

How to hire an idiot (from the 'How to sell your software for $20,000' guy) - rob
http://nukemanbill.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-to-hire-idiot.html

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tom_rath
The incompetence of this kind of character seems obvious in retrospect but
I've found if you've only ever worked with competent people it's dangerously
easy to miss these guys.

I worked with someone similar a decade ago. I found myself thinking "This guy
seems completely clueless but management likes him (and they're smart guys!).
He MUST have a great track record -- how else would he have gotten this job? I
guess I just don't know sales..."

Management's idea was "He costs us just a tiny bit in salary and if only one
of his big ideas takes off we'll be rich!". Of course, none of Clueless Sales
Guy's 'big ideas' went anywhere and correcting his constant PR errors drained
resources from those of us who had at least half a clue.

Sometimes you can correctly judge people at first handshake, but I've found
myself over-estimating the competence of far too many people based upon the
context I've met them in.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_The incompetence of this kind of character seems obvious in retrospect but
I've found if you've only ever worked with competent people it's dangerously
easy to miss these guys._

This reminds me of one of my all-time favorite PG lines:

 _I've found that people who are great at something are not so much convinced
of their own greatness as mystified at why everyone else seems so
incompetent._

~~~
ardit33
There are things that I asume/take for granted other people know, and
sometimes I am suprised when they say "oh, wow, I didn't know that". Really?
The older I get, the more I get this kind of response from other people, which
might mean I am acumulating some kind of knowledge, but still it has failed to
register on me exactly how much more I do know from other people, so this also
has kept my ego in check.

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ericb
I really respect the painfully honest admissions from the author. It's hard
writing about your worst mistakes and being totally forthcoming. Props for
that.

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Tichy
Chatting with a salesperson recently, I thought it was interesting how he
described there being different kinds of sales people. There are some getting
by on people skills and knowing everybody and their brother, and get the foot
in the door that way. Others are extremely technical and make an impression
that way. And so on (sadly, I forgot most details). So I could imagine that
there might have been a customer who would have been the perfect match for the
clueless first hire. Like if at the other end there was also an idiot hire,
maybe he might even have fallen for the "it has A, but C is totally super, and
B is awesome" stuff.

I don't know how those companies handle the matching of sales people to
customers, though.

~~~
huherto
A combination works fine. Sales people that get you the first interview,
backed but a strong technical person.

I think his mistake was not being able to use the strengths of his resource
effectively, he could have used it to generate leads and then he could be able
to close them.

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vaksel
Thats the problem with the corporate structure, when you grow to a certain
size the people who end up on top aren't your best talent. They are just the
people who are the best at playing the corporate game.

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brandon272
Two thoughts:

a) If the growing startup I work for had only hired new employees if we had a
full year's salary for them already in the bank, we wouldn't be even close to
where we are today.

b) While this guy clearly didn't know his head from his butt when it came to
sales, why not leverage his industry connections (which is previous employers
obviously felt were strong enough to hire him on, even when he had few other
discernable skills) to help establish some important industry contacts?
Considering the harm he could have done your business with his, "Please buy
our products or else our company will tank." sales approach, I would think
he'd be glad to set up a few meetings with some people who actually might have
been able to help you out a bit.

Food for thought!

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a-priori
Could have done with a few fewer "but this guy was a friggin VP of a $100
million company!!!" moments, but still a good story.

I don't think anyone would recommend blind trust right off the bat. Of course
you need to trust your employees, but only after they've earnt it in a
probationary period of increasing responsibility and freedom.

~~~
tom_rath
That was the core of the problem though: Having framed the guy as an
experienced VP clouded all following judgment and kept the author from giving
him the boot.

~~~
johnyzee
Someone wrote an interesting article once about hiring strategy (Joel?).
Basically he didn't want to know anything about the interviewee except what
job he was considered for, to the extent that if anyone told him any details
(like "Harvard graduate") he'd refuse to interview him, as his perspective
would already be tainted.

~~~
dats
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html)

~~~
johnyzee
Right. Too bad the author took every piece of advice from the Guerilla Guide
except that one.

------
russell
Any salesman, good or bad, can sell himself to an engineer. I too learned that
the hard way.

Another good rule for a startup: never hire a VP from a major corporation.
They are too used to a support staff that does everything for them, writing,
presentations, even thinking. As others have said,they are too far removed
from performing the on-the-streets job. None of us would hire a VP of Software
from IBM to write code. Same applies to sales.

Big company VP's are used to intimidation and throwing their weight around,
attitudesthat would probably be used against you.

------
yef
So he "read all the books" but didn't interview, look at a resume, or check
references? Huh? I feel for the author, and it's a good story and all, but he
made some extremely basic mistakes.

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ojbyrne
One of my favorite quotes (can't remember from where, and I'm paraphrasing) is
that great marketing people are the most important people you can hire, but
it's nearly impossible to figure who are the great marketing people and who
are the snake oil salesmen.

~~~
shiro
Interesting. They say non-hackers can't tell whether a programmer is a great
hacker or not. Is there a symmetry? Can great salesman tell who's great and
who's not?

~~~
ambition
I don't think there's perfect symmetry. A bad programmer can get stuff done
but leave a time bomb of bad code which would be hard for a non-programmer to
detect. Sales results are easier to measure than programming.

That said I'd have very little confidence in my ability to measure a
salesperson at interview-time.

~~~
esja
A bad salesman can also get stuff done, but leave a time bomb of bad
perceptions or promises, which can be hard for a non-salesman to detect.

------
pmorici
This business owner unfortunately had that coming to him. The rule is trust
your employee's not trust your interviewee.

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bigbang
I wish I had read the last sentence first.

------
jbrun
I'm sorry, but this guy is a idiot for hiring the idiot. Putting faith in
titles is ridiculous and not recognizing someone's incompetence upon meeting
them has more to do with yourself that with the other person. My two cents
anyways.

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volida
i am not sure who is the "idiot" here.

 _"I called the competitor to ask about him. They verified that yes, he was a
former VP there. Awesome, this guy was for real."_

even if the guy who responded the call is real, you just never trust a phone
call.

if the guy worked on commission why not hire others too on the same manner?

also we don't have any info about the product and why they should prefer it.

~~~
Tichy
The obvious question would have been "why is he no longer working for you?".

~~~
pchristensen
Unless someone is listed as a reference, you're not allowed to ask about job
performance, reasons for leaving, etc. You can only contact to verify that the
person did actually work there and when.

~~~
skmurphy
You can ask, they may not answer. One good question that can often ferret out
issues is "do you have any advice on how to manage him to bring out his best
performance?"

~~~
jamongkad
I think your suggestion is good. But knowing people they're going to be pretty
diplomatic about their answer as well. Spitting out generic schlips that you
already know. I guess the best advice is Iron_ball's. Just try to read between
the lines, but thinking about it, even that method is a stretch :-(

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edw519
_I was prepared! I read a lot of books!_

lol

Books, articles, conferences, websites, etc. can all be excellent sources of
good data to run your business (especially for us techies).

Just don't make the mistake of substituting them for experience in the
trenches. That would be like taking a pill for exercise. (Now if someone could
just invent an exercise pill or a book as good as actually doing it...)

~~~
ph0rque
> Now if someone could just invent an exercise pill...

[http://esciencenews.com/articles/2008/07/31/researchers.iden...](http://esciencenews.com/articles/2008/07/31/researchers.identify.drugs.enhance.exercise.endurance)

