
Convincing engineers to join your team - Harj
https://triplebyte.com/blog/convincing-engineers-to-join-your-team
======
ninetax
> ... the final step is presenting them an offer to join your team and
> convincing them to accept it.

I think more effort could be made to sell before the candidate decides to
interview. The best candidates have to be sold on the opportunity before they
invest their time into an interview process because they have so many
opportunities available.

Widen the funnel at the mouth.

Anecdotally I have had many experiences where the hiring manager didn't take
the time to listen to what I was looking for before launching into their 10
minute spiel give everyone, and then they ask me for phone screen
availability. Why is this the right opportunity for _me_?

EDIT: after reading TFA, I see this is exactly what they're advocating for.
cool!

~~~
mrfusion
An easy step to widen the mouth is to get rid of the web forms that make you
retype your resume into your boxes.

No one who isn’t desperate is going to do that.

~~~
torgian
And you probably don’t want to work for a company that does that anyway

------
chadash
During the recruiting process, I expect a company to be putting its best foot
forward. If things seem disorganized at that stage, then I assume that day-to-
day operations at the company are even _more_ disorganized.

Additionally, it always makes a big difference to me if people high up in the
organization (even if they aren't technical) are involved in the interview
process. If a founder or C-level employee spends some time talking to me
during the hiring process, it's a positive sign that they see this as an
important position and you as an important hire.

~~~
BookmarkSaver
>If things seem disorganized at that stage, then I assume that day-to-day
operations at the company are even more disorganized

I'm not really sure about that. In my experience there can be a pretty big gap
between the initial recruiters (who often understand nothing about the actual
qualifications necessary) that are just trying to get as many people in the
door as possible, and the actual operations of the company. Granted I have a
pretty small sample size, but I've had this misalignment go in both
directions.

~~~
vonmoltke
Having recruiters that are so clueless about the jobs they are recruiting for
is a significant red flag for me and an indication that the company is
immature and disorganized.

------
tootie
My phone screen technique is more old school but I think works well. I pick
their top language or domain (web or mobile or whatever) and ask 10 trivia
questions. Medium difficulty questions I'd expect a programmer with any
experience to answer. I look for maybe 70% correct and I look for quick
answers. You know it or you don't. And I set that expectation up front so they
can give me a few "I don't know"s with no penalty.

This is my sanity check and I think it's faster and more accurate than a
FizzBuzz and doesn't require screenshare.

~~~
ssully
Could you provide a few example questions you would do? Just curious what
medium difficulty questions look like to you.

~~~
gumby
"What do you think are the top strengths and top weaknesses of <language X>?"

Doesn't matter what the specific answers are, much less if you even _like_
language X or not. Instead it says: does the person really have an
understanding of the language; do they have enough experience to say "well I
really do like X, but I do often wish it had feature y of language Z". or
"yes, I have a lot of JS experience since that's the job and I sure know how
to sling it, but I far prefer Lisp which I found made me more productive than
any other. Why? Well because at XXX I was able to do YYY...."

~~~
aspaceman
This is one of the best questions to ask imo.

It's very free-form and honest, and gives you the potential to dive into
things technically.

Do you like C or C++ better? Oh you don't like pointers? How do you avoid them
in C++? etc.

------
maerF0x0
> Have your recruiter keep a list of reasons why candidates said they wouldn't
> move forward

So companies want this kind of feedback, but won't provide it?

~~~
anandsuresh
True that! IMHO this has been a trend that I've observed where interview
feedback is something that doesn't exist. More often than not, even when
requested, I've never received any kind of feedback from companies. Despite
the the abundance of companies like Hired, TripleByte, LinkedIn and others,
recruitment still remains a black-art!

------
ashelmire
What's with the standard of doing a full day interview? Who does this work for
other than fresh graduates? I don't want to spend a whole day (which I have to
request off from my current employer) answering probably-silly technical
puzzles as the first round interview (the 25 minute phone call doesn't really
count since it sounds like just a pitch).

Does a full day of whiteboarding really get you better candidates than say, a
single hour technical interview or 1 or 2 hour homework? I'd rather do half a
dozen video chat interviews spread out over a month than give a whole day just
for the possibility of a new job. I'd prefer a single technical interview or
homework over that by a mile.

