geoffroberts
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11 months ago
We keep inventing magic tools, declaring all that will die in their wake. A 50-year perspective on why this is almost never true, how magic tools help us, and why understanding the engineering is where the value always lies.
geoffroberts
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1 year ago
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on: Inner turmoil reported at Hubspot, Stripe
You clearly didn't read it haha. It's a joke, brotha.
geoffroberts
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5 years ago
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on: The Unspoken Hard Bits of Bootstrapping a SaaS Product to Life
Thank you! I appreciate you giving it a read.
geoffroberts
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5 years ago
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on: The Unspoken Hard Bits of Bootstrapping a SaaS Product to Life
Thanks for sharing! It's always great to hear about entrepreneurs that have found their way into an ideal work setup. Congrats to you!
geoffroberts
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5 years ago
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on: The Unspoken Hard Bits of Bootstrapping a SaaS Product to Life
This makes a ton of sense—far too few people reach this conclusion and realize that picking one path or another is a key to their sanity and happiness!
geoffroberts
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5 years ago
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on: The Unspoken Hard Bits of Bootstrapping a SaaS Product to Life
That's a good point and I agree with what you said. But I think so many customers are accustomed to working with large, public or VC backed companies where response times are near immediate, product polish is higher, etc. When that's viewed as "the norm" then life becomes harder for bootstrappers.
geoffroberts
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5 years ago
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on: The Unspoken Hard Bits of Bootstrapping a SaaS Product to Life
100%
geoffroberts
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5 years ago
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on: The Unspoken Hard Bits of Bootstrapping a SaaS Product to Life
I completely agree that bending over backwards for users is a competitive advantage and customers won't forget it. But that does need to somehow reconcile with your availability and life outside of work—that's the rub for small bootstrapped companies.
geoffroberts
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5 years ago
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on: The Unspoken Hard Bits of Bootstrapping a SaaS Product to Life
I agree with your points here. Expectation setting is key.
geoffroberts
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6 years ago
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on: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
I understand your point—it's not about optimizing your process above all else (at the expense of speed, for example). But you can and should optimize your hiring process just like you would your sales process, onboarding process, etc and the outcome you're looking for is hires that are successful once hired. It costs companies far more if they sacrifice in the name of speed and make poor hires.
geoffroberts
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6 years ago
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on: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
geoffroberts
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6 years ago
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on: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
What we advocate for is making the technical assessment component relatively quick and painless, but using the work sample as a basis for assessing the other sorts of skills and intangibles that you mentioned. You can use your in-person time with candidates not to discuss their technical work, but to add requirements, talk through how they might build an additional feature, and generally assesses how well they communicate and solve problems beyond writing code.
geoffroberts
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6 years ago
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on: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
No argument there!
geoffroberts
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6 years ago
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on: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
Why would it not be?
geoffroberts
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6 years ago
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on: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
The purpose of this paper is to present research that's completely independent of any product, and show how the concepts apply to software engineering specifically. What's your source in saying "software engineering has one of the highest amounts of variability in productivity of any profession?" That seems hugely unfounded.
geoffroberts
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6 years ago
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on: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
Great points—I completely agree that the human element of hiring is of critical importance when it comes to building effective and high functioning teams. This article is intended to focus on the more technical/job focused component of hiring. That said, I agree with your comments here across the board.
geoffroberts
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6 years ago
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on: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
Agreed. Ambition is an intangible that should also be assessed during the hiring process.
geoffroberts
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6 years ago
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on: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
I don't think that true—what the article is saying is that different hiring activities are more or less useful in predicting the future success of a hire. And the more measures you employee intelligently, the more predictive the process becomes.
geoffroberts
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6 years ago
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on: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
That's true.... that might not be a company you want to work for. If there's not clear strategic direction and things constantly shift, it's very hard to hire anybody effectively into the org.
geoffroberts
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6 years ago
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on: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
So you need to design you assessment process to reflect the real world scenarios the hire will encounter. It's surprising to me to hear so many developers push back on this notion that you can't design a predictive hiring process. If you were hiring a dentist, wouldn't a great way to assess them be having them fill a cavity? Or asking a chef to make you your restaurant's signature recipe? It seems very logical and the key here is that the work sample is reflective of what they'll encounter on the job.
