
We Only Hire the Best - braythwayt
https://m.signalvnoise.com/we-only-hire-the-best-c711c330fc2e#.yty4hjlla
======
deedubaya
Such a no brainer, but jezus it's about time for someone to call out the
hiring posts.

Hiring a good employee is like shopping for a car. You don't buy the coup if
you have a family of six, a gas guzzler when you're a commuter, or a 2wd when
you live in the boonies. It's a balance of values.

I've seen "rock star" coders fail in team environments because they can't
communicate. I've seen great communicators fail because they were all talk.
I've seen really great team players impolode when facing the customer.

I'd rather have an employee who is good at a few things than one who is "The
Best" at one thing. It's called hiring for employee fit, not so you can tell
your buddies how l33t your team is.

~~~
bicknergseng
Definitely reading too much into your comment and not responding just to you
but the hiring post trend, but IMO all of those scenarios are conflating
mismanagement with bad hiring. Have a rock star coder who can't communicate
(I'd challenge whether or not that was possible another time)? Put them in a
position that minimizes the amount of communication they have to do or set up
a structure for their inbound/outbound communications that works for everyone.
Great communicator? Have them figure out how to facilitate that person who
can't communicate. Great team player? Have them work with the team and don't
make them outbound.

Point is, effective team building doesn't end at offer letters. Hire for fit,
then fit the hire. Train up. Just because someone is weak in some area doesn't
mean they can't contribute meaningfully given the proper resources and
support, nor is a strong hire going to succeed without the same carefully
tailored support.

------
johngalt
Experience tells me that hiring posts that demand this level of excellence are
often covering for weaknesses in their process.

"We only hire the best!"

 _The best at what?_

"The best at everything of course. We want a full stack wish fulfillment
genie."

 _Either you have no idea what skills are missing from your current team, or
they are all missing, and you want to fill that gap with one person rather
than a team._

Job postings that ask for excessive skills across multiple disciplines say to
me: This hiring manager doesn't want to do their job. The management job of
creating a team, process, workflow. Why bother building a team of shared
responsibilities? Why take ownership of the team's process? That would be
hard. Instead I'll just hire one uber-nerd and make them do it all.

~~~
Yhippa
Here are some of my favorite lazy hiring manager practices:

    
    
      * asking for "everything but the kitchen sink" skills
      * confusing Java with Javascript
      * even mentioning J2EE in the requisiton (who on Earth wants to do that in this day and age?)
      * copy-pasting of the requisition leading to truncation of the posting

~~~
gtk40
I was talking to the product manager for a product we were having issues with
from a major player in the corporate software place who, when we told the
manager we were experiencing Java exceptions and instability, kept calling
them "JavaScript exceptions." I couldn't believe a PM couldn't even keep the
language that the product was written in straight.

------
jemfinch
Nothing is said here that wasn't better said by Joel Spolsky over a decade
ago:
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html)

~~~
dbg31415
Expected this to be the top comment.

Nothing new DHH isn't widely praised for originality, but come on this whole
article is like a total re-hash. And he doesn't even bother to mention Joel...
to me that means he's trying to take credit, or he doesn't know about Joel...
uh, yeah.

~~~
why-el
> DHH isn't widely praised for originality

Unless you have more to say I think this is an unnecessary attack on David's
person, especially that one might think of a couple of things he did that are
original. ;)

------
ikeboy
[https://blog.codinghorror.com/we-hire-the-best-just-like-
eve...](https://blog.codinghorror.com/we-hire-the-best-just-like-everyone-
else/) (discussed at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11223316](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11223316))

[http://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/](http://danluu.com/programmer-
moneyball/) (discussed at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326940))

~~~
GVIrish
That Dan Luu blog post is gold. It really is kind of sad how arbitrary,
capricious, and wasteful hiring in IT is, not to mention the short-sighted
thinking about talent.