If you tell me your interview process is a 25 minute call followed by a whole
day of technical interviews, I'll tell you to take a hike.

~~~
dfabulich
A full day interview is standard. You grant that it's standard, right in the
first sentence of your post. But you'll tell anyone who offers you a standard
interview to take a hike?

This is symptomatic of a broader problem with HN comment threads on "how to
interview" articles: for any given approach to interviewing, the top comment
will be a middle-brow dismissal saying, "I would never interview at a place
that interviewed that way." _For all X._

I would never interview at a place that does whiteboarding. I would never
interview at a place that gave me a take-home assignment. I would never
interview at a place that asked me to pair-program on a real assignment during
the interview (I should get paid for that). I would never interview at a place
that asked me to work as contract-to-hire. I would never interview at a place
that used HackerRank. I would never interview at a place that looks at Github
profiles. I would never interview with a recruiting firm. I would never
interview if contacted by a recruiter (instead of the hiring manager).

And apparently some people would refuse to interview at a place that asked you
to talk to half a dozen of your potential teammates before offering you the
job.

There's just no good approach.

~~~
paulie_a
I have never had a full day interview, if it's more than 4 hours for a serious
onsite I won't waste my time. They clearly don't appreciate other people's
time and are quite frankly wasting theirs. The decision was probably already
made before the second cup of coffee anyways.

I absolutely agree with refusing to interview and meet the teammates. All you
have to do is rub someone the wrong way for whatever reason, hell they could
be in a bad mood because they got cut off on the freeway. Meeting tons of
people before an offer is an excellent way to reject great candidates.

~~~
logfromblammo
I had a company want to do a full day interview, but I had to cut it short and
beg off at 1 PM, because they had already blasted past my hotel check-out
time, and were in danger of encroaching on the departure time of my return
flight--that they booked for me. It was the worst interview experience I have
ever had. They declined to arrange for a rental vehicle, so someone from the
company had to drive me to and from the hotel, with airport ground transport
handled by a shuttle van. Later, they ghosted me, and even tried to stick me
with the hotel bill.

The one benefit was the lesson on how to recognize some early warning signs
when interviewing.

To name and shame: Tyler Technologies, Eagle Division.

~~~
bsder
I will say that as someone generally on the hiring side of the equation, I do
find that hotel chains and rental agencies drive me _CRAZY_.

No matter how hard I try and how many times I do it, there is _ALWAYS_ some
idiotic hiccup that prevents me from paying for the candidate's room, car,
etc. up front. I can give those companies all the credit cards and forms in
the world, and _somebody_ in the pipeline will screw it up and demand a couple
hundred dollar charge from my candidate. It's so bad that I normally show up
to meet the candidate in person simply so that I can use my personal card to
ride over the hiccup.

If somebody at HN is looking for a startup idea, here's a "grubby" thing that
someone could turn into a service that could browbeat the idiotic hotel
companies into submission on.

~~~
logfromblammo
In this case, it was not the hotel that screwed up.

At the time, I was living in Madison, WI, and they booked my flight out of
Milwaukee. With a connection in Madison. No, I couldn't just board the flight
in Madison. No, they wouldn't pay for my mileage between Madison and
Milwaukee, or for airport parking. The flight out of Milwaukee was cheaper,
you see.

The service you are suggesting already exists. It is called a travel agency.
Some even specialize in corporate travel. My spouse used to work for one. They
lost a lot of business to self-booking sites like Travelocity and Expedia. As
a result, some office peons in small and medium businesses are being tasked
with booking travel sometimes, and they have no skill or training in handling
the idiotic hiccups that will always happen when dealing with the airlines,
hotel chains, and vehicle rental chains. Larger businesses tend to have their
own travel agents, or contract to a travel agency, especially if their own
employees need to travel frequently. If a company cannot provide you with an
acceptable travel experience as a candidate, they won't do it as an employee,
either.

To contrast, the next travel-required interview booked a reasonable flight, a
full-sized rental car, a paid-for hotel, and sent me a per diem check without
having to submit any expense receipts. The on-site interview was about 90
minutes, without whiteboarding or coding exercises or pop quizzes or brain
teasers, and then they followed up on it and extended an offer. Which I
accepted.

------
throwaway9412
Hear that everyone?

"As a startup it's hard to compete with Facebook and Google compensation
packages, especially for senior engineers"

Also, Oracle apparently had a lot of success building out their bare metal
(now cloud infrastructure) team by making uncharacteristically (for them) good
offers.

You can hire good people, if you're willing to pay them. Bullshit doesn't work
anymore.

