
Why You’re Not Hiring the Best and the Brightest - dfine
http://firstround.com/article/Heres-Why-Youre-Not-Hiring-the-Best-and-the-Brightest
======
Jemaclus
I agree with most of the article. My problem with the "Hire by Audition"
section is a little more robust. I currently _have_ a job. If I'm looking for
a job, then I'm doing that in my free time. If I'm looking for a full time
job, I'm not looking for a contract job.

Now imagine that I've applied to five companies. Each of those five companies
has given me an "audition," something that I can take a week to do. I
necessarily have to do this in my free time -- I can't very well do it at my
current job! -- and not only do I have to solve your problem, but I generally
have to do it within some sort of constraint that you normally have, whether
that's your codebase or your language or whatever. I'm going to spend a
significant portion of that time simply getting up to speed with that
constraint. Maybe I have to install Ruby or I have to install Symfony or I
have to study the documentation for Twilio. Who knows?

I've never yet had an "audition" like this that didn't require me to sign an
NDA, then install that company's codebase and work within that codebase. And
I've rarely been able to do this in one or two nights of work. Usually one
night of work is spent simply installing it, the second night studying what's
going on, and then the third, fourth, and possibly fifth nights actually
fixing the problem, testing it, and making sure it's good enough to submit.

It's a lot of work to ask me to do, even if you're paying me as a contractor,
because again, I'm not looking to be a contractor. I'm looking to be a full-
time employee.

I want to solve your real-world problems much more than I want to answer
academic questions, but at the same time, you have to respect my time as well.
I don't want to waste your time by not giving you enough data to make an
educated decision about hiring me, but you should also not waste my time by
giving me a task that takes up my entire free time for a week.

There's a happy medium here. I don't know what it is, exactly, other than
letting me solve the problem my own way with my own code and my own tools, but
if I do that, then it's not "something you would give your employees right now
if they weren't so busy," right? Maybe.

The rest of it is fairly spot on, I guess.

Just my two cents.

~~~
jgh
I interviewed with Skype once, I ended up not taking the job because it would
have meant moving to SF and I don't really want to do that, but they asked me
to do something interesting. They asked me to complete an assignment that was
similar to the work I would have been doing, but did not require me to install
their codebase, nor was it such a huge task that it would have taken a week to
do.

This, to me, feels more like a happy medium between whiteboarding and
"auditioning". The task was simple enough to be completed in 8 or 10 hours
that I could do after work, and I even had some time to add some flair to it
for style points.

~~~
zerr
Interesting. Could you please clarify if your interviewed when Skype was
already acquired by Microsoft?

I wander if Skype does similar thing now, i.e. maybe they preserved some
autonomy and did not adopt general MS style puzzle interviews.

~~~
JayBlanton
MS employee here. AFAIK puzzles have not been used in a long time.

~~~
zerr
I meant CS puzzles (like in programming olympiads), which are still widely
used I believe.

------
kabdib
The "audition filter" here will eliminate those people who are (a) really
good, and (b) can get a job without such nonsense.

HN has thrashed this out before, but what the heck:

\- My current employee agreement may prohibit me from doing such work (this is
definitely true of ALL of my employers up until now)

\- I'm pretty sure I can get a job at a great company without such a hoop, so
I'm not going to bother with yours unless I _really_ want to work at exactly
your company [unlikely]

You need to work on your ability to assess candidates without involving fear-
based behavior on your part.

~~~
codinghorror
If we give you a real project to work on and you view that as "fear-based", "a
hoop", and "nonsense" \-- those are huge red flags.

You'd rather solve B.S. puzzle questions, or debug basic algorithms on a
whiteboard standing in front of an interviewer?

I like real work. You should too. Otherwise, you are absolutely right, we
_shouldn 't_ be working together.