I also really liked the post he did about discrimination in tech:

[http://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/](http://danluu.com/tech-
discrimination/)

------
leroy_masochist
One other aspect of "we only hire the best" that wasn't explored by this
article is the practice -- especially common among unicorn companies -- of
purposely casting a far wider net than needed, so that their hiring yield on
applicants is dauntingly low.

The recruiting process is deliberately set up to yield a lot of false
negatives -- i.e., applicants who are qualified on both skill and fit who are
rejected for some arbitrary bullshit reason.

I suspect it's largely an effort to mindfuck the employees who do make it
through the process. I'm so lucky to be here! Only 3% of applicants even make
it to a five-minute founder interview, and only half of them get hired!

~~~
cortesoft
Well, lots of people have to be rejected for a the not-bullshit reason that
there are only n jobs available at the company and n+x people applied. Even if
they are all great, x number of people are going to be rejected.

~~~
superuser2
I'm not so sure. My understanding is the big tech companies hire engineers on
a rolling basis and basically take everyone they like.

They're not approaching it for the frame of satisfying a requisition for a
specific role with the best of the N applicants for it on X date, they're
picking up talent as quickly as possible and then sorting out where to place
people after the hire/no-hire decision is made.

~~~
mahyarm
It's more like there is unlimited demand, and most managers could think of
more things to do if they had more staff.

------
braythwayt
"Everyone thinks they're hiring the top 1%.”—Joel Spolsky, 2005

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html)

~~~
bitwize
Well I must suck then because there aren't companies lining up to just hand me
a job like Joel says happens to all good developers. I have to hustle in order
to keep food and a roof.

~~~
pmiller2
Don't worry. I'm sucking right there along side you. 3.5 years experience and
I'm not even getting recruiter spam in the volume some of the people here are.
:P

~~~
pascal1usa
You probably would be if you lived in SF. Since the available housing ratio to
jobs is 1 to 3, they have effectively guaranteed that not all jobs can ever be
filled. Great for the job supply!

~~~
galdosdi
Or NYC. Or another major urban area with plenty of tech jobs. Anecdotal but
everyone I know here in tech (varying roles, skills, and levels of experience)
gets plenty of recruiter spam. By contrast, I do know similar people who have
had a tough time with the only difference being they're in a smaller market in
the interior and are not willing to relocate.

I think location really matters a lot. Telecommuting has not made it
irrelevant. There's strong network / market effects for an industry with
frequent job hopping and frequent changing of company hiring needs --
employees want to be somewhere with a lot of employers and employers want to
be somewhere with a lot of employees, so the top few cities end up taking the
lion's share of the tech work.

If anything, easier communications maybe has made it easier for companies to
just open up an office somewhere just because that place has a lot of
prospective employees. Maybe in an earlier era slower communications with
colleagues in other offices might have made this less attractive, but it's so
easy now. E.g., tech companies starting in SV but then also opening up an
Austin, Pittsburgh, London, Seattle, NYC office because there's plenty of
prospective hires there. What you don't see them do much is also open a St
Louis, Tampa, or Little Rock office. It's just not worth it.

DEFINITELY consider trying moving to a major tech hub, or just a bigger city
at least, if you have persistently had a hard time finding a job locally.

------
asb
Corp: "We only hire the very best"

Programmer: "What's the salary?"

Corp: "Market average. Also, we're looking for people who aren't just
motivated by money"

~~~
leroy_masochist
We want people who are motivated by _the mission_.

~~~
LargeWu
If the mission is feeding starving children, or curing cancer, or public
service, then yes, I want people who are motivated by the mission. But usually
the mission, the _real_ mission, is to make the founders exceptionally
wealthy, and forgive me if that doesn't get me out of bed in the morning.

