Such a no brainer, but jezus it's about time for someone to call out the hiring posts.
Hiring a good employee is like shopping for a car. You don't buy the coup if you have a family of six, a gas guzzler when you're a commuter, or a 2wd when you live in the boonies. It's a balance of values.
I've seen "rock star" coders fail in team environments because they can't communicate. I've seen great communicators fail because they were all talk. I've seen really great team players impolode when facing the customer.
I'd rather have an employee who is good at a few things than one who is "The Best" at one thing. It's called hiring for employee fit, not so you can tell your buddies how l33t your team is.
Definitely reading too much into your comment and not responding just to you but the hiring post trend, but IMO all of those scenarios are conflating mismanagement with bad hiring. Have a rock star coder who can't communicate (I'd challenge whether or not that was possible another time)? Put them in a position that minimizes the amount of communication they have to do or set up a structure for their inbound/outbound communications that works for everyone. Great communicator? Have them figure out how to facilitate that person who can't communicate. Great team player? Have them work with the team and don't make them outbound.
Point is, effective team building doesn't end at offer letters. Hire for fit, then fit the hire. Train up. Just because someone is weak in some area doesn't mean they can't contribute meaningfully given the proper resources and support, nor is a strong hire going to succeed without the same carefully tailored support.
Experience tells me that hiring posts that demand this level of excellence are often covering for weaknesses in their process.
"We only hire the best!"
The best at what?
"The best at everything of course. We want a full stack wish fulfillment genie."
Either you have no idea what skills are missing from your current team, or they are all missing, and you want to fill that gap with one person rather than a team.
Job postings that ask for excessive skills across multiple disciplines say to me: This hiring manager doesn't want to do their job. The management job of creating a team, process, workflow. Why bother building a team of shared responsibilities? Why take ownership of the team's process? That would be hard. Instead I'll just hire one uber-nerd and make them do it all.
Here are some of my favorite lazy hiring manager practices:
* asking for "everything but the kitchen sink" skills
* confusing Java with Javascript
* even mentioning J2EE in the requisiton (who on Earth wants to do that in this day and age?)
* copy-pasting of the requisition leading to truncation of the posting
Nothing new DHH isn't widely praised for originality, but come on this whole article is like a total re-hash. And he doesn't even bother to mention Joel... to me that means he's trying to take credit, or he doesn't know about Joel... uh, yeah.
That Dan Luu blog post is gold. It really is kind of sad how arbitrary, capricious, and wasteful hiring in IT is, not to mention the short-sighted thinking about talent.
I also really liked the post he did about discrimination in tech:
One other aspect of "we only hire the best" that wasn't explored by this article is the practice -- especially common among unicorn companies -- of purposely casting a far wider net than needed, so that their hiring yield on applicants is dauntingly low.
The recruiting process is deliberately set up to yield a lot of false negatives -- i.e., applicants who are qualified on both skill and fit who are rejected for some arbitrary bullshit reason.
I suspect it's largely an effort to mindfuck the employees who do make it through the process. I'm so lucky to be here! Only 3% of applicants even make it to a five-minute founder interview, and only half of them get hired!
Try reading The Hard Thing About Hard Things and not rolling your eyes the 10th time Horowitz brags about hiring the best of the best of the best. If you took him literally no other company stood a chance against him since he had a lock on all of Silicon Valley's top talent.
Perhaps it builds the perception in those hired they are in fact the best.
Well, lots of people have to be rejected for a the not-bullshit reason that there are only n jobs available at the company and n+x people applied. Even if they are all great, x number of people are going to be rejected.
> The recruiting process is deliberately set up to yield a lot of false negatives
Absolutely. There are a hundred bad candidates for every good one, but large companies reject good ones as well will bullshit justifications for a reason: rejection keep salaries down.
I called BS on Chris Dixon on this on Twitter and he blocked me. It was when he and Paul Graham were arguing that "not enough (good)engineers exist for startups, so we need to import more". I was arguing that plenty of great engineers exist, you just have to pay for it.
