
How to hire the best people you've ever worked with (2007) - wyclif
http://pmarchive.com/how_to_hire_the_best_people.html
======
JamesBarney
_Specifically, I am unaware of any actual data that shows a correlation
between raw intelligence, as measured by any of the standard metrics
(educational achievement, intelligence tests, or skill at solving logic
puzzles) and company success._

I don't mean to be nit-picky but I enjoy an internally consistent burden of
proof in a blog post. In this post he seemed to move the goal posts. He
dismisses intelligence as valuable because it doesn't meet an impossibly high
burden of evidence. But then argues you should instead should use drive,
curiosity, and ethics without substantiating his claims.

 _For example, test programmers on basic algorithms -- linked lists, binary
searches.

Just in pseudocode -- it doesn't matter if they know the relevant Java library
calls._

Programming and algorithms are two different sets of skills. Writing a stable,
easy to use, useful java/ruby/python/javascript library is a very different
skill set from solving algorithmic puzzles, which are both unrelated to
recreating a linked list from scratch in 10 minutes on a whiteboard.

~~~
danieltillett
Yes arguing from your own ignorance is not the most reliable way to convince
someone of something.

In regards intelligence it is the only thing other than work tests that has
been shown to have any major correlation with job performance.

Edit. This paper make for a great read on this topic.

1\.
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227600464_Stubborn_...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227600464_Stubborn_Reliance_on_Intuition_and_Subjectivity_in_Employee_Selection)

~~~
dlss
Conscientiousness is also correlated with job performance, and is about on par
with IQ for predicting lifetime earnings. Agreeableness (also a Big-Five
trait) is also quite important in cooperative settings (though both have small
effects relative to IQ for single shot task performance).

[http://www.gwern.net/Conscientiousness%20and%20online%20educ...](http://www.gwern.net/Conscientiousness%20and%20online%20education#conscientiousness)
has a nice overview of the literature.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness)
does a reasonable job describing the trait.

 _Edit: while we 're listing large causal factors for work performance, I feel
appalled I forgot to mention genetics...
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9739126](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9739126)
_

~~~
danieltillett
The problem is conscientiousness is heavily g loaded so what you are mostly
measuring is the effect of g.

------
overgard
His thing about reading too much into references is pretty bad. Like "moody" =
"clinically depressed." Pretty big jump there! Could you really say that about
a stranger based on a tepid reference? Maybe their project was stupid, or they
had a bad seating arrangement where they were stuck next to an annoyingly
chatty person, or they just weren't naturally bubbly, or ... whatever, there's
like a thousand possible reasons to consider before you jump to "clinically
depressed" with regard to a stranger.

I also think the thing about drive is a bit naive. If you're dealing with a
young unknown quantity than sure, drive can be a useful metric, but on the
other hand if you're dealing with a proven reliable professional with domain
expertise, who cares if they have drive? I've worked with plenty of really
good people that don't want to touch a computer after they go home, and yet
are incredibly capable at their jobs, and that's totally fine.

~~~
ntumlin
Similar to that, when he mentioned constantly interrupting = egomaniac. I've
noticed that I'm fairly bad about interrupting people, but I don't think it's
because I feel I'm way better than everyone else and my opinion is so
important, but that's what my parents and some of my close friends do as well.
When I do it with people besides them, I usually stop myself and maybe
apologize, but by then it's too late.

I know I must be annoying, but surely that doesn't mean I'm a bad developer.

~~~
nommm-nommm
Interrupters are people who don't listen to what others are saying. Playing
nice with others is usually is required to be a good developer (depending on
what you're working on, software is rarely a solo effort).

Not only that, you can learn something from other people as you don't know
everything all the time. Constantly learning is __required __to be a good
developer. You can 't learn when you interrupt.

I worked with an interrupter, he was one of the most incompetent programmers
I've ever seen but wasn't capable of understanding his own incompetence
because he was too busy interrupting others.

~~~
tomp
> Interrupters are people who don't listen to what others are saying

In contrast; I listen to people intently, and love learning new ideas and
opinions. However, most people take _sooo_ long to get to the point that I
often know how their sentences will end before they do. So I interrupt them.

Some people get offended, and insist on finishing their sentences. In about
99% of the cases, I correctly predicted their point.

~~~
elwell
I feel the same way. And I would like to imagine that I wouldn't be too
bothered if someone cut me off and quickly expressed how we were 'on the same
page'.

------
geofft
> _Now, you might say, Marc, that 's great for a young kid who has a lot of
> spare time to stay current, but what about the guy who has a family and only
> has time for a day job and can't spend nights and weekends reading blogs and
> staying that current?_

> _Well, when you run into a person like that who isn 't current in their
> field, the other implication is that their day job isn't keeping them
> current._

> _If they 've been in that job for a while, then ask yourself, is the kind of
> person you're looking for really going to have tolerated staying in a day
> job where their skills and knowledge get stale, for very long?_

If they've got a family to feed, the answer is "yes," right? Or "That's why
they're looking for a job with your company."

Alternatively, if they've got an H-1B...

------
rumcajz
> REST vs SOAP, the new Facebook API, whether Ruby on Rails is scalable, what
> do you think of Sun's new Java-based scripting language, Google's widgets
> API, Amazon S3, etc.

Really? Why would anyone learn any of that unless they actually need it to
make their work done?