~~~
kemiller
It's not a matter of liking real work or not. Of course everyone prefers real
work to silly logic puzzles, but that's a false dichotomy. It's about trust
and commitment. You're asking your applicants to assume virtually all of the
risk in the transaction. They have to either quit their job or violate the
terms of employment. They have to go all-in on your company for weeks as
opposed to considering multiple offers. This way of hiring may work for the
companies that are already highly desirable (though I think it's still cruel),
but it's absolutely lousy advice for unproven companies in a competitive
hiring environment. You totally don't want to work with bad people. Not at
all. So suck it up, hire the people who look promising, and fire them promptly
if they don't work out. But absolutely, positively, do not encourage every
little startup to strut around like they are doing top talent some sort of
favor by even considering them.

~~~
aetherson
You're absolutely correct, and I want to highlight one thing you said: Nobody
likes firing people. Every manager I've ever worked with hates firing their
employees -- even really bad ones.

What the "audition" is all about is trying to make it so that you don't ever
get into a situation where you hire someone, work with them for a month, and
say, "Holy shit, this isn't working out at all, I'd better fire this guy."

In France or something, where it's super-hard to fire people, maybe that makes
sense. In California, it's mostly about trying to spare the feelings of the
manager.

~~~
kemiller
I completely get that. I've had to fire people, and it really really sucks.
But that's the point: you don't get to externalize that onto your candidates.

~~~
aetherson
Yep! I'm not sure it was clear, but I was agreeing with you.

------
Aloisius
I'd much rather hire very good and local to the best and remote. Someone who
comes into the office adds so much more to the company besides the work they
produce.

They attract other very good people just by virtue of being there. They
contribute to things outside their specific job description in ways that a
remote person can't (company policies, culture, company direction, leads on
customers, etc - often serendipitously). They are frankly worth more in an
acquisition scenario because they are more likely to stay with the company.
They can grow into senior or leadership roles in a way that a remote person
simply can't.

Frankly, I think the best and the brightest is kind of a mythical unicorn
anyway. If you keep chasing them, you'll end up passing on a lot of great
people.

~~~
hga
This is one of the first really good points I've seen against remote workers,
at least for smaller companies.

E.g. just because I'm that way, bought my first DECtape in 1978 (sic), backup
my home systems on LTO-4 today, I almost always ended up being the guy who did
the company's backups at the startups I joined. Especially if you can't afford
a tape library, you've got to be there to do that, to make damned sure it gets
done.

Or someone asks me, a couple of decades ago, "we're dissatisfied with our ISP,
you know any good ones?" and I say "well, I've been personally using DIGEX for
a few years and they have their act together." Etc. All outside the scope of
my official work as a programmer.

Or even more obscure, one of the things my family back home back then did was
real estate and I picked up a lot of things by osmosis, and later reassured
several sets of small company management that the clock cycle of that field
was much, _much_ slower than ours, and they didn't necessarily have to be
concerned by how long it was taking to get new office space etc. Again,
something I'd not be able to contribute without being there to hear them
grumbling about the issue.

Also, if someone wants to politically trash you, being remote puts you at a
terrible disadvantage. I had that happen when I mostly "dissapeared" for 6
weeks to produce a MVP a potential client challenged us to make, because I had
a much faster machine at home and didn't have an office mate who's job it was
to talk a lot on the phone (yeah, the company didn't get several things).

Completely gratuitous, the guy was of ill intent, left the company taking our
biggest customer which probably doomed it. But it, well both of those, set up
the conditions for my getting constructively terminated as soon as I finished
V1.0 with my team, and with the guy I'd mentored on what was almost his first
job into a good software engineer, leaving soon after, removing _all_
knowledge of the system's backend from the company, that product died.

------
bri3d
I see a lot of drawbacks to the consulting project:

1) Anti-moonlighting clauses

2) Time commitment from both parties

3) Tax/thought overhead to signing agreements and getting paid. This way I'm a
1099 everywhere I interview. There's a reason I'm not an independent
consultant full-time.

4) Different challenges. How do you objectively, fairly evaluate candidates
when they're given a different issue to fix or different feature to implement?

But I agree that work-samples are essential to good hiring.

A staged, small-challenge approach (like Thomas Ptacek / Matasano use) seems
better to me from the standpoint of an interviewee for a few reasons:

1) Less overall time commitment.

2) Fail-fast. If I blow the first hour(s?) long screen, I'm done. No weeks of
work involved.

3) Consistent, fair evaluation. Presumably a set of "canned" challenges are
used and the time taken and quality of output can be evaluated directly
against the performance of others.

~~~
sliverstorm
Speaking of moonlighting clauses, can you imagine the legal shitstorm if you
were to moonlight for a direct competitor? There's no angle in which that
doesn't look bad.

~~~
Jemaclus
My company's direct competitor contacts me on a weekly basis to try and poach
me. I'm super, super highly qualified for that job, and I could probably
leverage a massive raise... but I would feel so, so dirty for doing that.