~~~
kisna72
Even if the mission is to cure cancer, thats the worst reason to not pay
people well. Those are the most difficult problems, and you definitely need
the best people to solve the hardest problems. If the idea is to pay people
really poor because that problem is so difficult, I think its a bad idea and
simply taking advantage of people, not to mention the best people will go
solve other problems that pay them well.

~~~
Loughla
This is the problem with education (and all non-profits for that matter).

1\. People work in education because they love the work, not the money.

2\. We don't need to pay educators well because they're not the tops in their
fields.

3\. We can't recruit top candidates because the pay is shit.

4\. Rinse, repeat.

------
VLM
"You know what the best people I’ve ever met or worked with had in common?
ALMOST NOTHING!"

I've found the best have interesting hobbies. The not so best have nothing to
say beyond "how bout that sitcom/drama/game last night, eh?". The extroverts
won't shut up about it and the introverts have to be coaxed, but one way or
another if they can tell stories for hours, about something other than TV last
night, they tend to be pretty good at their job.

Its a weaker argument that it has to be a craft hobby. Beer, carpentry,
knitting, playing music, writing poetry, subject doesn't matter. If doing
something the right way is important to them as a core value outside of work,
then they'll tend to do things the right way at work.

------
bpyne
"First, “the best” is bound to be situational. Someone who can thrive in one
environment might get crushed in another. The peak skills that gave them a
leg-up in one domain may very well make them unfit for work in another."

Key statement here. Some employers need top coding skills in modern
technologies. Some employers, like my current one, really don't need a top
coder: they need good analysis skills with some coding. Employers need
different degrees of executive function and technical skill. My previous
employers valued high technical skill, but we had single product/project
focus. My current employer doesn't need high technical skill, but a successful
person in this environment needs to be able to multiplex across four projects
with differing requirements - COTS implementation, soup-to-nuts software
development, bridges between existing systems, etc. - while also providing at
least second level support for existing systems.

In addition to executive function and technical skill, add in social skill.
Some employers in my past had no problem with on-edge bright technical people.
My current employer values politeness far over technical ability.

"Best" and even "successful" have to be defined by each organization according
to their mission and values.

------
blisterpeanuts
Thanks for this reminder of basic management practice which needs to be posted
about once a year: hire good people and get the most out of them through
superb leadership, great working conditions and ample incentives to achieve.

"We only hire the best" is a sales slogan, not a true management principle.
The "best" aren't usually for hire at any given moment; they're very well
employed already, or otherwise occupied. And when a high caliber person
decides to move on, someone in his or her network will likely hear of it and
snap them up.

I'd rather hear them say, "We have excellent hiring practices that filter out
incompetence and unpleasant personalities. We have a great team here and we're
really proud of the hard work they do."

Of course you can make a case for disruption; sometimes what a business needs
is someone to challenge the norms, shake things up, rattle the chains, and
that can be unpleasant if not downright threatening. An old manager of mine
called such people "brilliant assholes". Gotta love'em for what they can
achieve, but they're often not much fun to be around!

------
daniel-levin
"We Only Hire the Best" doesn't have to have any truth to it to be of use to
companies. Their purpose in hiring is to extract value from candidates.
Convincing people that they'd be amongst the best is all you have to do. The
rhetoric comes from existing employees, who may be rationalising their
decision to work there. It feels good to be amongst "the best" \- I want to be
amongst the best! I am sure I'm not the only one with such aspirations. If
being 'the best' means over-fitting to the requirements of a company, then the
most successful (viz. "best") candidates will optimise for what that company
wants. It means by the time they arrive at work they're already largely
conditioned into behaving as their new company would like them to.

Yes, "the best" is a transparent lie. It doesn't matter though, because it
serves the interests of companies who espouse it. DHH is calling a spade a
spade here - but I'd hazard that the vast majority of the HN crowd already
know.

Also, globally, _there are lot of extraordinarily shit software people out
there_. If we define quality by "gets things done and doesn't break things and
act in a crappy and deleterious manner", then it is not difficult for "the
best" to mean the upper 60% of software people. It is completely reasonable to
assume that the companies with this mantra do indeed hire from the top 60%, if
only because of how many rubbish people there are.

------
stillworks
The best line I heard "we don't hire a$$$holes". That's a check-mate
statement. I think to myself what if I don't get selected :-( . I did get
selected only to realise they hired people down the line whom I'd consider
rectal orifices. Can't catch a break really...