~~~
wyattk
So are you saying that non-salary benefits are bullshit?

Besides work flexibility, culture, purpose, and equity, how is a new venture
supposed to compete with an entrenched monopolist that is essentially printing
money (see: Alphabet)? Sure, equity is a multiplier that can return a huge
amount of money with huge risk, but even equity+salary can't come near total
comp offered by these juggernauts. I mean, these companies generate mountains
of profits after paying crazy salaries and perks.

How can a startup compete for talent against these behemoths?

~~~
throwaway9412
> So are you saying that non-salary benefits are bullshit?

I'm saying the reasons startups typically give to justify their low salaries
are largely bullshit and not persuasive.

> How can a startup compete for talent against these behemoths?

Outside of paying more, they really can't compete head-to-head with the
behemoths. They should really focus on hiring junior people who can't or won't
work for Google/Facebook. Case in point: someone wants to work on self-driving
cars but Google won't hire them to work in that group. That's someone a self-
driving car startup has a shot at hiring.

~~~
mmt
> They should really focus on hiring junior people who can't or won't work for
> Google/Facebook.

This is also antithetical to (some) startups' way of thinking, which is that
they must hire only senior/"top" engineers because that's the only way to get
a product out fast enough.

Similarly, mentorship (something TFA does advocate) is seen as too much of a
time/resource sink, a luxury only behemoths can afford.

This attitude makes some sense at seed stage, but after a few dozen senior
engineers on staff, it loses credibility.

------
OmarIsmail
This is a great post and founders/hiring managers/junior recruiters are
advised to listen to them. After a continual refinement of our own process
over many years we've landed on almost this exact process near completely
independently. This is a standard for a reason. You will save yourself A LOT
of headaches if you incorporate this feedback into your own hiring processes.

I also highly recommend Marco Rodgers' advice
[http://firstround.com/review/my-lessons-from-
interviewing-40...](http://firstround.com/review/my-lessons-from-
interviewing-400-engineers-over-three-startups/)

For people that are "too good for this process" \- well, in my experience
those are the ones that aren't a good fit for most organizations. You're self
selecting out and limiting your own options. For some people that's totally
fine, but for most I don't think that's good advice.

~~~
timr
_" For people that are "too good for this process" \- well, in my experience
those are the ones that aren't a good fit for most organizations."_

My experience is that most companies are asking for too much and being
downright rude in the way that they do it. Especially from more senior people
who have options.

I turned down a number of companies at (or just after) the phone screen stage
during my last job search. Usually the pattern was that they'd done one form
of preliminary screen, and then wanted to do one (or two, or three...)
_additional_ steps before going onsite. One company I remember asked me to do
an _eight hour_ programming exercise, after I had finished a phone-based
technical screen. I told them it was unreasonable, and that I'd consider it
only if I had nothing else to do with an entire day of my time. Never got back
to them.

I am a tolerant person, but I am, indeed, too good for that kind of process.
Early stage startups especially need to accept the reality that they're not
attractive places to work, and behave accordingly. The less reasonable your
process, the fewer good candidates will stay in the pipeline. Eventually,
you're just intensely screening the people who didn't have better options.

~~~
OmarIsmail
I'm talking about people who don't want to go through the standard process
outlined in this blog post. Specifically: 1 or 2 phone calls to establish high
level alignment and technical fit, and then a full day onsite.

~~~
timr
That's fair(er), but after you've gone through a service like Triplebyte,
you're supposed to be screened. Extra screening steps beyond the onsite are
excessive.

The promise of something like Triplebyte (for the candidate) is that I do one
round of technical interview, and then proceed directly to my favorite
companies for culture fit and personal evaluation. But every company believes
that _they 're_ the special snowflake who deserves extra screening.

------
throwaway8610
Has anyone been able to reapply to Triplebyte after an initial rejection?
Somewhat relevant question as this is an article by Triplebyte and Harj who I
understand is a YC partner. They say you can reapply after 4 months but I
can't find how to do that when I login and emails to their support line go
unanswered.

~~~
merlincorey
When I was going through Triplebyte, I asked a lot of questions.

According to the recruiter I was working with, it could be 4-6 months between
"refreshes".

I would say to keep trying to get in touch with them - everyone I interacted
with on the Triplebyte team was nothing but helpful.

