Why You’re Not Hiring the Best and the Brightest

I don't know if this good advice for everyone looking to hire but it seems like filtering for both ability and motivation is a good idea for young, growing companies.

The problem with any discussion here on HN is that, judging by replies, many commenters feel insecure whenever an idea is proposed that they feel could exclude them from a job, even though typically these ideas do not spread, and most people need only one full-time job at a time (writing about interviewing has the same problem. See the first few paragraphs of http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog...).

I agree that if every company started this practice in the same way, applying for five jobs at the same time while currently working at one would be difficult. But it seems very unlikely that would happen in practice.

Many companies rely on a bunch of open source components/tools/whatever, and they don't fit perfectly; so if you think about it, it's quite likely that you already have some 'good-to-have' items that you'd like to be done on those projects; important enough to pay for it but not important enough to have it done right now by your current people.

And the good thing is that it'd allow you to solve the problem your way with your favourite tools, not require any NDAs or granting access to internal systems, and also be useful for the rest of community.

However . . .

Sometimes I worry "what if I lose my job today?" It really could happen, even today, through no fault of mine.

People who live in Silicon Valley will say "well you have five other jobs waiting for you." But people not in a top-5 area don't have a job market 5 deep. It takes time to get hired again.

If I were to suddenly be unemployed, I would really love it that there are some companies out there willing to hire me for a one-week project at a much lower activation energy than taking on a full-time hire. It would 1) give me a chance to prove I can do the job, and 2) even if it failed it would give me money in my pocket right now which would be a very nice stress reliever. (In fact, it reduces my stress right now knowing that I could find a few short jobs like this. I'm happier even if I never need to use it.)

I certainly wouldn't want all companies to hire like this, because most of the time when I am searching for a job I am employed. But I like knowing that there are some employers out there that it would be easier to work with being unemployed instead of the reverse.

This, to me, feels more like a happy medium between whiteboarding and "auditioning". The task was simple enough to be completed in 8 or 10 hours that I could do after work, and I even had some time to add some flair to it for style points.

The specific problem with this scenario is that they give the audition too early in the process: they want to have a set of fully fleshed out apps to compared candidates from and use that as an initial/mid level filter. This is disrespectful on the part of the company precisely because in the best case only one will be hired (more likely none will be hired). It utterly devalues the time of prospective employees for the benefit of the company. This is wrong.

The solution here is to give the "audition" after the candidate has passed all of your other filters, and commit in writing to hiring the candidate if they do a decent job on the audition. And no wishy-washy bullshit: have an objective criteria to measure against and judge it fairly. This is the kicker here, which of course will be the tough swallow for most companies. Paying for their time is nice, but its really missing the pain point here. If you want someone to commit a disproportionate amount of time in the process of auditioning for your company, you need to put yourself on the hook in a similar manner.

I guess that when Facebook picked up the phone they didn't bother getting her to do a new 'like' icon or whatever it was they needed using their tools in their special dev environment with their special workflow.

They probably noticed that her other work had done quite well and thought they might as well chance it with her. They probably hired her without her drawing one pixel for them. Her competency was not in doubt.

This cumbersome audition process people want to put you through might work well for someone fresh out of college that has no portfolio of work, however, for those of us with work that is live and on the internets, isn't that, with a few code samples, good enough?

That is to say: I don't have the money, time, connections, nor geographical/familial luck to have been born in America or in a supportive environment and attend a "top college". Nor do I desire to throw away several years of my life and six figures to get a piece of paper from people dumber than me to say i'm as smart as they are.

In that respect, i'll take the one week of unpaid work over several years, thousands of dollars, and social/political/time barriers which are completely insurmountable to me because it puts me on equal footing with the stanford/mit/harvard graduate. If implemented well it means its more likely to have something to do merit, and i'll respect companies that have a process that at least TRIES to implement a merit based process far more even if i don't get the job.

I don't like it, but i prefer it over the alternatives...

I once applied to a company that insisted on interviewers doing a test first. Just looking at the questions on the test, I knew this wasn't a company I wanted to work for, so I didn't even bother doing it. They asked me "why didn't you do it?" and I told them I knew this job was a poor fit just by looking at your test questions. I'm not sure if that is what they intended, but the benefit was good for me.

Personally I'd be happy with anything that should take less than a day to do, but giving folks access to a pre setup client that has RDP or SSH setup would make that a lot less painful. A week is a bit too long.

I'm currently looking around for a new job and I'm being fairly picky about what it is I want to do, my biggest pain point is getting time to actually interview. My own personal preference would be a couple of phone interviews, then an audition project followed by something face to face. By then it seems likely we're going to get on so taking a day off is worth the effort.

Finally as someone currently looking around salary is something I'd like to at least potentially discuss relatively early on (or at least check we're both in the same ball park) I'm going to ask slightly high but caveat that with a statement saying that I'm potentially flexible for the right job (I like your problem domain, it will look good on my CV, you're offering equity etc).

