

Whom Should You Hire at a Startup? (Attitude over Aptitude) - thankuz
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/17/whom-to-hire-at-a-startup-attitude-over-aptitude/

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smanek
One thing I take issue with, as an entrepreneur, is that he explains a 'tell'
for a mediocre management team is that he'll _send a talented member to a team
and they say to me, “we don’t really have a role for that person.”_

Well, I'd often get people sent to me, that my VC claimed were amazing and
that I should to hire (they usually held senior roles at big/successful
companies before). But, without fail, every single one I talked to was a
technical idiot. They could talk a good game, and had lots of thoughts about
process and structure, but couldn't code their way out of a paper bag.

To be polite, I'd usually tell the VC that there wasn't a good fit, or we
didn't have a role for someone so senior, or management focused, or X right
now. Would you tell the VC who just wrote you an $N million dollar check that
the candidate he thinks is Einstein is an idiot because he claims he's a
programmer who 'loves to get his hands dirty' but doesn't understand the
difference between a hash table and a linked list? In hindsight, maybe I
should have. But I suspect a lot of people won't.

And this was when I was literally the only coder in the company. We didn't
need an engineering manager, we needed an engineer. And non-technical VCs
couldn't see the difference. (Of course, in an ideal world, you hire someone
who is both).

~~~
petervandijck
You could tell the vc that "he can't code his way out of a paper bag". Much
better than talk about hashtables they won't understand themselves. :)

~~~
smanek
Yeah, the issue was that tech VCs (even non-technical ones) pride themselves
on being able to find and recognize technical talent. You're really cutting to
the core of their perceived value by telling them they're actually terrible at
it.

More likely than not, they are going to doubt your ability to recognize talent
instead of their own.

~~~
stcredzero
_You're really cutting to the core of their perceived value by telling them
they're actually terrible at it._

Hah. I just met someone who has some money and an outsourced "team of 10,
programmers plus support" in an eastern european country, yet he doesn't know
enough about technology to describe things in terms other than web pages, and
can't differentiate between what's a solved problem and what's still being
researched at Google.

He told me that the thing he called me to talk about, he had requested of his
team, and they basically told him, "Well, if you can diagram it, we can build
it."

I asked him if he had someone who was technical, not an underling, who he had
rapport with and could hash these things out like we just had. I suggested
that if he didn't that he would benefit greatly if he could find such a
person. (And that it wouldn't necessarily be me.)

I hit him with this to see his reaction, which, sadly, was to puff himself up
with his sales. Wrong. I guess continuous improvement is good enough for his
employees, but not good enough for him.

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ojbyrne
I've never been able to reconcile "Only hire A players" with the Dunning-
Kruger effect.

"The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their
ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly
skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect>

The bit in this article about:

"B players tend to have slightly more self-confidence issues." suggests to me
that the many so-called B players are actually A players, and the so-called A
players are F players.

~~~
j_baker
I think one key assumption that you're missing is that it's possible to have
an inferiority complex and a superiority complex at the same time. In fact,
Adler believed that inferiority and superiority were two sides of the same
coin. That is, people feel inferior and adjust their attitude to the outer
world to over-compensate.

Steven Berglas has written a pretty good amount on this issue:
<http://hbr.org/2006/09/how-to-keep-a-players-productive/ar/1> ...There used
to be a free version of this, but I can't find it anymore. Still, the
introductory text is informative, and it's worth the $7 if this is a subject
that's important to you.

