We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

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42

One little Issue I find with Jeff’s logic is, well, does the policy of those people he disagrees with not work?

Because no offense, but all I see here is bad science.

Jeff brings up people who were turned away (or were turning away) potential candidates because they weren’t good enough, and then go on to do great things.

Okay, but what are you comparing them to?

If we set the people who WERE hired loose, would they not do as well?

Because it’s a process of elimination, if the person who is “the best” gets hired, now the second best guy is the official “best”, “the best” is not a static position, it’s changing every time any of these companies hire another employee.

Moving on to Jeff’s own anecdote, concerning Susan Warren, how was Susan different?

Was it because she was a woman? Was that the only difference? Was that the core difference? I’m usually quite skeptical of people who advocate skin deep diversity, that suggests they won’t keep going to evaluate diversity of ideas, diversity of thinking processes, unless you’d like companies to hire more women for the “feminine touch” factor.

Biases exist, yes, but that’s the point of blind tests, hiring committees, etc. etc., it’s to create as little bias effect as possible.

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Every company insists that they hire only the best programmers, the top 1%. Oddly, nobody admits to hiring the other 99% of the programmers. Unless Silicon Valley is like Lake Wobegon (“all our programmers are above average!”), which seems quite unlikely, there’s a good deal of self-delusion going on here.

Everyone in tech is proud of their practice of only hiring the top 1%. And yet the employment rate for computer science graduates seems to be around 90%. So, either 89% of CS grads are landing jobs selling coffee… or, mathematically speaking, there is no possible way that your tech startup has in fact hired the top 1% of programmers.

Yes, you hired the top 1% of job applicants. Every job opening attracts hundreds of obviously incompetent job seekers. In publishing it’s called the slush pile – novels written by people who cannot write, but don’t know it. But there’s a huge difference between rejecting the 99% slush pile, and actually managing to beat the odds and land someone who is a top tier programmer. The sooner the tech industry can accept that they aren’t living in Lake Wobegon, the better.

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I think the “A players hire A players; B players hire C players” theory is rather telling. The idea is that mediocre people will try to hide their insecurity (by hiring people who make them look good), while geniuses have the confidence to do what’s best for the company rather than themselves.

The issue is that confidence and insecurity are not a measure of an individual, or a function of IQ, but depend on the environment. Change the environment, change the level of confidence. And that’s especially important for people who don’t look or feel like everyone else in the room.

Silicon Valley has long been a macho place. That’s where we get the whole notion that if you’re not an “A player” or the best of the best you can’t be trusted.

In an environment that values diversity, you don’t have to be the best, or even great; you just have to bring something valuable to the table. It doesn’t matter what your IQ is, if you can point out how you are insulting your target market. For example, a health tracking app that assumes users don’t have a uterus. (Apple Health, I’m looking at you.) Or it never snows and the major highways go north/south. Or everyone is fine with a white male avatar.

In a welcoming environment, “B players” might feel comfortable hiring “A players.” In fact, they may be better at it than the A players.

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There is something I learned from being a consultant that no matter how qualified or not that you may be for a position, even if you have the said degree and have sparkling reviews from past employers and great references, there is one thing you’re missing.

Personality. If you’re personality doesn’t mesh well with the person who is interviewing you, you won’t get a second chance or get the boot after you’re done. The sad state of the interviews now is that they’re conducting emotional I.Q. tests on you as soon as you’re in the lobby filling out forms and talking with the receptionist, when you finally get in to the interviewer, they up the ante and really test you. When you leave the offices, they actually judge you on what you’re driving, how clean it is, etc.

All of this figures into the “hiring practice” of said companies even though they will never tell you this.

While they listen to what you say, what they’re really doing is watching your body movements, gesturing and your eyes. There are some interviewers that use the eye movement as a prediction if someone is telling the truth or not during an interview. However, there are three types of thought processes that can give false positives with the system they’re using.

They’ve only been taught about the symmetrical thought process, where both the right and left hemispheres of the brain have specific functions and the eye movements will have specific directions when you’re remembering an actual memory versus making something going up as you go along.

However, someone that has asymmetrical thought process will be just the opposite in eye movement that the symmetrical thought process has. These people are naturally very creative and make great programmers because they can see the whole picture and break it down into little parts they can code up for. This gives interviewers false positives, this might be what is getting you the boot.

