How to hire

Here is what I have learnt about hiring:

A Players hire A+ players because they want to learn from the best

B Players hire B players because they identify with them

C players hire D players because they want to make sure they are not at the bottom.

You know that interview in which the interviewer asks an impossibly difficult question and settles back with a smug look? That is your C player ensuring that A players do not make it into the company.

The most important job for your A players is hiring. This is how you set the tempo for the team. Amazon had a ‘bar raiser’ program that had the best engineers responsible for hiring. As a CTO, one of the most important jobs is to ensure that you hire the right people. And you do that by ensuring that the A players feedback is overweighted in interview discussions.

I attend every single interview debrief to ensure that exactly this happens. My opinion on the matter is less important than that of the A players. At the smaller place I work at now, the CEO interviews and attends every interview debrief (at a place that is now ~200)

The people you hire will set the tone for culture. Culture is not the pretty words on the wall. It is what the people you have hired do when you are not in the room.

How to hire

I see hiring as having 4 steps, sometimes condensed to expedite the process.

1. Meet with People & Places team to understand fit with the company
2. A technical panel interview with all interviewers
3. 1:1 or 2:1 discussions with the interviewers
4. A culture fit interview with the CTO and CEO

Steps 2 and 3 (and often 4) are completed on the same day.

Set an SLA. I like to put a 72 hour SLA from step 2 to communication of the decision back to candidates.

The technical interview

My thinking on this has evolved over time. One of the best writeups I have seen on interviewing (and a job description in general is from levelshealth.com at this link . I used to ask people to complete take home assignments and have that lead into a discussion (something that I learnt at Intuit) but this has evolved. Some engineers don’t have the time to complete such an assignment. So instead, offer options

• A take home assignment
• Live coding with the interviewer
• Show and tell — a project the candidate has worked on already (e.g. open source)

Hire for the long

You see those job reqs which call for ’10+ years of Java’? In most cases, those job descriptions are making a mistake (unless you are looking for a JVM expert). Most modern language and framework skills are portable. Optimizing for short over long is a mistake many companies make. If you are hiring for the long, avoid this kind of language. A candidate who understands the domain and toolchain well — irrespective of what they match up exactly with yours — is likely to be a great asset for you in the long. I always choose to hire for long term fit over short.

Hiring for the long also means approaching interviewing differently. The key is to assess in an interview is *how* a person approaches problem solving, not whether they solve the problem or not. Programming language nuances and frameworks are not very interesting to guage in an interview. Hiring for the long means sacrificing short term fit if need be.

Recognize that interviews are a stressful environment

Do you remember how you felt interviewing? I remember one in particular from the past: it involved writing very precise code for binary trees. Something I was very familiar with, but there were a bunch of curveballs thrown into the code. I flunked it, and felt miserable after.

The next day, I retried on my own. So simple. I shook my head. The stress in the interview had caused me to flub the question.

I always make take home on on site coding simple test. When the candidate is able to solve that simple problem, they have confidence and a consequent reduction in stress. Then you can build on it slowly, adding complexity.

In addition, I always ask about their personal interests: what do they do outside of work? What are they passionate about? It reveals more of their personality which helps in making decisions, as well as gives candidates a chance to talk about something that they are likely to know a lot more about than you.

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