
Ask HN: Who was your most impressive hire? - samblr
Share your hiring experience of getting best person for the job.
======
pplante
This person is someone I would hire over and over again, but they are a
private person so I won't out them.

About 5 years ago I saw someone post a project to HN. The project dealt with
stock predictions, and wasn't really unique. However it was some of the
cleanest hobby code, tests, and documentation I had seen a single person churn
out for an experiment. I cold emailed them and brought them in for an
interview the next morning. They were very shy and kinda confused why I was
interested, but I felt something about this individual that I couldn't
explain. Gave them an offer on the spot and they started the following week.

They were the model citizen of work ethic and quality that most of the team
took their cue from. Over the years they left the company and I eventually
rehired them. I would again in a heartbeat. Personally and professionally they
grew so much while I worked with them, with a dedication to goals that I
really admire.

I'll never forget that person I took a gamble on and saw a tremendous ROI on
everything they touched.

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3pt14159
This dude as a Senior Dev about half a decade back:

[https://github.com/caueguerra](https://github.com/caueguerra)

I wish I could replicate that hire on demand, but I did the same thing I
always do.[0]

Now, he's not the _only_ hire that has truly impressed me, but the company he
joined soon came under a hard time. It wasn't under the best leadership[1] and
he took the lead in a challenging project freeing me to handle other fires,
his communication was so clear and timely I never worried. He managed code
review and professional development without nagging, and he was adept at
identifying strengths and weaknesses in the team. He was capable of
understanding the shortcoming of the executive team, without bringing down the
rest of engineering. Oh, and of course the architectural decisions he made and
the code he produced was just rock solid.

[0] Ask for code samples, go through them with a fine tooth comb, filter early
and aggressively. In the interview focus on technology decisions with
questions agreed to beforehand that are tailored to the task and experience.
Really try to make the experience relaxing. If in doubt, schedule a second in-
person interview with some positive feedback from the first.

[1] I count myself in this as well. I was 27 and too young to be a C-level. I
couldn't handle the stress of anxious dev team and an erratic and emotional
CEO.

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YouKnowBetter
A person who send their resume with no directly relevant experience (being
fresh out of school) but listed an array of holiday jobs that got me
intrigued.

During the interview, it took me 10 minutes to make the decision to give him a
change. He took it and owned it. Worked hard, learned fast and had a great
personality making my other coders (8) feel more at ease, motivated, honest
and communicative.

Since then, I make sure HR does not hard filter all responses and try to give
at least 1 or 2 outliers a change. Results are what you expect :)

One other great hire was a person that came back into the industry (coding)
after a 10-year break (children). Over performed like nobody I have ever seen.
She is now a C level at a very large international company, x times my senior.

------
JoeAltmaier
Hired a business student to process Comstock satellite feed, asked "Can you
program in C++?" "Yes," he lied, "can I come in this weekend to get a head
start?"

He learned to program in C++ that weekend and hit the ground running on
Monday. Two weeks later he came to me, asked "What is this 'new' and 'delete'
stuff about?" I told him, he said "Wow that would be really handy".

Anyway 5 years later he was a Fellow at Adobe.

~~~
quickthrower2
And the moral of the story is … ?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Getting a job after college is a combination of skill and chutzpa

~~~
vram22
>and chutzpa

A joke like that, read in Reader's Digest:

A candidate was called in to an office for an interview. Entering the room
where the interview panel was awaiting him, he tripped on the door sill.
Recovering and standing up, he said:

"Well, at least I fell into good company."

He got the job.

------
__s
Friend of mine, highschool dropout, still living with his mother, no previous
work experience as a dev. Told my boss she should hire him, brought him in one
day, told him to just start coding, year later he's doing most the
project/release management while still coding tons

------
partisan
He was recommended to us by an employee. He was capable and looking for a
challenge so I delegated some core framework changes to him. Soon he was
making changes that he was recommending himself and I began referring to his
decisions and simply taking the time to understand his changes so that I could
still hold the entire picture in my head.

The reason he was the best hire is because he is a force multiplier. I felt
way more productive once he took on the work that I had not be able to entrust
to anyone else.

------
simonebrunozzi
Dr. Matt Wood, who joined AWS in Europe in early 2010, pretty much against the
opinion of a few people. He had a tremendous career at AWS, starting as a tech
evangelist and ending up very high in the rankings.

If you happen to be at re:Invent these days and see him, tell him Simone says
hi :)

~~~
taprun
It seems like the best people that my employers have hired are not just
"better" but "different" than most other employees. Unfortunately, the
criteria and methods that most firms use are designed to reduce the risk of a
bad hire, instead of maximizing the odds of hiring someone amazing.

~~~
quickthrower2
Software is a creative business, so someone thinking outside of the box can
out-gun someone pumping out 10000 lines of code in a week. But companies are
testing your ability to pump out nice enough lines of code. What about a
coding test where you have to 'delete' the right lines of code. Or a
whiteboard exercise where you choose what NOT to work on. Those things are not
tested.

------
legohead
our most impressive hire was also our biggest headache.

he was really smart, quick, nice, and had an answer for everything.

unfortunately he also couldn't accept things "just working." everything (in
his eyes) had to be built to near perfection, and he would go on and on about
how various systems needed to change/be re-written.

after we continually refused (as a group) to adopt his suggestions, he left
the job for something else.

~~~
Babycino
What was the reason for not accepting his suggestions ?.

------
thiagooffm
Was a guy that left the company 3 months after.

I've also been this guy a few times. Haha.

We both ended in much better positions than our peers, looking 5 years back.

------
dorianm
Probably Jeff Dean and Paul Buchheit for the people who recruited them for
Google.