You'd rather solve B.S. puzzle questions, or debug basic algorithms on a whiteboard standing in front of an interviewer?

I like real work. You should too. Otherwise, you are absolutely right, we shouldn't be working together.

In any event, I think the way around contractual obligations is to work on a small open source project together.

And to your second point, some employers only want employees that really want to work at their company in particular (e.g. Zappos).

To a first order approximation the job market is a market for lemons (jobs and workers). Generally, the best folks will spend the least time in the job market, if any at all (note that I said generally, there are exceptions which I'll get to, don't write letters). If companies make comparable offers but one requires a bunch more hassle and delay through an audition process then economics 101 says that people are going to choose the option with less hassle more often than not.

An audition is a cost, and without something to offset that cost most folks will simply choose to avoid paying it. If you really want to hire the best and brightest and you have to rely on an audition process then at least consider paying above average for the period of the audition and for the job (if you actually are getting the best and brightest, paying them above market should be expected anyway).

Alternately, look at other ways to hire. If you truly want a company filled with the best and brightest then I suggest you switch from a "filter bulk submissions" model to a talent scout model. Don't look to fill roles, just continually be looking for new talent, and form relationships with talented folks whether or not they're looking for work right then.

And that's exactly what Jeff, Discourse, and Discourse coworkers want. Someone who really wants to work at Discourse and not someone shopping for a new "best" job.

EDIT: No, this doesn't address the situation where a potential person who wants to work for Discourse can't because of current obligations.

EDIT 2: Wanting to hire the best and brightest is just marketing fluff that really means We Hire Very Talented People*

*Who want to work with Discourse.

I already have a job. When I search for other jobs, I do that in my free time. I really hate doing it. It is tedious and very unrewarding. So I want to maximize the number of leads I create per unit of time.

When I see a code audition, I see many hours of useless bullshit done in my own free time that could create at most one lead. At that point, you pretty much have to pay me to apply for your job.

So much gets said about the number of applicants per position, and how to filter those. Well, the converse is true. All those people are also applying to multiple job openings. They filter based on published requirements and ease of application.

Not only do you want to hire the best applicants, but you also need to make sure that the best people become applicants in the first place. That won't happen if the very first thing you do is prove unequivocally that you do not value other people's time.

E.g. just because I'm that way, bought my first DECtape in 1978 (sic), backup my home systems on LTO-4 today, I almost always ended up being the guy who did the company's backups at the startups I joined. Especially if you can't afford a tape library, you've got to be there to do that, to make damned sure it gets done.

Or someone asks me, a couple of decades ago, "we're dissatisfied with our ISP, you know any good ones?" and I say "well, I've been personally using DIGEX for a few years and they have their act together." Etc. All outside the scope of my official work as a programmer.

Or even more obscure, one of the things my family back home back then did was real estate and I picked up a lot of things by osmosis, and later reassured several sets of small company management that the clock cycle of that field was much, much slower than ours, and they didn't necessarily have to be concerned by how long it was taking to get new office space etc. Again, something I'd not be able to contribute without being there to hear them grumbling about the issue.

Also, if someone wants to politically trash you, being remote puts you at a terrible disadvantage. I had that happen when I mostly "dissapeared" for 6 weeks to produce a MVP a potential client challenged us to make, because I had a much faster machine at home and didn't have an office mate who's job it was to talk a lot on the phone (yeah, the company didn't get several things).

Completely gratuitous, the guy was of ill intent, left the company taking our biggest customer which probably doomed it. But it, well both of those, set up the conditions for my getting constructively terminated as soon as I finished V1.0 with my team, and with the guy I'd mentored on what was almost his first job into a good software engineer, leaving soon after, removing all knowledge of the system's backend from the company, that product died.

Each interaction should be treated like a mini presentation. I have a toolbox I use for this that includes:

1. screenshot software

2. screencast software

3. screensharing software

4. videoconferencing with an HD webcam

5. a whiteboard I can point my webcam at

6. note taking (I use evernote)

7. remote assistance software like logmein or teamviewer that lets me take control of the other persons PC or vice versa.

it's not completely seamless, but if everyone is using the same toolbox and is capable of starting a video call, snapping screenshots and sharing them, switching to the whiteboard to brainstorm posting a quick video of the issue/prototype whatever in the shared space then it works pretty well.

The biggest barrier to good remote teams or mentoring that I've found is when no one has the same tools or is willing/knows how to use them. Also, if either side has a resistance to learning knew remote processes or has a grudge against the remote person for being remote or for the need to hire remote (because of lack of talent in the local area) then there's more problems than just not being able to collaborate remotely.

Allowing only public chats will not help but just pollute the general channel of communication.

