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This is very specific for people who work on systems, such as programmers. I have a devshop and have sent his over and over again. The actual cost per employee

This is very specific for people who work on systems, such as programmers. I have a devshop and have sent his over and over again. The actual cost per employee isn't really paying them salaries to do stuff, but rather the salaries you pay them to learn stuff and get acquainted with the system. We call it ROL (Return on Learning). We've learned that on average it takes 3-8 months for an intelligent person to become fully productive within any system. Since we started hiring for the capacity to learn and culture fit, rather than existing technical skill, it's changed our business for the better. That said, turns out even if you're in the Bay area with all that great talent pool, chances to find local people who just happen to want to work with you are practically nill. Once you truly internalize this concept of ROL, there is no other way but to work globally with remote people and teams. Without that, you can't access a sufficiently large talent pool. I think the ROL is actually the leverage factor people have in mind when they say "10x" engineer.

bcassedy 11y ago
How do you select for these people with high capacity to learn?
abalashov 11y ago
In my experience, the more specialised the work, the more one has to select for a balance of capacity to learn with a certain amount of objective skills and experience present today. I tried the strictly-capacity route in the past (it was all I could afford) and, while these people had all the potential in the world, the ramp-up time was simply more than the business could sustain when customers expected high-end knowledge and expertise now. It was aggravated by a lack of time and resources typically found in a woefully undercapitalised startup, of which a consequence was inability to properly structure and manage the learning process.
ethbro 11y ago
I also think "having someone already in the company with X knowledge, who will be working closely enough with new hire to share it" is a huge multiplier in ramp-up rate. The amount of un- or poorly-documented things in decade+ legacy systems can be a minefield, but so easily solves with a quick "Oh, X, we always do Y because Z."

bcassedy 11y ago

How do you select for these people with high capacity to learn?

abalashov 11y ago

In my experience, the more specialised the work, the more one has to select for a balance of capacity to learn with a certain amount of objective skills and experience present today. I tried the strictly-capacity route in the past (it was all I could afford) and, while these people had all the potential in the world, the ramp-up time was simply more than the business could sustain when customers expected high-end knowledge and expertise now. It was aggravated by a lack of time and resources typically found in a woefully undercapitalised startup, of which a consequence was inability to properly structure and manage the learning process.

ethbro 11y ago

I also think "having someone already in the company with X knowledge, who will be working closely enough with new hire to share it" is a huge multiplier in ramp-up rate. The amount of un- or poorly-documented things in decade+ legacy systems can be a minefield, but so easily solves with a quick "Oh, X, we always do Y because Z."