With a typical side dish of substandard working conditions (open office, cheap chairs, no parking or no transit or even "better" none of both), substandard tools, substandard personnel policies (vacation, insurance, 401K, etc) and last but not least a very low "Joel Test" score preferably zero.
I'm sure the best will be naturally attracted to that. Sorta an "opposites attract" strategy.
There are historical analogies to the dating world where if you're trying to find a complete dumpster fire of a person for whatever crazy reason, just look for the loudest proclamation that they only date 10/10s. Actually dating 10/10s is a different issue, I specifically mean loudest proclamation. Generally this works pretty well. Both for finding dumpster fire people and companies.
The worst are the new "tech companies with internal recruiters, tech tests prior to interview, twenty stages to offer, who moan they can't attract the best. Of course not! The minute you said tech test, I said goodbye, the minute you said internal recruiters, I laughed as I slammed down the phone.
The best companies that can and do attract the best, still keep it simple - direct face to face interviews, max two stages to offer, no fucking around with shitty tech tests, and making the time and effort for the interview.
"You know what the best people I’ve ever met or worked with had in common? ALMOST NOTHING!"
I've found the best have interesting hobbies. The not so best have nothing to say beyond "how bout that sitcom/drama/game last night, eh?". The extroverts won't shut up about it and the introverts have to be coaxed, but one way or another if they can tell stories for hours, about something other than TV last night, they tend to be pretty good at their job.
Its a weaker argument that it has to be a craft hobby. Beer, carpentry, knitting, playing music, writing poetry, subject doesn't matter. If doing something the right way is important to them as a core value outside of work, then they'll tend to do things the right way at work.
"First, “the best” is bound to be situational. Someone who can thrive in one environment might get crushed in another. The peak skills that gave them a leg-up in one domain may very well make them unfit for work in another."
Key statement here. Some employers need top coding skills in modern technologies. Some employers, like my current one, really don't need a top coder: they need good analysis skills with some coding. Employers need different degrees of executive function and technical skill. My previous employers valued high technical skill, but we had single product/project focus. My current employer doesn't need high technical skill, but a successful person in this environment needs to be able to multiplex across four projects with differing requirements - COTS implementation, soup-to-nuts software development, bridges between existing systems, etc. - while also providing at least second level support for existing systems.
In addition to executive function and technical skill, add in social skill. Some employers in my past had no problem with on-edge bright technical people. My current employer values politeness far over technical ability.
"Best" and even "successful" have to be defined by each organization according to their mission and values.
Thanks for this reminder of basic management practice which needs to be posted about once a year: hire good people and get the most out of them through superb leadership, great working conditions and ample incentives to achieve.
"We only hire the best" is a sales slogan, not a true management principle. The "best" aren't usually for hire at any given moment; they're very well employed already, or otherwise occupied. And when a high caliber person decides to move on, someone in his or her network will likely hear of it and snap them up.
I'd rather hear them say, "We have excellent hiring practices that filter out incompetence and unpleasant personalities. We have a great team here and we're really proud of the hard work they do."
Of course you can make a case for disruption; sometimes what a business needs is someone to challenge the norms, shake things up, rattle the chains, and that can be unpleasant if not downright threatening. An old manager of mine called such people "brilliant assholes". Gotta love'em for what they can achieve, but they're often not much fun to be around!
"We Only Hire the Best" doesn't have to have any truth to it to be of use to companies. Their purpose in hiring is to extract value from candidates. Convincing people that they'd be amongst the best is all you have to do. The rhetoric comes from existing employees, who may be rationalising their decision to work there. It feels good to be amongst "the best" - I want to be amongst the best! I am sure I'm not the only one with such aspirations. If being 'the best' means over-fitting to the requirements of a company, then the most successful (viz. "best") candidates will optimise for what that company wants. It means by the time they arrive at work they're already largely conditioned into behaving as their new company would like them to.
Yes, "the best" is a transparent lie. It doesn't matter though, because it serves the interests of companies who espouse it. DHH is calling a spade a spade here - but I'd hazard that the vast majority of the HN crowd already know.
