
Hiring well is hard - DanielRibeiro
http://swombat.com/2012/11/12/hiring-is-hard
======
Peroni
Going against the HN grain here:

Stop assuming that the word 'start-up' makes you more appealing.

There are some incredibly talented developers working for start-ups across the
UK and Europe. I have a significant amount of experience in trying to source
the top talent in Europe and I can categorically state, the _majority_ of 'top
talent' don't work for, and have little interest in working for a start-up.
They work for established organisations that offer legitimate career
opportunities, stability and the financial backing to give them peace of mind.

 _...Europe has a shortage of talent_

Debatable. I've been first hand witness to startups struggling to hire the
best talent to the point where it almost cripples their business. I've also
witnessed established organisations having a hard time filling their
vacancies. There isn't a talent shortage. There is, however, a shortage of
great developers.

Hiring well is hard. It's incredibly hard. That's why recruitment companies
exist and that's why recruitment companies make billions annually. That's also
why I'm convinced there is a ridiculous amount of money to be made in offering
a solution that overshadows the corrupt and unethical business practices the
recruitment industry perpetrates.

~~~
hnwh
" There isn't a talent shortage. There is, however, a shortage of great
developers."

Not sure I understand the distinction here?

~~~
Peroni
There are an endless amount of average developers on the market. There are a
sizeable number of decent developers on the market. There is a very limited
amount of great developers on the market.

Guess which one of the three most companies are chasing.

------
ashray
Startups are not appealing because they do not offer a key ingredient that
most people look for in jobs 'stability'.

Want to work longer hours for lesser money and a lot more risk ? For a lot of
people the answer to that is no.

Furthermore, large established companies do have a lot of brand value. Getting
to say "I worked for Google" and "I worked for X unknown startup that tanked
after 2 years but we had a good run" are very different things.

Unfortunately, it's hard to sell risky prospects to people. The going gets
even tougher for startups without fat funding rounds because they can't really
afford to pay top dollar. Then their only hope is to find fresh but relatively
inexperienced talent. Also, a lot of programmers who are interested in
startups would also ask themselves "Why should I work with these guys when I
could start my own stuff up ?"

For those that love and crave the excitement of working at a startup and
making a real difference in your product - well, maybe there should be a place
where you can hire such folks ;D (startup idea!)

------
Robin_Message
The problem the quoted blog post was having was trying to hire a unicorn
([http://www.designstaff.org/articles/hiring-a-
designer-2011-1...](http://www.designstaff.org/articles/hiring-a-
designer-2011-11-01.html)) – they want expert Javascript skills and design
skills. They don't tend to happen in the same person, and so command a high
price.

~~~
nephronim
Actually we weren't looking for a unicorn since we have a designer (me
actually) we were looking for a frontend developer which actually broadened
out to a developer.

~~~
Robin_Message
Fair enough, in which case, perhaps the problem was your job ad sounded like
you wanted a unicorn when in fact you didn't.

Looking at the job ad on your site, you ask for three attributes:

    
    
        Ability to communicate effectively, self motivated, flexible and works well under deadlines.
    

Self-starter, entrepreneurial or freelancing type person who is going into an
incomplete team and will need to deliver a lot to satisfy.

    
    
        Advanced knowledge in HTML, CSS and Javascript with in-depth knowledge of DOM
        3rd Party API Integration ( Twitter, Facebook , Maps, etc.)
        Experience with jQuery
        SVN and QA tools.
    

Advanced development chops.

    
    
        Well-versed in design and concept development
        Advanced knowledge of responsive design for mobile
        Knowledge of tools /apps such as Adobe Creative Suite
    

Understanding and advanced knowledge of design, including using tools most
front-end developers do not ever touch.

Not trying to be rude here, but it seems to me your job ad was probably asking
too much in one person. I've been a full-stack developer for ~10 years,
computer science PhD, work with a designer at my current startup, and _I
wouldn't have felt qualified_. Maybe I'm misreading it, but maybe that's why
you didn't get the applicants you wanted?

------
hansc
Agree with hiring well is hard, but not with why it is hard. I think there is
way too much focus on hiring rockstars: Some of the beste people I worked
with, were people I initially wasn't working well with and vice versa.