~~~
overgard
Because learning that kind of thing increases the possibility space of what
you can do. Insights usually come from a diversity of knowledge, if you only
learn what you need to know you'll be exceptionally average.

~~~
DavidWoof
I agree in theory, but the problem is that everybody has their own personal
"10 most interesting things right this moment" list, and they often don't
match up even (or especially) among excellent programmers.

So the fact that somebody isn't spending time with your favorite new toy
doesn't mean they're not constantly learning, especially when the top 10 list
is as ridiculously subjective as the one in the article.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
That's not his point. He doesn't care that your list is different than his; he
cares that you _have one_.

------
jph
My top hiring metric is grit. Wikipedia says it's an individual's passion for
a particular long-term goal or end state, coupled with a powerful motivation
to achieve their objective.

This perseverance of effort promotes the overcoming of obstacles and
challenges... and serves as a driving force in achievement realization.

~~~
CryoLogic
I'm no expert in this area, but when I look for potential co-founders I always
think the best metric is how self driven they are. It's so easy to find people
who went to school, got the grades and graduated. Its harder to find people
who go and do things outside of the standard.

~~~
WWLink
I take it you don't care much for employees that do things besides
programming? Like I dunno.. hobbies, and family, and stuff?

Call me lazy if you wish but I almost never want to program during the
weekend. That time is better spent with family, or playing games, or washing
the car. Or something. Anything really. If I come into work having burned my
brain out over the weekend programming something, then I don't produce results
that satisfy me. Hehe.

~~~
yareally
I do some hobby programming for fun, but I don't expect everyone I work with
to do that. I do it for fun and wouldn't otherwise. When I interview
developers, I ask them about their hobbies in general. Sure, I throw in some
technical questions depending on the position (usually language/platform
agnostic), but those aren't the focus or the best way to hire to me. I want to
know if they have an interest/curiosity into how things work (problem
solving/debugging skills), can communicate effectively (can work as a team)
and are passionate about something in their life (tells me they can focus on
something when needed).

I follow up with questions about how they solved some difficult problem in
their life (could be programming or could be just learning how to change their
oil). I ask them how they came up with a solution and what they learned about
it. I want to see if they learned enough from it to be able to explain it to
me or anyone else in the interview.

Doing that gives me an idea of how their communication skills are. I want to
gauge their problem solving and debugging skills during the interview, because
I think almost anyone can be taught to be a better programmer, but it's much
harder to learn to be an exceptional troubleshooter/problem solver and that
tends to be a majority of what software developers do.

------
mabbo
> Google, on the other hand, uses the metric of educational achievement.

> Have a PhD? Front of the line. Masters? Next. Bachelor's? Go to the end.

That's... That's not really true at all. While I interned there (during my
bachelors) I met a lot of people without their masters. One guy had only his
high school diploma.

~~~
s3nnyy
Although a degree seems to be a poor predictor of performance in a software
engineering role ([http://blog.alinelerner.com/how-different-is-a-b-s-in-
comput...](http://blog.alinelerner.com/how-different-is-a-b-s-in-computer-
science-from-a-m-s-in-computer-science-when-it-comes-to-recruiting/)), I am
sure the percentage of people with degrees at Google is higher compared to
"normal" companies.

I have some insights in Google-Zürich and the percentage of Masters and PhDs
is above average compared to other companies. (Disclaimer: I live in Zurich
and I used to code for a living. Now, I hire engineers for different companies
in Switzerland. If you look for a tech-job in Zurich, check out my story "8
reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT" on
[https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-
moved-t...](https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-to-
switzerland-to-work-in-it-c7ac18af4f90) or ping me at the mail-address in my
HN-profile.)

------
tokenadult
The blog post says, "Specifically, I am unaware of any actual data that shows
a correlation between raw intelligence, as measured by any of the standard
metrics (educational achievement, intelligence tests, or skill at solving
logic puzzles) and company success."

That's just an argument from ignorance. According to Hacker News comment karma
scores, one of my most popular comments ever was a comment that included a FAQ
about what the research shows about company hiring procedures.[1] What the
research says is that for hiring workers for any kind of job, a work-sample
test and a test of general intelligence are about tied for effectiveness in
identifying good job candidates. ALL hiring procedures sometimes miss good
workers, and all hiring procedures sometimes result in hiring lousy workers,
but if you want to optimize, the way to optimize is to hire workers who are
good at doing the specific tasks you are hiring for (that's what a work-sample
test shows you) and how have good general cognitive ability, which shows as
well as any indicator that they can learn to do new tasks in the future.
References to the research literature are available in my previous comment,
linked in the footnote. Anything else you do in hiring, for whatever reason,
has less benefit to your company than checking whether job candidates can do
the job tasks and checking whether the job candidates are smart or dull.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543)

~~~
stanleydrew
It seems most people have missed what he actually said, which was that he's
not aware of research linking employee intelligence to "company success".
Employee intelligence may well be linked in research to employee success, but
he didn't suggest otherwise.

Employee success and company success are two different outcomes of interest.

------
d23
I know it's Marc Andreessen and I know it's a nit-pick, but did he never learn
how to use a paragraph? Short, standalone sentences can be powerful to make a
point, but they can be tiring when used every single paragraph.

------
untilHellbanned
> Most people softball deficiencies in people they've worked with when they do
> reference calls.

Everything these days is so PC that I wish people would even softball the
deficiencies. We are in the age of recommendation inflation. Everybody is
"great". There is no "but...".

------
ccvannorman
TLDR: There are thresholds for intelligence and pre-existing ability, but
focus on three things: Drive, Curiosity, and Ethics.

I have also heard "Hire for intelligence and attitude", which I also agree
with. A good attitude will take you far.

------
ishener
just in case people miss that: this was written by Marc Andreessen