Also, globally, there are lot of extraordinarily shit software people out there. If we define quality by "gets things done and doesn't break things and act in a crappy and deleterious manner", then it is not difficult for "the best" to mean the upper 60% of software people. It is completely reasonable to assume that the companies with this mantra do indeed hire from the top 60%, if only because of how many rubbish people there are.
The best line I heard "we don't hire a$$$holes". That's a check-mate statement. I think to myself what if I don't get selected :-( . I did get selected only to realise they hired people down the line whom I'd consider rectal orifices. Can't catch a break really...
The "No assholes" rule should really be the #1 rule when hiring.
I've heard a lot of complaints from friends and family in the tech industry over the years, as I've had my own issues. While details vary, it always comes down to the acting up of one obvious asshole or another. It infects the whole team/company/project.
In the long run, a team of average but positively motivated people more often than not beats a team with an asshole in it, even if he/she is a rockstar/guru/ninja/jedi/whatever. And their lives won't be miserable in the process.
"Losers always whine about trying to hire the best...." - J.P. Mason
"The best" is a relative measure. An absolute measure must be set first and gatekeepers put in place to guard it. Then, do all you can to find candidates exceeding that measure and then pick the best FIT you can from there.
What are you supposed to say; we hire mediocre developers? Give me a break. "Best" is such a loaded, nothing term that it doesn't really mean anything without a ton of context.
"We only hire the best, because nobody else has a hope of surviving the mess that our previous 'best' made."
Seriously, I think WOHTB is an indication that the company doesn't know the difference between selection and training. They want the technical equivalent of Navy SEALs (which is already a questionable goal) so they put in an equivalent of BUD/S, but that's a training program and they're using it for selection. Anybody capable of getting past that is either a faker or doesn't need it, and since the second group will also have little patience for it all you're left with is the fakers. Not a strategy for success. I don't mind, though, because their failure makes things easier for the rest of us.
> (Did you see Hamilton and Rosberg collide in Formula 1 last week? Mercedes probably wish they had more of a Vettel and Webber kind of dynamic right now.)
DHH back at it again, dropping truth on the dev game. This was a timely post because my friend and I were just mocking the phrase "we only hire the best" this past weekend. If you like DHH's writing, check out one of his other recent posts: RECONSIDER [0].
I think pointing out some of the absurdities of software development culture and startups is fun. It's unfortunate that Startup L. Jackson hung up his hat :/.
This makes me think of an observation an old colleague of mine made to one of the revolving-door CTOs at our former employer. He said there are three things you can offer to get good engineers... high pay, an interesting problem, and a great work environment. If you can't offer at least two, you really need to excel at the last one.
Problem with former employer was a lousy work environment for uninteresting work...
[+] [-] deedubaya|9 years ago|reply
Hiring a good employee is like shopping for a car. You don't buy the coup if you have a family of six, a gas guzzler when you're a commuter, or a 2wd when you live in the boonies. It's a balance of values.
I've seen "rock star" coders fail in team environments because they can't communicate. I've seen great communicators fail because they were all talk. I've seen really great team players impolode when facing the customer.
I'd rather have an employee who is good at a few things than one who is "The Best" at one thing. It's called hiring for employee fit, not so you can tell your buddies how l33t your team is.
[+] [-] bicknergseng|9 years ago|reply
Point is, effective team building doesn't end at offer letters. Hire for fit, then fit the hire. Train up. Just because someone is weak in some area doesn't mean they can't contribute meaningfully given the proper resources and support, nor is a strong hire going to succeed without the same carefully tailored support.
[+] [-] ArkyBeagle|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johngalt|9 years ago|reply
"We only hire the best!"
The best at what?
"The best at everything of course. We want a full stack wish fulfillment genie."
Either you have no idea what skills are missing from your current team, or they are all missing, and you want to fill that gap with one person rather than a team.