If you washed out of the process at the initial testing stage, make sure to
let them know that you have been working on your skills and you are ready to
re-take the test.

~~~
throwaway8610
Thanks. I'm just going by their website that indicates 4 months but I'm
actually at 5 months. I've tried emailing support@triplebyte.com but have not
gotten any response. My first time around I made it to the online in-person
interview and thought I did fairly well but got rejected after that point with
some rather vague, generic reason and feedback. I just want to know if I
should just cut my losses at this point so wondering if anyone has had any
success at being able to just reapply.

------
tuxidomasx
I often hear or read about how there is a developer/software engineer
shortage. And the rising salaries seem to reflect that-- supply and demand and
all that...

Yet it seems that there are hundreds of applicants vying for each position.

How is this possible? Are there really that many lesser-skilled people trying
to finagle their way in as software developers? Is the shortage one of
_skilled_ engineers, while the deluge of applicants is a result of posers and
imposters trying to get a slice of the pie?

------
tptacek
Broken record, but here's our hiring process:

1\. An initial call, handled by a principal ("founder"), with the objective of
explaining the role and the company and arming the candidate with as much
detail about the hiring process as is practicable.

2\. A followup in email shortly thereafter confirming interest and locking
down schedule.

3\. 1-3 work-sample challenges (our current set, for the role we're hiring
now, is a short combined AWS/Django security assessment, an automated best-
effort-secure deployment of that Django app in a fresh AWS environment we
provide, and a short API scanner programming challenge):

3a. Introduction: provide the candidate with advance knowledge of what will be
on the challenge and what they'll want to know going in, along with time
expectations.

3b. Preparation: offer the candidate books, links to presentations, and a
practice version of the challenge to get confident and comfortable with the
challenge.

3c. The challenge proper.

3d. Scoring: each challenge has a pre-built scoring rubric, on a 1-5 scale,
designed so that anyone on the team can quickly score a submission.

4\. Meet in person: after informing the candidate they did well on technical
qualification, we do a single round of in-person "interviews"; no whiteboard,
no coding, just meet and greet and discuss logistics.

5\. Offer.

Missing from this process:

1\. Recruiters.

2\. Resumes.

3\. Telephone interviews.

4\. Technical interviews from members of the engineering team.

5\. Any significant interruption to the engineering team's work.

6\. Interview exercises with a member of our team watching you code.

7\. Free pizza and coffee (though I guess if you asked, we'd send you one).

8\. 5 of the 6 hours onsite this recommended process includes.

I'm happy to keep repeating this just as a sort of reminder that we're hiring,
but this is a streamlined and improved (we didn't have practice challenges at
Matasano!) version of the way we've been hiring for coming up on 10 years,
_and it works spectacularly well for us_. People keep telling me why what
we're doing can't work, and I keep wondering what I'm doing wrong to make it
work.

You should consider cutting way back on interviews --- especially telephone
interviews, which I've found to be completely worthless as generators of real
insight into candidates --- and replacing them with work-sample challenges.
But be serious about it if you do: candidates hate "take-home projects", and
when I ask them about it, it always turns out that those projects precede or
follow a standard interview loop. Fuck the interview loop. Interviews are a
random function. Figure out what skills you need candidates to have on day 1,
and then just build something that checks if candidates have those skills.

~~~
lukebaker
What happens prior to step #1 from a candidate's perspective? How do
candidates express interest and do 100% of the folks who express interest get
a call?

~~~
tptacek
They send us email. I get on the phone with them.

The way this "scaled" at Matasano was that we gradually got smarter with our
outreach, so that instead of constantly circulating wide appeals to the whole
developer community, we staged events (Cryptopals, Microcorruption) that
targeted a specific community of enthusiasts with whom those phone calls were
likely to be valuable to us.

But in the beginning, we just posted on the HN hiring threads; it's a fine
starting place. That's what we're doing now. I'll do a couple phone calls a
day at this point.

------
TinyBig
The industry standard onsite interview to offer rate seems astonishingly low
at 20%. Is this symptomatic of poor filtering early in the pipeline?

~~~
vonmoltke
No, it's symptomatic of paranoid hiring processes, arbitrarily high bars, and
interviewers who have no business interviewing people.

------
jedberg
> A complaint we hear from Triplebyte candidates is being asked how likely
> they would be to accept an offer before knowing the actual offer details.
> The reality is that compensation details are a large factor in where people
> decide to work and you can't expect someone to know if they want to work for
> you without giving them that data.