~~~
whatever_dude
The "No assholes" rule should really be the #1 rule when hiring.

I've heard a lot of complaints from friends and family in the tech industry
over the years, as I've had my own issues. While details vary, it always comes
down to the acting up of one obvious asshole or another. It infects the whole
team/company/project.

In the long run, a team of average but positively motivated people more often
than not beats a team with an asshole in it, even if he/she is a
rockstar/guru/ninja/jedi/whatever. And their lives won't be miserable in the
process.

~~~
jjuel
The problem is an "asshole" is subjective. I might find someone to be an
asshole that someone else might not think is an asshole.

~~~
whatever_dude
At least from my limited sample, more often than not the assholes are
considered to be assholes by everyone else. "Well, everyone thinks he/she's an
asshole, but he/she does the job, or has been in the company for a long time,
or knows someone in the executive team".

That's where the problems lie, when everyone the person is an asshole but no
one can do anything about it.

------
dmh2000
Joel wrote this same post about 10 years ago.
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html)

~~~
briandear
Ecclesiastes 1:9 -- The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and
that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing
under the sun.

~~~
jamisteven
wtf does this have to do with anything

------
drelihan
"Losers always whine about trying to hire the best...." \- J.P. Mason

"The best" is a relative measure. An absolute measure must be set first and
gatekeepers put in place to guard it. Then, do all you can to find candidates
exceeding that measure and then pick the best FIT you can from there.

blisterpeanuts is right on...

------
AndrewKemendo
It's signaling 101.

What are you supposed to say; we hire mediocre developers? Give me a break.
"Best" is such a loaded, nothing term that it doesn't really mean anything
without a ton of context.