To summarize though, "A Players" are often driven by an inferiority complex
that constantly manifests itself as an external egotism because they're
constantly trying to seek approval from others. When you work with them, your
first reaction will probably be that they need to be "brought down a notch",
but this is a mistake that will only make things worse. The key is helping to
build confidence and show that you trust their abilities.

~~~
dpritchett
I've found a handy Google template for these situations:

    
    
        "document title in quotes" filetype:pdf

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Dylanlacey
You can only do this once you've got enough people with sufficient of both.
Having a company full of people with "Can-Do" attitude who can't do will lead
to one of two things:

A: They all get frustrated and leave B: Your technical company becomes a
strange monster of convoluted processes achieving the same goal in a much
worse way.

For instance, if you do scheduling for classrooms, you'll end up with a group
of people who take orders for bookings on line, then manually try to fit them
into a diary for an organization, and occasionally make mistakes.

Attitude is a luxury.

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jonmc12
What exactly is an 'A player'?

The definition I perceive from the investment world is - 'Person X is an A
player because both myself and other investors I respect pattern match that
Person X is an A player'. The attributes of that pattern match vary, but
include things like work that is well known, educational and professional
pedigree, strong references from long trusted sources in industry, peer
reputation, etc.

I've read the book Topgrading, which gives a definition of 'an A-player is
someone in the top 10 percent of talent available at all salary levels for a
well defined organizational role'.

I've perceived that many modern engineering cultures will bias towards calling
an engineering candidate an A player if that candidate has worked with other
engineers that are considered to be A players by the same culture. Of course,
nearly all organizations have their own methods for assessing technical
ability and previous experience as well.

What is the most useful definition of an A-player in a tech startup?

~~~
stcredzero
The most verifiable and useful definitions have to do with quantifiable
results.

    
    
        - Can they get things done?
        - Can they act on their own initiative?
        - Can they think 2 steps or more ahead?
        - Can they code?  Can they code well?
        - Can they think and think well?  Can they think *independently*?
    

These aren't quantifiable like temperature or width, but they are tangible and
to some extent measurable.

The last two are the trickiest. For one thing, it's going to be very difficult
for someone who doesn't code to be able to tell reliably if they can code. One
can, however, watch someone code and observe their results. Likewise, it's
sometimes going to be hard for someone who doesn't yet know how to code well
to judge good code.

One can also listen to another's thoughts. However, someone who doesn't yet
know how to think independently won't necessarily know what good independent
thinking is. They'll only know what someone else tells them is good
independent thinking.

~~~
jonmc12
I agree with this, but something is missing. I think when it comes to
recruiting, fundraising or customer development the work must not only get
done - but it must be impressive to the target audience.

I propose an adapted definition based on your definition (numbers relate to
the order listed above): A players understand a problem in terms of
stakeholders[5], and takes initiative[2] to quickly build a solution in
code[4] that will impress these stakeholders both in the short-term and over
time [1, 3].

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ankimal
I think the two most important things for me is 'Attitude over Aptitude' and
'Dont oversell'. We ve had 'A-players' come and go just because they either
dint have the right attitude or were not sold on the idea (we oversold it at
times).

~~~
swampplanet
I agree to me the main gist of that post was: "So sell, by all means. But
don’t over sell. Don’t promise unrealistic things. Don’t over promise.s this
quote:"

Sales of everything including hiring talented people is all about the under
promising and over delivering. You do that with your customers and with your
potential team mates.

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p_h
My favourite quote: "I always have a role for talented people." "What role?
Who the F knows."

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theoj
I have heard something slightly different with regard to classes of players:
"A players hire A players, B players hire C players, and C players hire
losers."

Here is a discussion from long ago about the phrase's origins:
[http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.50837.1...](http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.50837.14)

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jdp23
Great advice from Marc Suster.

I think a lot of people get too fixated on "hire only A players" and forget
about "attitude over aptitude" and "culture matters". If the only A player you
find for a role is an asshole, keep looking -- or be more flexible in your
definition of the role.

~~~
stcredzero
_If the only A player you find for a role is an asshole, keep looking -- or be
more flexible in your definition of the role._

Sometimes, the problem is the definition of "asshole." For some people, this
is "anyone who tells me I'm wrong, even if they do it nicely." Such people are
not A players.

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bane
You should hire aptitude every time. You can work with and around attitude for
more the most part (there are exceptions) but if somebody can't perform on a
small team, there's simply nobody to cover for them.

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shimi
A C player with the right attitude can go places. An A player with bad
attitude will go nowhere

~~~
Psyonic
If the ability to "go places" is what's important, than doesn't that make the
C player the A player? It's like we're measuring something, then saying we
really want to measure this other thing instead.

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audriusarj
From the beginning you should know what skills your team lack. Sometimes you
need the A persons. However, if you don't have that amount of money, search
for those who can do the job. For the first days that's more valuable.