The numerical salary shouldn't be the deciding factor. I want to know if
you're interested in the work that you'll be doing and the team you'll be
working with. I don't want you to think, "man I wasn't going to go there but
they offered a huge salary!".

Of course the salary is relevant, but I want to know that we're just
negotiating on the number, and not number+job.

Are you interested in the work that we'll be doing? Yes? Good, is this number
high enough to make it worth your while? No? Ok, well that was the highest I
could go, so thanks for your time.

~~~
baumy
I exclusively work for whoever is willing to pay me the most, at the least
inconvenience to my current living situation. I would feel pretty comfortable
wagering that I'm in the large majority there.

I may be off base here so apologies if so, but reading between the lines a bit
I'm assuming that you are an early hire or possibly a founder of some startup.
Very few people, probably nobody, will be as invested in your business as you
are (unless you give them a non negligible amount of equity, and they believe
there's a good chance that will actually be worth something). It's
understandable that that's a difficult/frustrating fact to accept, but it
shouldn't be hard to understand. Acknowledging it will lead you to a more
effective hiring process.

~~~
drstewart
I'd rather work at somewhere with a 0.9x salary with a healthy culture and
work life balance and a product I'm excited about than a place with none of
those that pays 1.1x salary.

I don't think I'm in the minority of that either. That's not to say salary
doesn't matter -- it's very important because given two places I'm equally
interested in, I'll pretty much exclusively choose based on compensation.

~~~
borramakot
That seems reasonable, but the compensation ranges I've been seeing aren't
0.9-1.1 x a reference salary, they seem to range from 0.3x (crappy consulting)
-3x (HFT) the compensation of a mid-range FAANG position. With that kind of
variation, it's very possible that compensation differences could overwhelm a
normal sized difference in culture quality.

------
torgian
I’ve had many interviews such as “all day interviews” to ones that were only
an hour or two at a time in America.

The current position I’ve accepted is a German owned company that has a
Japanese branch. Small company. Pay is low when compared to compensation I
could get in America.

BUT, the interview process was simple. Skype video call with a few people at
the same time. Met two of the owners while vacationing in Japan. Got an offer
and accepted it.

Despite the low pay, I accepted it because it is completely remote. The work
is fulfilling (right now my project involves data that can help farmers). I’m
learning a lot of new stuff.

It’s actually because of all three that I might stay long term. Remote,
fulfilling work, and learning new things checked all the boxes despite the low
pay.

Stuff like that matters. Many companies don’t understand this.

------
jaggederest
Definitely shows their expertise in the space. Strongly agree with all of
this, one of the most important things for me as a candidate is to feel
appreciated as a person, not just "headcount". Being thoughtful and
considerate is a very rare thing in a hiring process.

------
jakobegger
Very valuable advise!

When I hired my first employees, I focussed too much on compensation. I ran
the numbers and offered as much as I could afford.

I was really disappointed when great candidates declined my offers, and went
with other companies that didn't even pay more (I asked).

Now I understand that I just failed to excite them. You really need to tell
people how awesome the work is, good engineers will always have many options.
And also understand that what excites you may not be what excites the
candidate, so starting with asking about what the candidate is looking for is
a really good idea.

~~~
Kludgist
Both are certainly important. A few years ago, received offers from two
places. One had employees that were excited about the work, the culture was
great, the job had a combination of data science and programming that was
right up my alley and we talked in-depth about real problems.

The other office was just depressing. I mean, it was literally kind of dark
and bare. They seemed evasive about what day to day work was like -- something
about "dashboards." No one seemed happy to be there. It was a satellite to the
main office in New York.

When I got the offers, the second job offered $25k more than the first job. I
did a little bit of moral handwringing, but... you know, I was getting married
the next week, we wanted to buy a house, and an extra $2k a month can make up
for a LOT of shitty work environment. I took the second job, got a $5k raise
each year, and haven't regretted my decision at all.

------
expertentipp
You are not Facebook, you are not Google, you are not Apple. You will never be
any of these. They have piles of cash and can afford almost anything, they
have unimaginable datasets about private lifes of billions of people. Stop
using the same practices as them, stop using the same frameworks and stacks as
them, even reconsider using technologies produced by them.

------
hotpotjunkie
Why would companies need to change anything? Every engineering job gets
hundreds of applicants. Its an employers' market.

~~~
xtracto
But of that hundred, maybe 1 or 2 are somewhat qualified.

