6 ms·

I don't know that grabbing beers and playing foosball necessarily equates to getting the hires "EXACTLY right". I feel like it's the litmus test for "Can I hang

• leroy_masochist 11y ago
  That's a valid point and I'm not sure why people are downvoting you. I think the litmus test should be, "do I not dislike spending a lot of time with this person", not "do I really like spending time with this person". Shooting the shit over beers and foosball is really testing for the latter, not the former. Plus let's face it, a lot of technically gifted and experienced people ain't exactly extroverts. And people act different when they know they're being evaluated anyway. So some founders' insistence on fratting it up for step one of the hiring process just strikes me as stupid. And by the way...I'm a tall, white, former college athlete male. I'm VERY comfortable in a "drinking beer in bars with dudes" environment; it's what I often do with my friends on my own time. I'd likely be even more opinionated about this if I were not as naturally comfortable in a bro-y environment.
  • supjeff 11y ago
    I'm not okay with somebody expecting me to be their friend if they hire me. I'm here to make software, not lend emotional support. That said, we're all still just people, and if we're gonna be friends, we'll be friends. That usually sorts itself out just from sharing circumstances.
    • stanleydrew 11y ago
      Friendship isn't really about emotional support. To think that working in a high-level position at a growing company doesn't require getting along with people is incredibly naïve.
      • izacus 11y ago
        In my experience "getting along" is a large spectrum and working with someone professionaly isn't the same thing as going to a beer with them. I've had extremely productive professional relationship with several people I wouldn't go out to grab a beer with (mostly because they were at different stages in life and we didn't really have much to talk about). Filtering via non-professional social occasions is pretty much the worst part of the bro culture.
        • stanleydrew 11y ago
          This is a good point. Depending on the stage of the company and the type of people working there it is very possible to have productive working relationships that would never extend to events outside the office. But that doesn't mean a first meeting outside the office over beer or coffee isn't a good idea. It isn't necessarily part of "bro culture" either. I've found that it's a good way to have a conversation with someone to get a feel for what they like to think about, and hopefully learn a little bit about what kind of decision maker someone is.
      • mwfunk 11y ago
        Of course you have to be able to get along with people, but friendship is way more than just getting along with people. It's being involved in each other's personal lives for non-business reasons. When someone is explicitly looking to hire not just colleagues but new personal friends, it can be a sign of immaturity, and that they might not be great at understanding boundaries. On the other hand, there are probably some people who would like that kind of a work environment. No harm is done if the potential employer is up front about it, at least they're being open about what they want. Much more awkward to take the job and get surprised by Overly Attached Coworkers if that's not what you want.
• DanBC 11y ago
  You're filtering out people who don't drink alcohol. That probably doesn't have much to do with whether they're any good at the job or whether you like working with them.
  • _yosefk 11y ago
    Actually, wouldn't you expect drinking to correlate negatively with a programmer's output? Whatever bullshit people say about drugs enhancing their output, I've never heard similar bullshit about alcohol/hangover being a stimulant and if someone drinks a lot there's a decent chance they'd program when drunk or hungover. (Personally I've tried once to program when drunk - I ate nothing the whole morning and drank half a bottle of wine, which is more than enough for me given my very little drinking experience; I couldn't stop laughing at any joke by the guy we drank with - or at pretty much anything he said, really. I did write pretty decent code in the couple of hours it took me to become sober again, in retrospect, and I think it actually gave me courage to tackle the shit I had to at that moment, but then I thought about it all a lot before getting drunk and it was almost done and all I had to do was finish it. It didn't feel like I'd do very well in general in that condition.)
    • smnrchrds 11y ago
      Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/323/ https://xkcd.com/323/
    • tedmiston 11y ago
      Even in a startup environment with a keg in the office, I wouldn't typically drink and code, besides perhaps a Friday afternoon beer. That said, for personal projects in the evenings, I find having 1-2 drinks helpful for removing barriers to perfectionism when you have simple coding tasks to solve.
      • shopkins 11y ago
        Bingo. Implementing features doesn't usually require it, but keeping an entire system in your head with all its complexity and chain reactions from making something work another way keeps me from moving ahead sometimes -- especially when it isn't clear what the best option is. A beer or two helps me pick one and keep moving, to discover the answer as I go.
• ashayh 11y ago
  You mean hiring echo chambers is an essential thing? Considering the vast majority of startups fail, maybe this is one aspect that needs rethinking.