

How Your Hiring Techniques attract Losers - tracksuitceo
http://blogs.dovetailsoftware.com/blogs/main/archive/2007/12/18/Amateurs_2C00_-Experts-and-Context.aspx
This article suggests that as we seek to hire people based on rigid criteria, we simply reinforce the cementing of our own entrenched position.  It shows us how to innovate...
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apathy
I was expecting something more interesting than what this article covered.
It's for corporate drones, I'm afraid.

If you're starting a company, you'll eventually (inshallah) get to the point
where you can't spend the time to interview everyone anymore. And you'll have
to rely upon the judgment of your hires, who may or may not have ever
interviewed anyone before. I've been there and done that and here are my
observations, take them for what they are worth.

To keep your n00b employees from eagerly hiring the first moron that walks in
the door -- remind them that they are, with _each and every hire_ ,
determining the future of the company. Do they want their company to be
average, stocked with average people, with an average chance of success in a
ruthless, winner-take-all market? Or would they prefer to work with smart,
capable people who can adapt to an ever-changing marketplace of tasks and
ideas, who care more about the daily challenge of doing something that few if
any others are doing Exactly Right, and who view the Big Payday as a potential
bonus for excellent execution and the blessing of a fickle market?

I watched some new-ish Google employees start down the former road, eager to
defuse an ever-increasing workload (they were outside of engineering proper
and had no ready list of questions or expectations to refer to). Once the
matter was crystallized per above -- do you want to work with money-grubbing
robots, or do you want to keep this company at a standard higher than most on
the planet?! -- I noticed a distinct change in the interviews and votes. Once
upon a time I was willing to accept average people. Then one day, as the
startup I worked for was considering whether we could afford to hire a
desperately needed cameraman, it dawned on me that for a small company,
literally every employee must be better than their counterparts at established
corporations, or your equity is that much more likely to become worthless. Is
that what you worked your ass off and sacrificed some of your life to accept?

It's so easy to give in to mediocrity -- and it's deadly, because once it
sneaks in, it's really hard to exterminate. Hire people who are smarter than
you, if you possibly can. Hire people who you'd like to ask hard, probing
questions to which you (or anyone) may not know the answers. And only ever
hire people who you absolutely NEED, where you are forced to think -- is this
person the one who's going to make the Specific Problems for which we're
burning our hard-earned cash go away? And the next round of problems, and the
next?

Every time you hire someone you are spending your precious time and deciding
whether to spend your precious cash, so you better goddamn well get it right.
Startups can't afford to make mistakes -- this article is simply rehashing
that point, for corporate chumps who haven't Got It.

------
theremora
The takeaway here: hiring should not be based on rigid
criteria.[http://jobhacks.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/job-postings-are-
de...](http://jobhacks.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/job-postings-are-dead/) The
advice regarding hiring for startups:
<http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/how_to_hire_the.html>
<http://paulenglish.com/hiring.html>

------
henning
I'm skeptical.

Let's have these touchy-feely visual learner team player super duper people
learn about continuations in Scheme, monads in Haskell, the massive libraries
in .NET/Java EE, or something else that poses a formidable challenge. Let's
see them visually learn their way around _that_ stuff. Then you can call me a
loser.