It's nice to know I still have morals. ;)

~~~
sliverstorm
It's fine to go to a direct competitor, I think. I'm just saying working for
both at the same time would be... well, probably career-ruining in my line of
work. I believe our little industry has an unwritten rule of 2-week minimum
cooldown when switching companies.

------
kldavis4
I have first hand experience with mentoring a junior dev and he is dead on
about it not working remotely. In my experience it quickly devolves into the
senior dev answering a continuous stream of emails or instant messages to help
troubleshoot some simple issue. Interestingly, one of the biggest issues I
have seen is an inability to succinctly communicate the facts around the issue
that the individual iss struggling with. A lot of time is spent interrogating
them for more info to find out what exactly the problem is. These are the
kinds of situations where you really must be able to sit down next to the
person to efficiently bring them along and not being able to quickly becomes
an exercise in frustration for both parties.

~~~
iamthepieman
I've found that it takes more preparation from both parties but is still
doable.

Each interaction should be treated like a mini presentation. I have a toolbox
I use for this that includes:

1\. screenshot software

2\. screencast software

3\. screensharing software

4\. videoconferencing with an HD webcam

5\. a whiteboard I can point my webcam at

6\. note taking (I use evernote)

7\. remote assistance software like logmein or teamviewer that lets me take
control of the other persons PC or vice versa.

it's not completely seamless, but if everyone is using the same toolbox and is
capable of starting a video call, snapping screenshots and sharing them,
switching to the whiteboard to brainstorm posting a quick video of the
issue/prototype whatever in the shared space then it works pretty well.

The biggest barrier to good remote teams or mentoring that I've found is when
no one has the same tools or is willing/knows how to use them. Also, if either
side has a resistance to learning knew remote processes or has a grudge
against the remote person for being remote or for the need to hire remote
(because of lack of talent in the local area) then there's more problems than
just not being able to collaborate remotely.

~~~
Yunk
Wow, you go all out! I've mentored remotely and been mentored remotely with
nothing beyond email, text chat and (rarely) phone. I'm not sure how that
couldn't be sufficient given all of the open collaborations successfully
occurring.

Of course it helps if the junior developer also has a project (or any other
tasks) matching their current skill set to work on so issues don't have to be
solved in real-time to prevent idle+frustrated engineers.

I've actually had more trouble with local mentoring. It is hard to get people
thinking deeply about how something works and how to solve problems when they
know an answer is a few grunts away.

~~~
iamthepieman
well I don't use all the tools all the time but I've certainly used all of
them at one time or another.

It's not so much having all the tools, but standardizing on a certain set of
them and making sure everyone uses them and knows how to. Then if I say,
"Let's collaborate on this, I'll send you the document link" my co-worker
knows I'm talking about a google doc or a whatever we use.

Sometimes you need feedback but it's not urgent. Could be for a problem your
having or maybe just on a new interaction or UI element you're working on.
That's an ideal case for grabbing a short video clip rather than trying to
describe in an email, "The drop-down panel re-sizes the entire parent element
to 100% but only when I . . .etc".

Videoconferencing should really be the default for team interaction remotely.
It's takes no additional work over a phone call but you can read the other
person better. Over time this makes a big difference in team cohesion.

I keep notes on my work process regardless of whether I plan to share them or
not. Being able to share them and even collaboratively edit them is another
big time and bandwidth saver as both of us can add debugging notes to a
running log or brainstorm together on a new idea complete with screenshots of
mockups or grabs from a similar webpage or app.

~~~
Yunk
Anything raising team cohesion without jet lag is definitely worth trying.
Thanks!

------
jw2013
It's a long article, so let me excerpt a few bullet points for those don't
have enough time to read the whole article:

1) Don't just hire local talent, hire nationally, even globally. There are
lots of successfully companies embracing working remotely.

2) Evaluate the value of a person's contribution based on how much they have
done rather than how much time they showed up (what's done >> what to do).
Some effective way to measure so is to track Github commits to see how many
bugs they fix, etc.

3) When hiring, hire by audit. Pay the interviewees some hourly rate to finish
a mini-project that is a part of your company's real work (e.g. add a
feature), and let their performance in the mini-test be a large factor in
deciding hire/no-hire decision. Also, try to hire from your tech community.

4) Effective communications for remote work: real-time chat, video chat,
online bulletin board, weekly team status report.

5) Some big drawbacks of remote work are: brainstorming is hard + mentorship
is hard. Luckily, some of the companies don't need brainstorming much. And for
mentorship, don't hire people that need extensive mentoring.

