I disagree with you in saying that this type of audition exercise is below me. > We complain [...] is broken. Why is this not a better alternative? It's not a better alternative because many of the best developers in Silicon Valley don't disagree with me. There are many reasons for this -- not everyone is a carefree recent college grad, and many people can't afford the luxury of taking the time off to do something…

> They may be more risk averse than someone younger with fewer obligations, for many of the same reasons outlined above. Arguably, if they're risk averse they have no business in the startup game. But that's neither here nor there. I see where you're coming from. I guess when I read it I understood it as "Hey, let's get together for an evening an work on something - I'll even pay you with it if it's for our company"…

>Then again, taking a PTO day to do a trial day of work has a really minimal level of risk to it.

You're not going to find much support for that idea among people in demand. I'd interpret that as a huge red flag that this person does not respect my time. Also, imagine you're applying at a few different places and they all do this. Suddenly, you've wasted your vacation days on working harder without getting paid.

Re: How to Hire

#77

Post by lawnchair_larry »

tptacek wrote: post #67
theorique wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly if a person is not willing to have his assumptions challenged, then the "hang out" test will tend to attract and replicate more of the same. But it's still an important question for reducing conflict and confusion in hard-working teams who will be spending a lot of time together. The "hang out" test (or "Sunday test" or "airport test") has its imperfections, certainly. I'm wondering, what would be a better…

Not assessing cultural fit in that sense at all.

I feel like I agree with your aversion to the "hang out test" because it's just wrong to do that, but I also know that for me personally, work is far more motivating when I'm friends with my coworkers. Especially when travel is involved.

I can't be the only one who feels this way, so it would be hard not to factor this in when hiring, especially with a small startup.

Do you really think that the added motivation from working with "friends" is insignificant?

Re: How to Hire

#78

Post by lawnchair_larry »

Michael_Murray wrote: post #20

Great thoughts in this one, but missing what I think is the biggest key to hiring correctly in the startups I've been part of is what Paul DePodesta said in Moneyball - ""What gets me really excited about a guy is when he has warts... and the warts just don't matter." I've always thought that hiring in a startup is really like what the A's had to do in Moneyball - you don't have the advantages in terms of money, faci…

I disagree. InfoSec has these companies who hire #3, thinking they can underpay, and it's given the whole industry a bad name because of the shoddy work and dubious claims they make. They go in and play pass the hash, charge a lot, and the company is really no better off.

No offense, but do you think the fact that you have made multiple attempts and not yet created a company that has become a prominent name in the industry means that your approach may not be working?

Re: How to Hire

#79

Post by j_baker »

nawitus wrote: post #73
j_baker wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any empirical data to back your point up? Or are you basing your thoughts about gut feelings on gut feelings?

You don't need specific empirical data to back up the point of saying that claims without empirical data are not reliable enough. We have the scientific revolution to back that point up.

I think it's worth noting the irony in that you seem to believe in solving everything rationally except for the value of rationality.

One thing that scientific research has elucidated is that gut feelings aren't useless, and in fact can be very useful in evaluating people. The thing is that we take in so much data via our senses and the conscious mind is only capable of handling a very small amount of those signals. The unconscious mind picks up on these things and surfaces them as intuitions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuition_(psychology)#Studies...

Re: How to Hire

#80

Post by tptacek »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #77
tptacek wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not assessing cultural fit in that sense at all.

I feel like I agree with your aversion to the "hang out test" because it's just wrong to do that, but I also know that for me personally, work is far more motivating when I'm friends with my coworkers. Especially when travel is involved. I can't be the only one who feels this way, so it would be hard not to factor this in when hiring, especially with a small startup. Do you really think that the added motivation from…

I agree, I "like liking" my coworkers too. I guess I'd just encourage hiring managers to consider that:

(a) it's hard to predict who people are going to be friends with; we have 9-5 people with kids, 20- somethings that live in the hipster hotspots, board game geeks, people who drink beer, people who hate beer, people who don't drink at all, and a variety of ages, and everyone seems to get along and enjoy having lunch together.

(b) monocultures are risky in social environments too; for instance, they become incestuous and breed drama; one team member leaves in a huff and your whole team's morale can get seriously screwed up.

(c) if you're getting a company culture by literally hiring everyone's friends, that team is going to be hard to manage top-down. If you don't have a top-down management culture, that might be fine. But a lot of companies that think they're not top down really are; most companies are managed top-down.

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