The third is a rare thought process and is quite a bit unnerving to the interviewer. Where your eyes are transfixed in one spot and don’t move at all no matter what you’re thinking of. This is the “instant boot or “no” list”. These people are a combination of the practical symmetrical thinkers and the asymmetric thinkers that are great with abstract and theoretical stuff. This thought process is known as isommetrical. The look that this people have is what people call the “Silence of the Lab / Hannibal Lecter look”. People associate this look with psychopaths and sociopaths which is actually an incorrect assumption and belief. The reason why I say this, there is no specific facial feature or look that can tell you if a person is a psychopath or sociopath.

What I am really driving at, you can have the best qualifications but if you spook the interviewer in any way, it’s over. Here’s the thing, if they decide to pull you in for an interview. Many people in H.R. have already pulled a credit report on you (yes, they do this). They do a background check on you before they bring you in. So, if they make a strange off color comment about you. This is a hint. The best thing you can do is get a deep background check done on yourself for your own records. What they find might surprise you and it could inaccurate as well. That is something to look into to have fixed, if there is an error found.

Another thing, since identity theft and fraud has been running rampant since the year 2000 in the USA, it would be a good idea to see if other people are trying to use your social security number, your good name and your address or if someone committed a crime in your good name.

The reason why I know to check this is that I’m a victim of identity theft due to no fault of my own. Anthem, Inc., the second largest insurance provider in the USA failed to protect my private information as well as over 10 million other people with the exact same problem as me.

So, do get a background search done in your name and do the other stuff to make sure that your information and data isn’t being used by someone else and doing bad things with it. Rule out all the strange possibilities first, then see if it’s a personality problem that is tripping you up.

Here is the other thing I’ve noticed. Interviewers expect you to be nervous in an interview. When you come prepared and aren’t nervous, that makes them uneasy and nervous. You’ve inadvertently changed the power differential within the interview simply by doing this. This is something else that can be seen as an “untenable situation” in an interview.

I’m no longer nervous in interviews because I’ve gone through so many myself and gotten the very same garbage responses you have. When the interviewer will say something like, “You don’t see in the slight be nervous. Are you so sure of abilities and how you can fit into our corporate / company environment”. My response is different depending on how it’s said and question is asked.
Tell them why in a calm, cool and collected voice why you believe so. Then pause. Tell them that you’ve gone through many interviews and you’ve gotten used to the process, whereas it no longer makes you nervous.", it’s best to be completely honest with an interviewer. When you get into this situation, you now have a 50% chance of a yes or no in going forward. That 50% is up to the interviewer only, nothing you can say after this will change that perception. At least it’s not a 100% no go / “the boot” situation.

Pay close attention to the interviewers stance and posture. Is he or she relaxed when you talk to them are they rigid and stiff, see how it changes (if any) when you say something. That’s a clue as to how someone really feels about you and what you’re saying. Remember they’re testing and analyzing you, you should analyze, too.

Rigid and stiff means they’re uncomfortable; maybe they hate to interview people. Perhaps they have to use company spiel and don’t believe it or in it, perhaps their stressed about life in general or something else is going on. Just remember, they’re human, too. That they do a lot of research and interviewing all day. Perhaps they’re assuming you’re like all the rest he/she has interviewed. This is your chance to take reins, just don’t go overboard with it.

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Common sense is to hire the best you can get.

You never want to hire someone inadequate and this should be your number one priority which is obvious. One thing I do is to always look for someone at least a bit better than needed. I’ll take the bar which is at exactly what is needed and then raise it at least 10%.

I hire across a spectrum staggered according to what can be tolerated. You’ll only have so much work for B and C coders. The kicker is really that the A’s can do everything. I’ve always tried to target class A coders but it is exceedingly difficult. Bs are needed to take the work load from As that can be taken so that they can focus on the A grade problems. Cs are only introduced on a small scale, for example, a promising beginner, etc. Anything lower than C is unacceptable. On that note, grading is far better than going for “the best” which means I don’t know what.

In the Macintosh Division, we had a saying, “A players hire A players; B players hire C players” – meaning that great people hire great people.