~~~
up_and_up
> And for mentorship, don't hire people that need extensive mentoring.

So then forget interns and/or jr's devs?

I have found code reviews via pull requests to be a good mentoring tool.

~~~
dmourati
I've been thinking about this issue lately. Jr developers, interns, fresh
grads, etc all have some alluring properties: they are cheap(er), have few(er)
bad habits, and are more open to being coached into their roles.

Netflix, on the other hand, hires no folks like this.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/interns-banned-at-netflix-
quo...](http://www.businessinsider.com/interns-banned-at-netflix-quora-2014-2)

My current company is comprised almost exclusively of newer engineers. It has
put me in a strange position as someone with > 10 years experience in my field
when that long ago, most were in high school.

EDIT: fixed split infinitive and spelling

~~~
codinghorror
I think the reality is that only large-ish companies have the slack time
necessary to devote to mentoring. Companies have to get to a certain size
first.

At a startup, you are running full tilt 24/7 by necessity.

~~~
Consultant32452
Startups are not (usually) engineering firms with super high quality
requirements. My first job (still in college) was at a startup. I was the only
developer under the CIO. It was a java webapp and both of us barely knew Java
when we started. It worked pretty well, we had minimal serious quality issues
compared to most companies I've worked at, we had zero unit tests and a shoe-
string budget. That company is still going strong and has made millions off
the project I started practically on my own over 10 years ago.

~~~
PeterisP
It can be argued that startups require a broad range of skills in a wide array
of technologies, and you don't get that with inexperienced people.

In a mid-sized organization you can work on a java webapp - as in your example
- and possibly only on a part of that java webapp. In early stages of a
startup, you're likely to have to know your way around the webapp's frontend,
backend, mobile app/mobile web adaptation, handle SEO, plan for scaling, be a
part DBA, handle server administration DevOps style, and do all kinds of
internal business process automation unrelated to that product you're
building. You'd need to be a jack of all trades at beginning - since there's
noone around who's specializing in that other stuff - or spend half of your
time becoming a jack of all trades.

~~~
Consultant32452
I installed the servers in the rack at the data center, configured the load
balancers, installed and configured the database with a hot backup and wrote
90%+ of the application code when we went live. You don't need people with all
that much experience.

------
forgottenpass
_Ideally, your audition project should be a regular consulting gig with an
hourly rate and a clearly defined mission statement. Select a small project
that can be done in a few days, maybe at most a week or two. Let the candidate
choose to come into the office or work remotely._

So, only hire people that can afford to quit their current job for an
interview? Or at least blow all their vacation time on you?

~~~
megablast
Just like IT projects, there is no silver bullet to interviewing, and you have
rightly brought up some good points about why this will not work.

Despite producing over 60 apps for the iOs app store, a new employer wanted me
to whip up an app with a tableview that is sortable and searchable. I told
them to stop wasting my time.

------
bowlofpetunias
The dirty secret of remote working is that unless your company is located in
the middle of nowhere, the pool of developers that have the discipline and
skills to successfully work remotely on a permanent basis is even smaller than
your average local pool of talent.

Right now it's still an opportunity because the number of companies fishing in
this pool is still relatively small, but that is changing rapidly.

The scarcity we're dealing with is still mostly a scarcity of mature
professionals, and with remote working anything less than that is not an
option.

~~~
hibikir
It's not really about scarcity of mature professionals, but of how hard it is
to find the ones that are out there, and get them to apply.

Take this large-ish city in middle America. I have worked with a few local
developers I would call mature professionals: If I was starting a startup, I
know where I'd call. But I only know their skillset through having worked with
them over the years. How can someone that doesn't have a network find them?

A few you can find in user groups and meetups. But that gets you one very
specific brand of mature developers. Many in my list wouldn't go to one of
those: They are often just sausagefests, with 25 to 35 year old males trying
to impress others about how good they are. That and recruiters who tend to not
know anything. Same thing by going with speakers in conferences: You get a few
people, but those are probably not going to make your company their number one
priority. It's more likely that you are an excuse to make money between other
engagements.

An ad in a recruiting site? The really good ones don't get jobs like that:
They mention a friend they are unhappy in their workplace, and they quickly
get recruited. I got my last job like that, without even an interview. So and
so says you are great and would mesh very well here, so have an offer.

Pestering recruiters? You can talk to those, but they can't tell the good from
the bad. Also, the mature professional can't tell if your newfangled startup
is good or bad. Will you want insane hours? Do you have a crazy idea, like
mandating that all code is organized in tiny web services 100 lines of Clojure
or less? Unless they are unhappy in their existing position, you have to find
them and prove to them that you are a worthy employment option. And they might
not even buy into your pitch. No, They might think that a web of tiny services
doesn't really fix all the world's problems, or they might not want to do
boring business analytics.

So, more than the scarcity of professionals, the real problem is that you
can't even contact them.