Job postings that ask for excessive skills across multiple disciplines say to me: This hiring manager doesn't want to do their job. The management job of creating a team, process, workflow. Why bother building a team of shared responsibilities? Why take ownership of the team's process? That would be hard. Instead I'll just hire one uber-nerd and make them do it all.
[+] [-] Yhippa|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jemfinch|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] up_and_up|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbg31415|9 years ago|reply
Nothing new DHH isn't widely praised for originality, but come on this whole article is like a total re-hash. And he doesn't even bother to mention Joel... to me that means he's trying to take credit, or he doesn't know about Joel... uh, yeah.
[+] [-] kough|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ikeboy|9 years ago|reply
http://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/ (discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326940)
[+] [-] GVIrish|9 years ago|reply
I also really liked the post he did about discrimination in tech:
http://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/
[+] [-] leroy_masochist|9 years ago|reply
The recruiting process is deliberately set up to yield a lot of false negatives -- i.e., applicants who are qualified on both skill and fit who are rejected for some arbitrary bullshit reason.
I suspect it's largely an effort to mindfuck the employees who do make it through the process. I'm so lucky to be here! Only 3% of applicants even make it to a five-minute founder interview, and only half of them get hired!
[+] [-] technofiend|9 years ago|reply
Perhaps it builds the perception in those hired they are in fact the best.
[+] [-] cortesoft|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ex_amazon_se|9 years ago|reply
Absolutely. There are a hundred bad candidates for every good one, but large companies reject good ones as well will bullshit justifications for a reason: rejection keep salaries down.
[+] [-] braythwayt|9 years ago|reply
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html
[+] [-] asb|9 years ago|reply
Programmer: "What's the salary?"
Corp: "Market average. Also, we're looking for people who aren't just motivated by money"
[+] [-] CaptSpify|9 years ago|reply
Corp: "We only hire the best, but we can't find any good people. There must be an industry shortage of good engineers!"
Me: "What about $candidate that we interviewed last week, I thought you liked him?"
Corp: "He was great! But he wanted too much money"
Me: "..."
[+] [-] optimiz3|9 years ago|reply
"we're looking for people who aren't just motivated by money"
You should counter:
"there's no shortage of meaningful problems; I'd be irresponsible if I didn't work on the one that improves my family's standard of living the most"
[+] [-] anotherhacker|9 years ago|reply
I called BS on Chris Dixon on this on Twitter and he blocked me. It was when he and Paul Graham were arguing that "not enough (good)engineers exist for startups, so we need to import more". I was arguing that plenty of great engineers exist, you just have to pay for it.
[+] [-] VLM|9 years ago|reply
I'm sure the best will be naturally attracted to that. Sorta an "opposites attract" strategy.
There are historical analogies to the dating world where if you're trying to find a complete dumpster fire of a person for whatever crazy reason, just look for the loudest proclamation that they only date 10/10s. Actually dating 10/10s is a different issue, I specifically mean loudest proclamation. Generally this works pretty well. Both for finding dumpster fire people and companies.
[+] [-] leroy_masochist|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandrake|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] busterarm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jazzyk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] askyourmother|9 years ago|reply
The best companies that can and do attract the best, still keep it simple - direct face to face interviews, max two stages to offer, no fucking around with shitty tech tests, and making the time and effort for the interview.
[+] [-] venomsnake|9 years ago|reply
Programmer: "Too bad, I consider myself mediocre, bye"
[+] [-] slig|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gotchange|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anandjoseph|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] VLM|9 years ago|reply
I've found the best have interesting hobbies. The not so best have nothing to say beyond "how bout that sitcom/drama/game last night, eh?". The extroverts won't shut up about it and the introverts have to be coaxed, but one way or another if they can tell stories for hours, about something other than TV last night, they tend to be pretty good at their job.
Its a weaker argument that it has to be a craft hobby. Beer, carpentry, knitting, playing music, writing poetry, subject doesn't matter. If doing something the right way is important to them as a core value outside of work, then they'll tend to do things the right way at work.