This is false. A players often want to hire A players or better. I find I occasionally have better luck because of birds of a feather. Experts want to be around other experts and not held down or isolated. We don’t grow on trees though. I always want A grade. For me the worst thing is having to spend nearly all my time compensating for others instead of being able to focus on my own things. The reality is however that you’re not going to be able to scale if you can’t rely on people on grade below. I agree with Joel’s first paragraph and can sympathise but the reality is you can’t always hire swarms of developers at your skill level or above.

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Hey, the audition idea is great. It really is as good as it gets when considering who is gonna be the best hire.

As a candidate, I had some doubts about joining a smaller company, so I proposed to them the very same thing :“I will take some days off and come work with you guys. I don’t even need to get paid, we’ll just see if we are a good fit for each other”…only to be turned down.

I think for my next job I will start making the proposition in every interview: I can understand the audition idea not being put into practice for a any number of reasons…but surely they will have to appreciate the idea.

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I find it’s kind of strange when it’s not practically possible for every startup out there to hire the best. If someone tells me A is the best out there and I hire them, what will the other startups do? They want the best too so will they just wait for them to be done so they can hire them, meanwhile rejecting perfectly good candidates and putting their business on hold? It just doesn’t make sense. I think there’s a perfect fit for every business and you just have to find yours. Not all startups are the same so what’s perfect for me might not be perfect for someone else. I just have to find who’s best for my business and stop worrying about the one everyone says is the best.

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I think another problem is that only very few people are “the best”. And so if everyone will only hire that, then very few people get hired. There are real IQ differences amongst people, especially men. And only a few have very high IQ.

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Experience does go a long way, just to play devil’s advocate. While I hated being clever but lacking experience when I just started web development and tech support, and I did deserve a chance (which I finally got), I now realize, with 5-10 years experience points achieved, that there are a lot of things I grasp as if by reflex. I don’t mean just the tools and technologies (though I have a stronger confidence with those as well), but with general decision making, common pitfalls, and how to generally carry myself. For example, I’m much better at knowing how to tap my boss on the shoulder and say “this thing is on fire” or know when it’s a good idea to put out that fire personally OR NOT to do that, etc. With experience, I’ve learned a lot about trusting my own interpretation of a situation and my assessment of what needs doing. So a lot less asking permission or worrying about messing up. (I still mess up a bit, I just am better at handling it).

As far as this VP goes, the best way I’ve found in turning that situation around is to start interviewing them. Don’t be defensive or aggressive, just start showing interest. “How much experience do you have? Where did you go to school? What is the hardest job of the department? Where does this company hope to be in 5 years?” Etc. My big break came from the following parts of a specific interview:

A. During the skills assessment part, I knew that post-processing filtering was done via HAVING clause, not WHERE.

B. When the president of the firm came in for his part, I asked him questions about the company and how he started it, rather that questions about the job.

C. I mentioned that in my limited experience, I found integrating products via their APIs was what I found to be most important and that “that’s when web development really gets fun and interesting”.

So basically I knew just enough hard skill stuff to get through that section without looking like I needed the manual for everything; I showed an interest in the company and its people rather than my own success; I let myself have a chance to be passionate about the field and sincere, rather than try to only get by on my firm skills (which were easily lower than 20% of the other candidates).

And even then, I had been messing with web stuff and doing tech support for 3 years, so it took me that long just to be “inexperienced” but get a real shot.

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Hi Anthony,

Great reply!
Experience is indeed important, but getting experience is like the chicken
and the egg - how can you get it, if no one will give you a chance?
Surely, no one was born with a keyboard in his hands… (Or with a serial
cable connected to his mom, oh, wait… (-:wink:

In this case the VP in question was so stuck up, he wasn’t open to think
back on his first days.

Your idea to bring the interview back to them is a really good idea.

I did, by the way, got a brake (-;
Which I’m very excited about.
So it is a matter of keep fighting the good fight - believing in your self,
and never give up and find that place that will recognize your potential.

Cheers,
Ore

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This might sound trivial or trite, but as a hiring manager who’s worked for Fortune 500 companies and startups, my hiring criteria are (from most to least):

  1. Do they have a good attitude (not “cheerful”, but own their job responsibilities, want to learn, want the team to succeed, do whatever they can to help the team succeed)
  2. Have they demonstrated adaptable problem solving skills - especially success at doing new or unusual things
  3. Do they have domain knowledge of the company’s industry (retail or advertising or aviation or whatever)
  4. Do they have XYZ technical chops

The reason they’re in this order is that each makes the next one easier. Good attitudes involve curiosity, and the desire to grow, and generally help develop new problem solving skills, which beget knowledge of the company and how it works and where it fits in the industry, which make picking up technical programming skill much simpler.