Over 15 years helping people on IRC has taught me that dealing with this is a mentoring skill. There are lots of shortcuts that both get to the root of the problem and foster skills in the junior to suss things out for themselves, or at least formuate their problem better. Streamlining two-headed troubleshooting is a form of pairing and can totally be done remotely.

So then forget interns and/or jr's devs?

I have found code reviews via pull requests to be a good mentoring tool.

Despite producing over 60 apps for the iOs app store, a new employer wanted me to whip up an app with a tableview that is sortable and searchable. I told them to stop wasting my time.

Take this large-ish city in middle America. I have worked with a few local developers I would call mature professionals: If I was starting a startup, I know where I'd call. But I only know their skillset through having worked with them over the years. How can someone that doesn't have a network find them?

A few you can find in user groups and meetups. But that gets you one very specific brand of mature developers. Many in my list wouldn't go to one of those: They are often just sausagefests, with 25 to 35 year old males trying to impress others about how good they are. That and recruiters who tend to not know anything. Same thing by going with speakers in conferences: You get a few people, but those are probably not going to make your company their number one priority. It's more likely that you are an excuse to make money between other engagements.

An ad in a recruiting site? The really good ones don't get jobs like that: They mention a friend they are unhappy in their workplace, and they quickly get recruited. I got my last job like that, without even an interview. So and so says you are great and would mesh very well here, so have an offer.

Pestering recruiters? You can talk to those, but they can't tell the good from the bad. Also, the mature professional can't tell if your newfangled startup is good or bad. Will you want insane hours? Do you have a crazy idea, like mandating that all code is organized in tiny web services 100 lines of Clojure or less? Unless they are unhappy in their existing position, you have to find them and prove to them that you are a worthy employment option. And they might not even buy into your pitch. No, They might think that a web of tiny services doesn't really fix all the world's problems, or they might not want to do boring business analytics.

So, more than the scarcity of professionals, the real problem is that you can't even contact them.

What are the positions where "telecommuting" doesn't work and reasons for that? The OP argues that for pretty much all development jobs that isn't the case, and gives examples of how successful companies have implemented this.

There's also the problem of remoting requiring a different skillset. I know many developers that are very good, yet they are terrible remote developers. I know one that would spend her days tweeting or enjoying her boyfriend. Another one that will fight a problem for a week instead of asking a 5 minute question. Another will undertake major refactors without telling anyone. And all those three are amazing developers while on site: You just have to keep them on an extremely short leash while remoting, and they really don't like that.

If you're willing to hire remotely and hire from your online community as Jeff suggests, you're competing with surprisingly few companies.

I'm part of a small Microsoft SQL Server consultancy, and competition for good database performance tuners is notoriously difficult. However, when we publish a blog post that we're hiring, we get overwhelmed with applicants. Most of our competitors require an onsite presence, make the employees show up in an office from 9 to 5, and hire in cities with high costs of living. We don't - so we don't end up with much competition for brilliant people who just happen to have family ties to smaller communities.

Sure, plenty of those companies say, and maybe even think, they're "only hiring the best and brightest", but if they're wrong, or not good at retaining them....

If you get, say, Facebook or IBM or Microsoft large then you just have lots of regional offices to handle this.

Another solution I have seen in real life is to ask the foreign "employee" to create a one-person company that bills the "employer".

The process then is simply making a periodic invoice from my company to yours; the ongoing costs involved would be whatever an international money tranfer costs for you, + I'd pay something like $50/mth to a local accounting company to handle all the taxes&reporting for that.

I don't know of any full "remote employment as a service", but there are a lot of outsourced accounting companies who'd do the taxes & paperwork - most local small businesses do it this way, since there's not enough work to have a full-time accountant/finance person on board. Actually executing payments and managing days off is a bit trickier, since the first requires full access to the company funds, and the second involves managing people, which is hard to outsource - you probably could get them to calculate 'what is owed to whom' by the local laws, but you'd have to pay salaries yourself & schedule vacations directly with the employees.

1. Its realistic. It has a customer and it has needs. 2. You're prepared with the resources needed. [You've thought about this before] 3. You're willing to put your money where your mouth is. I get the feeling that many of the lengthy coding tests or auditions are nothing but timewasters for punishing a new applicant. 4. It sounds like a weekend project/take home exercise.

Don't complain about not finding the best engineers if you're not an engineering-centric company; by definition, you don't need the best, you just need good enough. There's nothing wrong with this.

Hiring processes throughout the industry are entirely non-rigorous, and there is almost never any loop-closing when it comes to hiring signals and eventual job performance.

We are spectacularly bad at recognizing talent because we've never sat down and rigorously connected signals to success and failure.

Tech hiring is the ultimate cargo cult. It goes through fads (remember when logic puzzles where the thing?), and works primarily via arguments that sound logical but were never even remotely verified. It's monkey see monkey do at a mass level.

And some one really good might take a CTO role at a me to start-up to tick that box make your mistakes where it doesn't matter then move on to bigger and better things after 18 months 2 years.