~~~
bowlofpetunias
If there wasn't a scarcity, the people you describe couldn't afford to make
themselves that hard to find.

The fact that they don't bother applying for jobs or, directly or indirectly,
publicly soliciting offers is a symptom of that scarcity.

Also, the problem I encounter with calling on the people I worked with and
would like to work with again is that most prefer to be self-employed, and can
easily make more money that way.

------
mbesto
I live in SF and operate a startup in the US but almost exclusively work with
resources outside of the US. I believe this model, with it's challenges, does
work and can work for many business. I also believe that many talented people
(right now many of them coming from Eastern Europe and South America) lack the
ability to get exposure to opportunities from well funded US (mainly SV) based
companies.

That being said, if anyone (mainly front-end UX/UI, iOS, android,
rails/django, node, and various MVVC js frameworks) who feel you are talented
but aren't getting the right opportunities to work on cool, well-funded
projects in the US, feel free to get in touch.

~~~
Axsuul
Same here, been working exclusively with devs from Eastern Europe and it's
been working great. Also want to plug that we're always looking for capable
Rails devs so hit me up if you're interested!

------
ignostic
On the point of hiring the best and brightest wherever they live: I worked for
a startup that hired from all over Europe and North America. We did hire some
great people, but there are definitely considerations and downsides. Here are
some of the cons I noticed:

1) It took a lot of effort to discourage cliques based on location. People
from different countries or parts of the country bonded more easily. New hires
would also quickly bond because they didn't know anyone, but together they
felt excluded by the established groups. This was critical to their happiness
because they didn't usually have friends outside of work. We managed, but it
does require more effort to prevent internal politics.

2) This wasn't the sort of job where everyone could work remotely, so we
regularly lost people who decided to go back home. That's why I left, and I
was neither the first nor the last. People miss their families and friends,
especially if they miss a large event.

3) Moving people can be expensive. Obvious, so I won't elaborate.

4) Recruiting from all over is also more expensive. You may or may not need to
fly people out, but you also have a lower rate of interest for the same amount
of effort. On job boards you'll get 500 resumes, out of which 100 people
actually realized the position requires them to move. For the low-profile
startup it just takes more effort and money to get the word out to the right
people across the country.

Was it worth it? Sometimes. In the end, you need to consider whether the
position is really worth the extra time and cost of hiring or whether you can
find local talent that will do as well. The issues I've raised above are
obviously harder for positions where "telecommuting" doesn't work.

~~~
PeterisP
The whole point of the article is explicitly on hiring people who aren't
willing to relocate - those who are eager to move to SF already make up the
current market.

What are the positions where "telecommuting" doesn't work and reasons for
that? The OP argues that for pretty much all development jobs that isn't the
case, and gives examples of how successful companies have implemented this.

------
sesqu
The mostly unrelated world population density map [1] really distracted me,
partly because of how entirely wrong it is.

The map is actually of the populations of countries, not of world population
density as claimed in the caption, and it's pretty aggressively thresholded,
too. A density map would look something like [2], which is so dissimilar as to
undermine any conclusion the reader might have drawn.

[1]
[http://frcs3.s3.amazonaws.com.global.prod.fastly.net/library...](http://frcs3.s3.amazonaws.com.global.prod.fastly.net/library/rowImage/map1.jpg)
[2]
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/World_pop...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/World_population_density_1994.png)

------
kemiller
The reality is, there are not enough "best people" to go around. And, for that
matter, it's probably arrogant to think that your idea is so hot that you
_need_ Google/Apple/Facebook-level talent. You are much better off figuring
out which imperfections you can live with, ditching any lazy elitism ("only
top schools") and looking in places that are not quite so over-fished.