Going the other direction is hard. I’ve never been impressed by somebody who had memorized an API or three, and then expected the business to bend to whatever technical framework they wanted to impose, and then couldn’t think of any other way to solve a problem, and then ended up clashing with teammates.

Granted, I have had the luxury of being able to hire and mentor and promote in most cases. This approach works for me and it is by no means the “right” way - I imagine that whoever runs the JVM team at Oracle would not share my views.

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Hi all,

I have a general question which sparks my interest. What do you think are the industries with the most software developers, except for finance and software development vendor/consultancy industries?

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From recent news, check out how the best developers’ do things:

A developer pulled out a very common dependency and a huge list of node packages are suffering for it. As to the purpose of this thing, it’s just padding strings.

Now, seriously. What kind of developer prefers to invoke a package manager and add a dependency (thus, a liability) to a project instead of coding a very elementary function that would have take 10 minutes at most? Well, apparently thousands. All of them, I’m sure, being top of their line developers, carefully selected and approved by HR to carry out their jobs. :joy:

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A very good piece. I read on Facebook recently that in every business there is someone you look at and think: “How did they ever get the job?” or “How come that person’s not been fired?” If you look around your office/business and can’t find someone like that it’s you. On a more serious note, it isn’t just the quality of candidates you have to be mindful of, it’s the quality of the people tasked with hiring and the overall process. It’s a surprise what low priority many companies seem to put on hiring. A couple of years ago I was asked to interview with a big tech company, but the process was a shambles. I was interviewed by a very disinterested HR person who seemed to know nothing about the role in any detail. The interview was held late in the afternoon as most staff were leaving for the day. After the interview I got a tour of a deserted building by someone who’d just started themselves. They couldn’t answer most of my questions and we got lost wandering aimlessly about. Needless to say, I decided the job wasn’t for me.

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I’ve worked on a bunch of teams, The amount that the team gets accomplished is related to how good they are on the team, not how good they are individually. I’ve worked with several A+ geniuses who could not work well with others and were therefore a detriment to the teams that they were on, and I’ve worked with a number of people who weren’t at the top of the stack but were multipliers on teams they were on. Go read Arlo Belshee’s stuff on emotional intelligence: http://arlobelshee.com/gender-bias-in-my-hiring-history/

As for the A’s hire A’s, B’s hire C’s, I think it is true to an extent, but I don’t think it’s a deliberate action by the B’s, it’s simply because they are not as good at evaluating talent as the A’s are. Assuming you agree with the kind of talent that the A’s prefer, which I tend not to any more.

If you have a team that pairs, bring your candidates and have them pair with different team members. You will find a lot more about somebody during pairing than you will during a typical interview.

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Well that’s not uncommon. Many companies administer a pre-interview coding test to filter out unsuitable candidates. Usually through an automated testing service (for example: TestDome). This is done to either narrow down the pool of candidates quickly, which is useful when there are dozens or maybe hundreds of candidates that have applied to a company, but it can also be used a brief evaluation prior to the thorough technical interview.

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Wow! I’m so glad to have read this post. The “audition projects” technique is brilliant. In fact, I have been thinking about a similar strategy: a paid trial period – basically, a contractor – before actually hiring him/her as a permanent employee. Working with a person for an extended period of time is the only reliable way to assess a potential hire. There are so many aspects that traditional interviews and tests do not or cannot measure. For instance, how do you measure a person’s ability to learn? How do you assess his/her ability to efficiently find information? How do you know if that person is a reliable team player? How do you know if he/she has skills other than the main skills required for the position, such as business, management or documentation skills? How do you measure good judgement or diplomacy in an interview? What if the person is a brilliant and meticulous software engineer who just can’t produce the high quality work he is known for when under extreme time constraint and stress? Does that necessarily mean he’s less qualified to get the job done in a real work setting where he/she generally would have much much more time to do the work? In general, in today’s world, there is such a bias for speed that we may unknowingly be sacrificing the quality that may well make the difference between a good product and an awesome product. In fact, the hiring process itself is often under pressure for speedy completion – “We must hire someone before the hiring window closes!”

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