
We Rejected Dan Shipper (And What I Learned About Hiring) - quintendf
http://www.quintenfarmer.com/2012/05/02/we-rejected-dan-shipper-and-what-i-learned-about-hiring/
======
dustingetz
OP uses the word "rejected" 9 times.

A-level hiring is not about rejection. A-players aren't looking for a "job"
and A-managers aren't trying to build an assembly line. It's about finding a
mutual relationship where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and
that requires a lot of things to come together.

> As a startup, if you have the opportunity to bring on an A player in a low
> risk role (like an internship), you do it

All circumstances are different, so maybe he should have found room for Dan,
or maybe not. Engineering quality (and talent in general) is on a power law
distribution. When you consider engineering quality to be a competitive
advantage (not all startups, even YC startups, need this), your early hires
are your future managers, and will tend to influence the future hires. Its
tough to attract and close people smarter/better than you.

I imagine myself now at age 26 (pretty decent engineer, doing functional
programming and stuff), and compare to age 21 (cocky, overconfident) and while
I was smart and driven and all that, it doesn't mean I can contribute to a
rockstar team. I would drown and get left behind. World class teams at the top
of the power law distribution, say the Clojure team[1], at age 21 I'd be a few
orders of magnitude behind them and just not worth paying. at age 26, who
knows, probably still at least 1 order of magnitude behind, not worth hiring.
Square peg, round hole. At least I can see my trajectory of exponential growth
over the last 5 years, and if that keeps up another decade, I can build or
join a team like that.

[1] <http://thinkrelevance.com/team>

~~~
quintendf
(OP here)

I should probably note that the use of the word "rejected" was done to
emphasize the humor of the situation (we rejected someone who is now being
publicly recruited), and to draw attention to what a mistake it was.

I would completely agree that A level hiring isn't about rejection, job
descriptions, or assembly lines. That's why I am such a fan of what Jason
Freedman is doing at 42floors.

To your second point, I remain a firm believer that early stage companies
(less than 10 people) in this hiring environment should be open to bringing on
A players, even if they don't fit into an immediately defined role.

------
credo
I know nothing about "Wheremyfriends.be, a simple webapp " and it is
interesting to see how a brand is being built around one of its three
developers. However, I hope we see less of these hero-worship posts on the
front page (or at least limit the number of hero-worship posts until something
more substantial has been accomplished)

Btw self-seeking flattery of powerful, influential people is generally
considered as sycophantic.

Is there a good term for flattering people like the guy described in this post
:)

 _[edit] for chc and anyone else who didn't get the sarcasm, yes, the intern
wasn't powerful. That is precisely why the smiley-question asked for a new
term_

~~~
chc
I thought we were talking about a college sophomore who wrote something cool
and gained recognition for his skills. Who's the powerful, influential person
that Mr. Farmer is flattering?

I believe the term for flattering people like Dan Shipper is "paying a
compliment."

EDIT: You're right, I didn't get the sarcasm. In the context of a comment that
described the OP as "hero-worship," it doesn't come across as sarcasm. If we
acknowledge that the guy is neither powerful nor influential, it seems pretty
obvious that the OP's "flattery" is merely paying a compliment to somebody he
respects. I think we could use more of that and less "So-and-so is full of
shit" articles.

------
gcp
_But in a review between myself and the company cofounders, one sticking point
kept coming up: Not enough relevant development experience. We were trying to
build a core front end team that had an existing passion for mobile/tablet,
and Dan was a square peg in that round hole._

It's hard to comment accurately without knowing much more about both sides
involved here, but generally speaking, rejecting a (skilled+proven) developer
who's willing to learn a new technology _because_ he doesn't have experience
in it is just...a mistake.

~~~
brockf
What are the boundary conditions here? I'm a young developer (23) who's made
over half a million USD$ from web apps while in school - would many companies
be interested in hiring even with programming languages I have little to no
experience with?

~~~
mquander
The startup I work for would! Assuming, at least, that you have experience in
a couple moderately dissimilar languages (e.g. not only Java) it's really not
a big deal. It's important to have _someone_ who is a _real_ expert on a
language you're using, but most people can just be good at it, and you can get
good at most languages quickly with sustained effort.

What is a big deal is being smart and motivated and knowing a lot about at
least something useful. Everything else is gravy.

------
sliverstorm
Naming names in these "Why we didn't hire this person" always comes across as
showy posturing. If you want to talk about insight gained in the hiring
process, you don't need names. You only need names if you want people to be
impressed by all the famous people you turned down.

~~~
jsprinkles
They're trying to ride the Dan Shipper bandwagon. I thought that would have
been clear; there's no other reason to write this post.

------
SethMurphy
> it was clear that Dan had the mentality and intellect of an A Player. He was
> young, driven, and extremely intelligent.

Young has nothing to do with mentality or intellect. Nice to hear someone who
is in charge of hiring be honest and say it out loud though.