------
BossGrand
In my experience having all local employees works well or having all remote
employees works well. It becomes a logistical nightmare when you start to mix
local and remote employees.

~~~
hibikir
More than logistics, the problem is a cultural divide. 6 people talk to each
other constantly, but the other 3 guys are stuck on chat.

There's also the problem of remoting requiring a different skillset. I know
many developers that are very good, yet they are terrible remote developers. I
know one that would spend her days tweeting or enjoying her boyfriend. Another
one that will fight a problem for a week instead of asking a 5 minute
question. Another will undertake major refactors without telling anyone. And
all those three are amazing developers while on site: You just have to keep
them on an extremely short leash while remoting, and they really don't like
that.

~~~
hga
I don't like the words you're using to describe the people in your second
paragraph, it doesn't sound like a problem with skillsets as we normally think
of the word, or culture necessarily, at least the "culture" of workplaces.

It sounds like these people have to be on a short leash, period. It's just
that the leash is implicit on site, but has to become explicit in a bad way
when they're remote.

Although I do empathize in other contexts (especially the long term
unemployed, or those not making it into the job marketplace) the general
"skillsets" of working, of "showing up on time", being diligent, properly
subordinate to your superiors, etc.

------
binarytrees
It's hard only hiring the best and brightest as I assume there is only x% of
people who you qualify as best and brightest. How many other companies are you
competing with to get this so called "best and brightest"?

~~~
BrentOzar
> How many other companies are you competing with to get this so called "best
> and brightest"?

If you're willing to hire remotely and hire from your online community as Jeff
suggests, you're competing with surprisingly few companies.

I'm part of a small Microsoft SQL Server consultancy, and competition for good
database performance tuners is notoriously difficult. However, when we publish
a blog post that we're hiring, we get overwhelmed with applicants. Most of our
competitors require an onsite presence, make the employees show up in an
office from 9 to 5, and hire in cities with high costs of living. We don't -
so we don't end up with much competition for brilliant people who just happen
to have family ties to smaller communities.

------
mschuster91
I guess the problem many companies/startups have with international workforces
is: how do I deal with local laws/taxes? Do I need to establish a branch in
the country of the prospective employee? Do I need a bank account in the
country or can I use one European bank account for all my European employees?

Does anyone know of a company/startup which provides "remote employment as a
service", including managing payroll, days off/holidays, local law/tax
compliance and the whole slew of paperwork?

~~~
PeterisP
For me the simplest way to work for from EU to a USA company would be to
register a mini-company for myself. I don't have one, but many freelancers do
it just for local customers, because you can get a bit of tax savings that
way.

The process then is simply making a periodic invoice from my company to yours;
the ongoing costs involved would be whatever an international money tranfer
costs for you, + I'd pay something like $50/mth to a local accounting company
to handle all the taxes&reporting for that.

I don't know of any full "remote employment as a service", but there are a lot
of outsourced accounting companies who'd do the taxes & paperwork - most local
small businesses do it this way, since there's not enough work to have a full-
time accountant/finance person on board. Actually executing payments and
managing days off is a bit trickier, since the first requires full access to
the company funds, and the second involves managing people, which is hard to
outsource - you probably could get them to calculate 'what is owed to whom' by
the local laws, but you'd have to pay salaries yourself & schedule vacations
directly with the employees.

~~~
mschuster91
This however doesn't grant you days off - if you don't work you don't get
paid.

Also, at least in Germany, if you only have _one_ client/customer, you're
vulnerable to committing a tax/social security offence called
"Scheinselbstständigkeit" (roughly: faked entrepneurship), as you'll end up
paying less in taxes, social security and insurance than a full-blown employee
and people have abused this in the past to maximize their profits on cost of
the employee or the systems.

~~~
PeterisP
Sure, this is the 'contractor' approach where you bill for services provided
at a higher rate than a pure salary, and pay for your
vacations/sicknesses/whatever out of that.

As for that "Scheinselbstständigkeit", I believe most other countries have
some similar legislation. It's not an issue with freelancers as you have
rotating clients, even if it's only one at a time; but yes, if you're creating
it just for a single employment then that can be treated as tax avoidance -
having the employer run a shell-subsidiary-branch would be preferred in that
case.