This is a waste of outrage.

~~~
braythwayt

      > What are you supposed to say; we hire mediocre developers? 
    

That’s a perfectly valid business strategy, and one that is practiced by many
big consulting firms. You put someone’s butt in a chair, you are billing for
them by the hour, and if they won’t work 90, 100, or 110 hours a week, there’s
always someone else who wants their job.

They’re not that great, and they know it, and you like it like that.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_big consulting firms_

Ok, fine. That's obviously not what we're talking about. You don't recruit
talent or raise capital on the idea that you are going to put talent in the
sub-basement of a server room because they are a "warm body."

------
notacoward
"We only hire the best, because nobody else has a hope of surviving the mess
that our previous 'best' made."

Seriously, I think WOHTB is an indication that the company doesn't know the
difference between selection and training. They want the technical equivalent
of Navy SEALs (which is already a questionable goal) so they put in an
equivalent of BUD/S, but that's a _training_ program and they're using it for
_selection_. Anybody capable of getting past that is either a faker or doesn't
need it, and since the second group will also have little patience for it all
you're left with is the fakers. Not a strategy for success. I don't mind,
though, because their failure makes things easier for the rest of us.

------
DVassallo
> (Did you see Hamilton and Rosberg collide in Formula 1 last week? Mercedes
> probably wish they had more of a Vettel and Webber kind of dynamic right
> now.)

Vettel and Webber crashed as well in Turkey 2010 as they battled for the lead:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vx9zIQvrdZU](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vx9zIQvrdZU)

------
travjones
DHH back at it again, dropping truth on the dev game. This was a timely post
because my friend and I were just mocking the phrase "we only hire the best"
this past weekend. If you like DHH's writing, check out one of his other
recent posts: RECONSIDER [0].

I think pointing out some of the absurdities of software development culture
and startups is fun. It's unfortunate that Startup L. Jackson hung up his hat
:/.

0:
[https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3972-reconsider](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3972-reconsider)

------
anotherhacker
There's no way they hire the best. My company told me they already hired all
the best programmers!

------
beat
This makes me think of an observation an old colleague of mine made to one of
the revolving-door CTOs at our former employer. He said there are three things
you can offer to get good engineers... high pay, an interesting problem, and a
great work environment. If you can't offer at least two, you really need to
excel at the last one.

Problem with former employer was a lousy work environment for uninteresting
work...

------
sandworm101
I was looking at a senior position at a "we only hire the best" firm
yesterday, a senior position requiring at least a masters plus a decade of
experience. But right at the bottom of the qualifications: "Must be proficient
in Word, PowerPoint and Visio".

------
bretpiatt
Places that truly hire the best are not doing it through job postings. The the
company / department leadership are actively involved spending time networking
to curate a queue of candidates for hard to hire roles.

The second thing high performing companies do is have entry level roles where
you can mass hire to see who rises to perform as "the best" where you can then
promote out of that pool into your "hard to hire" roles where you cannot
afford an average or below average player on the team.

You'll also need to pay the best at market rates for "best" not market rates
for "average". "Pay" breaks down into what I call 'the money/fun dial' \-- the
dial goes from 0% money / 100% fun to 100% money / 0% fun. At 0% money those
activities are called hobbies and everyone has a list of activities they enjoy
doing each day they either spend money on or at best break even. At 100% money
/ 0% fun this is effectively "selling your soul" \-- these are the jobs that
leave you no time or energy to have hobbies, non-work relationships, or a
family. With my company we aim for 50%/50% on the dial -- we pay well, allow
folks to work hard on meaningful projects, and give them time for
hobbies/friends/family. I view life as a marathon and if you turn the dial up
or run a company culture with the dial turned up beyond 50% on money people
will work for you until they burn out or make enough to find a long term home.

------
quantum_nerd
Sometimes I even ask myself: “you only hire the best…at what exactly?” there
is difference between having a fancy degree/accolades and actually
contributing meaningfully to your work. I have also seen(in my thin years of
experience) that at most companies, there is a disconnect between HR and
company’s talent needs. Only those who have figured out how to bridge that gap
hire “the best”(subjectively).

------
karmakaze
In the spirit of going deep, the root cause of the F1 crash was human error
(being in the wrong strategy mode) rather than ego.

~~~
protomyth
Yeah, that was a whole different kind of error. Also, the line before that is
pretty wrong too, so I guess we're just going to have to ignore the whole
paragraph.

------
henrik_w
Another good post on the same subject is:

We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest

[http://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/](http://danluu.com/programmer-
moneyball/)

HN discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326940)

------
jerryhuang100
just like when you see signs "best pizza/hero in town" or "we use best
ingredients" at eateries

------
20years
Sooooo good! I think I may start replying with a link to this article every
time a recruiter contacts me with one of these types of jobs. They almost
always require moving to the Bay area for some "hot new" startup and a
whopping $80k salary + equity. Can't live off that in the Bay area and I have
no desire to work for your Uber for X startup, do weekly scrum sessions or
work in an open office environment crammed tight.

I think a quick reply with a link to this article will do the trick.

------
anamoulous
We only hire the best. We are going to consult all the best experts and we'll
get the best people in the office to make 37 Signals great again. It will be a
beautiful thing.

------
pjc50
One of the chapters of "Parkinson's Law" (the book that among other things
coins 'bikeshedding') discusses hiring from a satirical point of view. He
makes the point that the easiest kind of hire is when only one candidate
applies, so it's good to load down your adverts with as many requirements as
possible so as to put applicants off.

------
graycat
And what if a candidate has a good background in computing, computer science,
AI, and pure and applied math and, then, also a good STEM field Ph.D. degree
from a leading research university.

Do you want to "hire the best" or do you want to reject anyone with a Ph.D.
degree? E.g., how many STEM field Ph.D. holders have you hired to date?

