
Types of People Startups Should Hire, but Don’t - Shanerostad
https://trifinlabs.com/people-startups-should-hire/
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andrewstuart
I'm sorry but if your resume shows you've never spent more than 12 months in a
job over the past X years then I pretty much drop it.

I don't really care why your career has played like that.

At best, you are a an awesome employee who won't stay with them more than your
"frequency period".

At worst, you get discovered and fired within your frequency period.

Especially true for senior roles. Team lead for 5 months? Drop the resume.

Not always true, but in general terms if you are a great employee then you
tend to hang around.

I know these are generalisations but when I am sitting there reading 300
resumes in a row and trying to work out who is going to get through an
employers gruelling assessment process then if you hop jobs then it's just not
worth the effort to even try to assess you.

In software development, there is a co-investment between employer and
employee in which time spent in a job tends to result an an increase of value
through knowledge of the systems and therefore productivity. Job hoppers don't
accumulate such value, and leaving early removes that value from the employers
side of the relationship.

~~~
lainga
What if I was part of a university co-op program where I work for 4-8 months
at a time between academic terms (which I am) ? I've left an interview where I
could hear the CTO say "so why was he fired after 4 months?" as I walked out
the door.

I understand you have 300 resumes, though -- should I put _Co-op_ or
_Internship_ in big red letters before the item?

~~~
lucozade
Just make the heading on the section be “4 month internship at blah”. That
should be fine.

You may have met a CTO that wasn’t paying attention but that’s not the problem
here. Having short periods of work while you’re studying is fine.

Flipping more than a couple of full time jobs is a big red flag. You need a
really good reason.

~~~
chadash
Agree with you. Caveat is that a "couple" can vary based on the length of your
career. If you have been working for 20 years and in that time, you had 3 jobs
that you only held for 6 months, I'd look at that very differently than
someone with a shorter career span.

~~~
lucozade
That’s fair. It’s the narrative that counts. If you look like you’re a good
investment then you might be asked to explain but, at least, you’ll probably
have the opportunity.

If your history says risk then you need something special to counteract it or
you won’t get the chance.

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wheresvic1
One could apply these recommendations to all companies really.

I guess the one interesting point was hiring freelancers but in my experience
good freelancers are really expensive amd moreover if someone is not invested
with a long term view they usually end up taking a lot of shortcuts which
leads to a lot of technical debt. Of course, this is just my experience.

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capkutay
I think its more important to consider who startups should NOT hire and give
large 'management' roles to. Namely middle managers who come from large
bureaucratic, declining public companies.

they bring in all the baggage that startups are supposedly supposed to operate
without.

of course there are exceptions (the individual is creative, very high IQ
etc)...but if your sole reason for hiring them is 'oh they were the senior
director of x at [fortune 500 company]'...just no.

~~~
deviationblue
Funny thing about "declining companies", some of these will see more money in
their bad times than the sexiest startups in their heyday. It's cruel, but
true.

I wouldn't look down on a manager who comes from such a company; they bring a
different set of experience that a startup has not gotten to yet. I also think
having access to relatively more money allows these managers to develop
different kinds of skills.

~~~
PeterisP
There's a stage in a startup's growth when that different set of experience is
valuable, and at other stages it's often harmful.

I.e. the experience of a manager coming from a 500 person organization is
valuable when the startup is scaling to 100 people and is building the
structures and processes required for those 100 (and later on 200 and more) to
work efficiently; there's a lot of organizational know-how and perspective
that would be useful to take into account. The same experience/perspective
from the same person are not that valuable and potentially wrong/misleading if
you're currently scaling from 10 people to 20.

~~~
cannonedhamster
This assumes that the middle manager knows what they are doing. Sadly in my
case I haven't been lucky enough to get someone who understands the job,
nevermind the process and politics which has just resulted in a lot of
firefighting, inconsistent policies, and then being blamed when we don't know
what the policies actually are. No matter where you are having the right
people for the actual problems seems to be the correct plan of action.

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jaggederest
As someone definitely in the intersection of "weird dude", "freelancer", and
"successful alumnus of a startup", I'm on board with this, strangely enough.

One of the advantages of freelancers is that you get a little bit more
consultative relationship than with employees. For myself at least, I bring
strategic perspective not just boots on the ground, and that can make a big
difference in heading off pitfalls.

I see a lot of startups running from three alarm fire to three alarm fire
without the ability to tie things up over the longer term, and that often
comes back to bite them. Automate and standardize all the non-core parts of
your business or you will pay in distraction.

~~~
rb808
> running from three alarm fire to three alarm fire without the ability to tie
> things up over the longer term

No offense but that is incredibly frustrating for employees. It really sucks
being in a team that is continually chasing fires with no time to do something
strategic -and the a manager will bring some highly paid freelancer who works
9-5 without stress telling you how it should be done. What I'd like is the
managers to bring in people to do the shitty work while employees get some
downtime to improve things for a change.

~~~
lolsal
Doing the shitty work is hard and unpredictable. I wouldn't be very likely to
want to hire per-hour contractors to fix bugs.

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rmason
I'm not sure about hiring the job hopper. Sure you may get a great talent, but
my experience is they will leave you at the worst possible time for your
startup.

~~~
taternuts
Me either. I think maybe swap that out for the "Old Heads" of IT and it's a
solid list.

~~~
rmason
I agree, lots of wise "old heads" out there who could make a large
contribution. Super smart idea because they're being ignored by everyone else
in the talent search.

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kreutz
I'm more interested in "Types of People Startups do Hire but shouldn't"

~~~
dsr_
Friends.

People who have no experience operating without the support of a Fortune 500.

People who are addicted to trends.

------
dandigangi
I'm quite disappointed to not find something along the lines of "Hiring
employees of different races, ethnicities, sex, socio-economic backgrounds,
etc."

~~~
lolsal
You probably should just hire the best person for the job and ignore their
race, ethnicity, sex, socio-economic background.

~~~
dandigangi
It's a poor perception to think that those factors wouldn't have any relation
to who is the "best" candidate. Especially when you apply context and
subjectiveness to what "best" really means at its core.

~~~
lolsal
You can analyze things to death, but sometimes those factors truly aren't
relevant.

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lanius
What frequency of changing jobs is considered job hopping?

~~~
chadash
It's subjective and depends on the field. Software engineers tend to move
around more frequently than say, petroleum engineers, probably owing to the
larger number of companies who they can potentially work for. For me, looking
at a software engineering resume, ideally I'd want to see at least a few
stints lasting two years or more, but I'll forgive occasional short stints,
since even great engineers can be bad fits in some companies.

I tend to look at this from a Bayesian perspective. If someone has left a lot
of jobs after short stints, then that's a red flag. There's a possibility that
they just got very unlucky (e.g. they are an amazing worker, but 5 companies
they worked for folded within a few months), but it's also possible that they,
for example, don't get along with people or lose interest in things very
quickly. The more of a discernible pattern I see, the more likely I am to
conclude the latter.

I might decide to hire that person anyway, but it's probably something that's
going to weigh against them in the hiring decision.

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raymondgh
Perfect. I'll send this with my cover letter next time :D

