4 ms·
If you are a startup, you can't afford to be NOT be "ridiculous" Possibly nothing is worse for a new tech venture than a bad hire. I've lived through a few at
by sghael 16y ago
If you are a startup, you can't afford to be NOT be "ridiculous"
Possibly nothing is worse for a new tech venture than a bad hire. I've lived through a few at various startups. It's horrible. It's the worst kind of death because its often slow and painful and you're bleeding capital.
Also realize that a bad/incompetent programmer is a NET NEGATIVE.... not just net 0!
(obviously being 'ridiculous' is subjective, and highly dependent on the roles and responsibilities of the job).
Google on the other hand actually could afford to be less ridiculous.. they just choose not to.
- chc 16y agoThis isn't about rejecting bad programmers — it's about rejecting good ones. If you can't afford a bad hire, that means you should spend more time and care trying to determine accurately whether somebody is good rather than relying on a rough heuristic with a strong negative bias — especially if you find that your heuristic is rejecting everybody.
- sghael 16y agoyou make a valid point, and i completely agree. It's about more efficiently honing in on the best candidates. And the trick is to do that early in the process, especially when the hiring process is typically front-loaded with mostly crap candidates. I've thought A LOT about this problem... so much so that my web-startup is attempting to solve one aspect of this problem (see my HN profile for the link).