------
hashkb
> but recognizing the difference between what you’d like to be true and what
> actually is serves as a prerequisite for closing that gap

...and not recognizing it is a prerequisite for running a company.

------
paulclinger
It needs to be read as "We only hire the best (we can find)". So the results
are explained by the search and selection "algorithms" applied in the hiring
process.

------
iamgopal
Is it just me or svn blog quality greatly reduced these days ?

------
devy
Although I agree most of what DHH said in this blog post, I am a little
disappointed that he only offers Don'ts but not in Do's.

------
jklinger410
Employer: I want the most work for the least money.

Employee: I want the most money for the least work.

In the current market Employer > Employee.

------
xiaoma
Isn't the author of this post the primary villain from the big #rubydrama
article on HN over the past couple of days?

------
galistoca
I see a lot of people on this thread who just say it's bullshit without
understanding what's going on. You can live your life that way, or you can
enlighten yourself on what really is going on and make the right decision.

This "salary cut" works only in this case: The employee is not just looking
for money but something intangible from the job (Experience/network/etc.) This
doesn't apply to most of you guys who have no intention to start a company or
make a huge leap in life. That's why you think it's bullshit. But there are
also a small number of people who are really not driven by just money but puts
a lot of value on the intangibles I mentioned above.

Many startups look for these types of people, so to those of you who are
hating on this idea: there's nothing wrong with you hating on them. It's by
design, these companies don't want you either. I know from experience because
I've hired people who just got in without any specific reason. These people
tend to give up very soon because they simply don't care about what they're
building. And again, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that these
startups can't afford to hire you.

Here's my horror story: I was working on a startup. We were fortunate to have
a guy who's extremely talented and wrote the core part of our product. However
he switched ship immediately when he realized it was a business that will take
time to mature. I really hated that guy for a while because we had to
basically abandon our core product the day he just left. Now I understand and
also know that part of it was my fault too, but it was a very difficult
experience for me. If you look at the world with this lens you'll notice so
many "rockstar developers" jumping ship after another when things don't go
well for the company (which is totally fine for them but bad for the company).
That's why startup companies should care more about the "right match" than
"rockstar developers". And hiring a rockstar developer by paying him tons of
money when he's not so passionate about the company's vision is the worst
thing you can do.

An analogy is most girls who don't want guys who are just in it for her looks.
When you try to seduce a girl, complementing her looks rarely works unless
your social status is extremely obviously high or if your looks are extremely
great. In most cases you have to demonstrate that you like her not just for
her looks but because of her personality. Most girls don't want a guy to just
have fun for one night, never to see again, especially if they like them. I
know many girls who gave up on a guy she really liked because she didn't want
to be hurt. Startups are like that.

~~~
dmitrygr
I'm not even going to try to reply on the sexist nature of the second half of
this comment, but focus on the startup-related one.

Your guy switched to another company because you were on track to become rich
off his work, and he was not. If you incentivized him right, he'd stay. Did
you ask him why he left? Because if not, you really did not learn a lesson.

~~~
galistoca
I knew someone would call me sexist. I know where you're coming from but I
think people whenever they come across something that makes them uncomfortable
just call it "sexist", "racist", etc. and call it a day. All I did was state
the fact. You explain how it is sexist and if it's logical I will shut up.

Lastly, he switched because no one was getting rich off anyone's work. We were
going through difficult times. But that was not the point of my comment. You
blame me of being sexist but maybe you should also be less biased when reading
someone else's words.

~~~
soulbadguy
Well with all due respect, you yourself didn't address OP main point in your
answer : Did you or did you not try to rightfully incentive your main coder?
It seems to me that many founders want early employees to take the risk of a
co-founder but with the reward of an employee.It always amazes me that some
people don't realize that being mad a someone for acting in his best interest
is actually selfish.

------
jamisteven
what a shit headline.

------
pigpaws
so... they're really just lowering their standards... I was told here on HN
that's wrong...