~~~
sliverstorm
Whoa there. The quote can be interpreted two ways; the way you read it
("young, driven, intelligent" = "mentality and intellect of an A Player") and
the way I read it ("mentality and intellect of an A Player. _In addition,_ he
was young, driven...")

~~~
dpritchett
There's no legal upside to publicly being interested in young people. The best
you can really do is look for inexperienced people with low salary
requirements.

------
tocomment
It's funny, when I read that 42 floors offer, I thought Dan Shipper was a name
they made up for a hypothetical developer who "Ships" (produces) code.

So I thought it was an open letter to all good developers that they wanted to
hire them.

Granted, I only read the first half of the post...

------
jvandenbroeck
I think the whole thing is kinda ridiculous, making a blog post to hire
somebody.. Maybe I'm just outgrowing HN or it's because I'm from Europe that I
don't get the fuzz.

More on topic, I quite liked this blog post & think it was much more informant
than the one from 42F

~~~
mattdeboard
You're conflating HN with a single blog post.

------
pjmlp
Who is Dan Shipper?

~~~
mikemac
I believe it's referring to this: <http://bit.ly/IHTk05>.

~~~
chollida1
Actual link the above obfuscated link refers to:

[http://42floors.com/blog/posts/consider-this-a-job-offer-
to-...](http://42floors.com/blog/posts/consider-this-a-job-offer-to-work-
at-42floors)

------
silverlake
Hiring is random. There have been numerous studies that show people are highly
influenced by interviews despite the fact that it's not a good indicator of
ability. Would you have hired Systrom or Krieger (instagram) as engineers?
AFAIK, they had no experience building large-scale sites, yet put together
instagram. Would you have hired Paul Bucheit when he applied to Google? AFAIK,
he hadn't done anything spectacular yet.

A-players are by definition people who have done something big. Who hired
these people to give them a chance to do something big? What about the larger
group of people whose startup flamed out before they could demo their skills?
It's all a crapshoot.

Hiring is easy. A small startup is receiving resumes from a self-selected
group of people who want to work there despite the low pay and lower job
security. Most of the people reading HN could build an instagram-type system.
So once you filter for ability with some stupid programming quiz, just pick
the guy you like. If your company succeeds, he will magically be considered an
A-player.

------
mstdokumaci
writing one sided stories about your business relations in public, like this,
is not ethically correct, in my opinion.

~~~
quintendf
Dan reviewed this post in its' entirety before it was published. I gave him
final say on whether or not it was published or submitted here.

I agree that personal stories like this should have the approval of everyone
involved before they are published.

~~~
GavinB
I strongly suggest you add this to the post itself. If not early on, then at
least at the end. My thought that "they probably let Dan sign off on this, but
it would be good to know for sure" distracted from focusing on the broader
point of your article.

~~~
cesarpereira
I strongly agree with this point. I was also very distracted during this very
good post wondering if Dan signed off on it before it was published. By the
end I assumed that was the case, but the message would have been better served
without the distraction.

------
jrockway
I'm waiting for the michaelochurch analysis of this situation.

~~~
dpritchett
Did Google also reject Dan?

(Kidding, I have really enjoyed Michael's recent spurt of blog activity.)

------
ericson578
What is an "A Player"?

~~~
dpritchett
It appears to be a reductive staffing methodology invented by this book:
[http://www.amazon.com/Topgrading-Leading-Companies-
Coaching-...](http://www.amazon.com/Topgrading-Leading-Companies-Coaching-
Keeping/dp/1591840813)

The key points:

\- Hire people who are awesome

\- Fire people who aren't

~~~
biot
The term A-player originated in the sports world a long, long time ago. It is
literally a player of the sport who is considered A-grade material. This
phrase, like many other from the sports world, has been adopted into the
business lexicon.

------
nhangen
This feels like a reach to prove superiority and save face. Surprised Dan
approved it.

------
saturn
TL;DR:

HR at some no-name start-up gets it into their head that some kid can make all
their programming dreams come true. They made a blog post to lure him.

Later, HR at some other no-name startup makes a blog post proudly announcing
that the kid in question applied there first, also making some annoying
backhanded compliments about how their standards were too high or some lame
shit.

What next? Nothing at all.

~~~
krschultz
Not only do I hate TL;DR meme (I don't believe it fits the community at HN),
but that isn't even an accurate summary of the article or the situation.

~~~
spudlyo
Agreed. I thought the parent was ill served by editing the post and moderating
the language, which for me more accurately described how I felt about the
article and situation.

------
georgieporgie
_Always hire A Players_

Words cannot describe how tired I am of hearing these sorts of weird sports
metaphors used to describe tech talent. Are we really so immature as an
industry that we have to constantly rely on sports metaphors? It's as bad as
talking about ninjas and rockstars.

Also, I'm really sick of all these mindless, droning, uninsightful posts about
hiring in general. Who cares? Tech interviewing and hiring is a joke, and
everyone here knows it. Larger companies act like you're saddled with the new
hire forever, even though in most places reading HN it's extremely easy to
fire people. Small companies act like they absolutely have to find the best
talent in the universe, even though what they actually need to do is get some
product shipped. It's all just ego stroking and an attempt to codify
insecurities.

How about more awesome submissions about hacks, ingenuity, and product
success, and less B.S. about name-dropping, baseless pontification on
interview tactics, and overuse of bad metaphors. While were at it, let's drop
the bubble FUD and ridiculous guesses about big company tech strategy.

/rant