You do need good people, but I think that focussing on rockstars will give
poorer results in the long run. Are they going to stay when stuff gets more
mundane? Are they going to do the boring stuff? Are they going to work well
together iwth other people in the team. My experience tells me to get good
people that get stuff done, so that the founder(s) can focus on the
entrepreneurial part.

~~~
Swannie
I agree. A wise manager once said: "I don't want Rock Stars. I want a team
that Rocks". So yes, we have a team of very mixed skills.

But I agree most with this idea that you want to hire "the best", or "highly
talented". The thing is, no one started out as a great employee, with bags of
talent. The rare few that got very good, very fast, were snapped up by the
worlds of finance, corporations, or are already Director of Engineering in a
start up. (Hint: you can't afford them unless you offer them a painful amount
of equity).

Everyone else, early in their career, needs training, mentoring, coaching,
regular feedback cycles, a manager that is willing to have the open and frank
conversations about what they should and shouldn't focus on to achieve more
results. You have to grow talent.

So "good people that get stuff done"... it's a classic Joel on Software type
statement. How do you find them? I meet a lot of people who never "get stuff
done"... but why is that? Is it because they are lazy? Bored? Incompetant? OK,
you don't want these guys. But what about: they are perfectionists and nothing
is ever quite right to be called finished? Or do they always find themselves
stuck trying to micro-optimize? Or are they always "late" because they got
into the design, and realised the use case was wrong, so they fixed the use-
case first? This second class have a lot of potential, with little "extra"
effort.

------
DirtyMonkey
I read this as “Hiring is well 'ard” and thought Catherine Tate had found HN.

I started looking for my first hire a few months ago, and it hasn't been easy.
But in that time I've come across plenty of people that don't have the skills
or experience I require… they do however have a lot of motivation. I'm
currently helping three people learn the fundamentals of web development, and
every day I'm surprised at how fast they pick things up. In-house training is
the way forward for me.

~~~
YousefED
Interesting, what was the base level experience of the three people you're
training?

I'm currently looking for a (mainly frontend) webdeveloper, and even finding
an intern proves to be quite difficult so far.

~~~
DirtyMonkey
The first guy was quite ‘techy’ to begin with and had dabbled in web
development beforehand (PHP). The other two had absolutely no experience,
surprisingly (for me) they have picked up things much faster – maybe because
they have no prior notions or assumptions about how it all works but I'm not
sure. They continuously mention how they can't believe how simple a lot of
things are. Whereas the first guy seems to have already formed opinions about
how difficult something is before actually trying it. He also procrastinates
quite a bit (I believe it's because he thinks things are harder/bigger than
they really are) – the challenge with him has been to break his misconceptions
(“Git is difficult”, “The command line shouldn't be used” etc.) and to just
get on with it.

Oh and a bit off topic, but just to mention that one of the other ‘guys’ is a
girl… and after a few months of seeing her code, I think every team should be
comprised of as many women as there are men (and be more diverse in general).
It might just be her, but she approaches some problems in a completely
different way to the rest of the team and her perspective has saved us from
banging our heads against the wall many times. She also notices things that
the rest of us are oblivious to. One day I'll get around to writing a blog
post about it, haha.

In short, I would love to have the resources and time to train more people up
from scratch – I never considered it before, it's all been positive so far.
But, for most of the heavy lifting I'm still relying on either myself or
freelancers. As for finding interns, I just asked around friends and family…
it turns out there's a _lot_ of people that have thought about web development
at some point but don't have a clue where to start – for some reason they
thought they had to be good at maths or art.

Edit: just to clarify, they aren't interns… at the moment it's sort of
informal class. We have a project that we work on over weekends (and a little
bit during the week) . At the rate they're going, I would hire them in 6 or so
months though.

------
dbecker
95% of companies want to hire exclusively from the most talented 5% of the
labor pool.

It's understandable, but we shouldn't be surprised that not everyone can
succeed at that.

~~~
chrisbennet
I agree that a large percentage of companies _say_ they want to hire from the
top 5%. However, from what I've seen, their HR departments seem hell bent on
eliminating anyone exceptional.

They want a bargain (ask them if they also expect to pay in the top 5
percentile), a college degree and experience with _exactly_ the technology
they have now.