------
jmzbond
Hiring the best and brightest presumes that you, the employer are the best and
most successful.

On both sides of the table, society constantly pushes us to think we're number
1 when we're really not. Non-top-tier companies and top-tier companies
shouldn't have the same hiring practices. Nor should non-top-tier applicants
and top-tier applicants have the same recruiting strategies.

Can we all stop pretending to be something we're not? The world operates on a
normal curve and not everyone can be the 1%.

That said, if you are the top employer, I think a great metric is simply to
gauge the time an audition takes. A technical problem for the best and
brightest might take a couple of hours, whereas for someone less qualified it
takes much longer. And this exercise should come with suggested timing to weed
out people who know they're not able to crack it in the allotted period.

I think this could be a way to not have long term auditions, because what
you've done is focused on creating a quality-assessment (difficulty of
problem) as opposed to a quantity-assessment (length of time).

I disagree with what other commenters have said; having anything but long term
auditions will not sufficiently gauge fit with corporate culture. But hey if
you're going around the world to hire remote workers, culture is probably not
your top priority anyways.

------
imroot
I've taken a different approach to the audition -- I have something that would
take a developer 8 hours to do: something that we do in the core product, but,
in an entirely different context.

For example:

"At LowBudget Brands, we provide reservations, customer support, front desk
software, and backend support for property owners who want to own a successful
hotel brand. A large portion of our travelers may not know which television
station to turn to or have their smartphone or other device know set to the
local weather, so, LBB wants to build a solution that: -> Provides Hotel
managers to create an account that allows them to set their property number
and zip code -> Queries Weather Underground to determine the three and five
day forecast for that zip code -> Generates a single page .pdf file with that
content -> Mails the hotel the day's weather at 3 in the morning. "

If you've gone through the interview process, we know that you have experience
with API's, background tasks, and PDF generation...or two of the three. I pay
a flat rate of $200 for this task, and then we throw it away once they're
either hired or we decline.

We provide a Vagrant file and an amazon t1.micro instance if that's easier,
and that's proven to suit our needs rather well...

~~~
monksy
I like your approach for a few reasons.

1\. Its realistic. It has a customer and it has needs. 2\. You're prepared
with the resources needed. [You've thought about this before] 3\. You're
willing to put your money where your mouth is. I get the feeling that many of
the lengthy coding tests or auditions are nothing but timewasters for
punishing a new applicant. 4\. It sounds like a weekend project/take home
exercise.

------
pacofvf
You want the best and brightest?, just pay more money, word will spread out,
the best and brightest will come to you.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
Additionally, have interesting work.

Don't complain about not finding the best engineers if you're not an
engineering-centric company; by definition, you don't need the best, you just
need good enough. There's nothing wrong with this.

~~~
jrs235
Exactly. Interesting work goes a long ways. Some [boring] things you can't pay
me enough to keep doing.

------
WWLink
I don't think I have the guts to call myself the best and brightest lol. Does
that mean I'm never going to find a job? Seems like every company insists on
hiring the best and brightest, and everyone here thinks they're the best and
brightest.

~~~
collyw
I feel about the same. Looking around me I see I am maybe top 25%. There are a
couple of really smart people, and a fair few that I would classify as below
average.

------
norswap
Another (more worrying) problem is that most of us would be unable to
recognize the best people if they stared you in the face.

~~~
potatolicious
Of course we can't. Practice is critical in mastering a skill, and frankly as
an industry we really don't practice the skill of recognizing the best people.
At all.

Hiring processes throughout the industry are entirely non-rigorous, and there
is almost never any loop-closing when it comes to hiring signals and eventual
job performance.

We are spectacularly bad at recognizing talent because we've never sat down
and rigorously connected signals to success and failure.

Tech hiring is the ultimate cargo cult. It goes through fads (remember when
logic puzzles where the thing?), and works primarily via arguments that sound
logical but were never even remotely verified. It's monkey see monkey do at a
mass level.

------
jokoon
I hate the hiring process. I've been unemployed all my life, and an interview
feels like pop idol. Everything is about the looks, the communication, what
are you flaws, what do you like, why do you want to work here, etc.

Maybe it's because I live in france and that employers can't easily fire
people, maybe I'm not the "best and brightest", maybe I'm bad at
communication, maybe I can't manage to sell myself properly, maybe I have
issues.