[+] [-] bpyne|9 years ago|reply
Key statement here. Some employers need top coding skills in modern technologies. Some employers, like my current one, really don't need a top coder: they need good analysis skills with some coding. Employers need different degrees of executive function and technical skill. My previous employers valued high technical skill, but we had single product/project focus. My current employer doesn't need high technical skill, but a successful person in this environment needs to be able to multiplex across four projects with differing requirements - COTS implementation, soup-to-nuts software development, bridges between existing systems, etc. - while also providing at least second level support for existing systems.
In addition to executive function and technical skill, add in social skill. Some employers in my past had no problem with on-edge bright technical people. My current employer values politeness far over technical ability.
"Best" and even "successful" have to be defined by each organization according to their mission and values.
[+] [-] blisterpeanuts|9 years ago|reply
"We only hire the best" is a sales slogan, not a true management principle. The "best" aren't usually for hire at any given moment; they're very well employed already, or otherwise occupied. And when a high caliber person decides to move on, someone in his or her network will likely hear of it and snap them up.
I'd rather hear them say, "We have excellent hiring practices that filter out incompetence and unpleasant personalities. We have a great team here and we're really proud of the hard work they do."
Of course you can make a case for disruption; sometimes what a business needs is someone to challenge the norms, shake things up, rattle the chains, and that can be unpleasant if not downright threatening. An old manager of mine called such people "brilliant assholes". Gotta love'em for what they can achieve, but they're often not much fun to be around!
[+] [-] daniel-levin|9 years ago|reply
Yes, "the best" is a transparent lie. It doesn't matter though, because it serves the interests of companies who espouse it. DHH is calling a spade a spade here - but I'd hazard that the vast majority of the HN crowd already know.
Also, globally, there are lot of extraordinarily shit software people out there. If we define quality by "gets things done and doesn't break things and act in a crappy and deleterious manner", then it is not difficult for "the best" to mean the upper 60% of software people. It is completely reasonable to assume that the companies with this mantra do indeed hire from the top 60%, if only because of how many rubbish people there are.
[+] [-] stillworks|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whatever_dude|9 years ago|reply
I've heard a lot of complaints from friends and family in the tech industry over the years, as I've had my own issues. While details vary, it always comes down to the acting up of one obvious asshole or another. It infects the whole team/company/project.
In the long run, a team of average but positively motivated people more often than not beats a team with an asshole in it, even if he/she is a rockstar/guru/ninja/jedi/whatever. And their lives won't be miserable in the process.
[+] [-] leroy_masochist|9 years ago|reply
...
"Our company is founded on an engineering mindset in which the best ideas always win and people are encouraged to candidly speak their minds!"
[+] [-] dmh2000|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drelihan|9 years ago|reply
"The best" is a relative measure. An absolute measure must be set first and gatekeepers put in place to guard it. Then, do all you can to find candidates exceeding that measure and then pick the best FIT you can from there.
blisterpeanuts is right on...
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|9 years ago|reply
What are you supposed to say; we hire mediocre developers? Give me a break. "Best" is such a loaded, nothing term that it doesn't really mean anything without a ton of context.
This is a waste of outrage.
[+] [-] notacoward|9 years ago|reply
Seriously, I think WOHTB is an indication that the company doesn't know the difference between selection and training. They want the technical equivalent of Navy SEALs (which is already a questionable goal) so they put in an equivalent of BUD/S, but that's a training program and they're using it for selection. Anybody capable of getting past that is either a faker or doesn't need it, and since the second group will also have little patience for it all you're left with is the fakers. Not a strategy for success. I don't mind, though, because their failure makes things easier for the rest of us.
[+] [-] DVassallo|9 years ago|reply
Vettel and Webber crashed as well in Turkey 2010 as they battled for the lead: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vx9zIQvrdZU
[+] [-] travjones|9 years ago|reply
I think pointing out some of the absurdities of software development culture and startups is fun. It's unfortunate that Startup L. Jackson hung up his hat :/.
0: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3972-reconsider
[+] [-] anotherhacker|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beat|9 years ago|reply
Problem with former employer was a lousy work environment for uninteresting work...