It feels like buying somebody to be a friend in a club, not paying him to do
some work.

I think employers like to hire people "they can trust", and I find it stupid.
It's normal at first, but I wonder why there aren't any company trying to hire
people who are not likable and finding ways to make the company work. I mean a
company is not a group a friend doing chores and having coffee, of course you
need people to behave a little, but I don't understand why it can boil down to
simply exclude elements that can create "awkward situations that can put the
company in danger".

------
gargarplex
.. you're also not hiring the best and the brightest because you aren't paying
enough. Top talent knows what it's worth and enjoys those rewards .. finding
them through consulting, banking, or entrepreneurship.

Only the mediocre are going to settle for $160k/yr + options at some "me too"
A16Z startup.

~~~
walshemj
Depends if that start up is a 10 min to walk to work and you say have a wife
and newborn child to support some times you will take any job.

And some one really good might take a CTO role at a me to start-up to tick
that box make your mistakes where it doesn't matter then move on to bigger and
better things after 18 months 2 years.

~~~
gargarplex
I'm gonna just say it. The really good people know their worth and
consequently have very premeditated family planning.

------
lucisferre
For some reason I can't quite articulate, I find just about all "how to hire"
advice is mostly a mix of platitudes, anecdotal evidence, weighed down heavily
by personal opinion. In short I don't find much if it useful in actual
practice.

I suppose this is true of most entrepreneurial advice.

------
microjesus
Interesting points all around. As someone working as a remote consultant;
rarely if ever meeting the clients in-person: I dig this. It's interesting
this culture culture where the masses have these obnoxious, noisy, single room
shared workspaces where they invite employees to "collaborate". Working on-
site as a requirement simply has to go.

------
relet
One problem I personally have with most remote jobs is they don't give me the
same social security as I have in my own country, and don't allow me to pay my
taxes locally. I want to support the community I am living in, and know that
community to have my back.

------
Aloha
I'd rather hire people who are good, and can do the job, rather than snag the
all-stars.

Driven people with practical applicable experience are all the more worthwhile
to me than folks who while smarter and brighter, often need an external source
of motivation beyond a paycheck.

------
gomox
> Always hire the best people… who are willing to live in San Francisco

... and are allowed to do so.

------
merrua
"I’m talking about a real world, honest-to-God unit of work that you need done
right now today on your actual product." This bit sounds unethical. Your
asking someone to do work for you without paying them.

~~~
MisterBastahrd
Exactly what happened to me. I interviewed with a company from a position of
weakness (I had been out of school for several years and worked as a recruiter
then Katrina hit, so I was flat broke and out of a job for a year) and I was
looking for my first real programming job. They had me build something for
them that they decided they needed but that no candidate had been able to
create so far. I built the tool in a couple of hours, learning the language
along the way. They turned around and used the tool in production without
compensation.

------
lifeisstillgood
Does anyone else have an issue with the world population map claiming the
Russian steppes have a population density on a par with the South East of
England? Or am I bad at reading keys on maps?

------
crimsonalucard
Studies show proximity is just as important as talent.

~~~
lucisferre
Which studies? Seriously I'm interested, but also why would you just state
this without referencing at least one?

~~~
walshemj
Rapid development by McConnell has loads of examples of where co-located teams
are by far the best solution - And my several decades of experience I woudl
also agree.

~~~
lucisferre
Thanks. My gut tells me there are advantages for both, but that it's at least
somewhat situational.

How do you feel about the fact that the book is quite dated. I mean our
ability to be integrated into the team, information and workflow while working
remotely has improved by leaps and bounds since 1996. He's referencing a time
before, DVCS, team chats (IRC I suppose), shared work boards like
Trello/Pivotal, DropBox, Google Docs, Github, screen sharing. The list really
goes on and on.

~~~
walshemj
MM all promoted by sales men who want to sell you something.

Video conferencing is never as good as face to face and I have used pro level
video conferencing gear at BT not some 20$ webcam and crap mic.

Its a bit like thin client computing which is one idea that keep coming around
and around.

------
dsugarman
wow first time I have heard real sense on this topic from a SV VC. the other
option beyond remote work is to physically locate your company out of SF and
near the engineers (like we did!)

------
phazmatis
No don't tell them this. I like being mediocre but in-demand.

