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Disclaimer: said CTO. Happy to answer any questions — though we definitely don’t presume we have all the answers, we’re constantly learning! We are also hirin

• hitekker 8y ago
  I recently heard from friends of friends that Zapier conducts reference checks on its candidates without the candidates' permission. By that I mean: finding previous coworkers on LinkedIn, contacting them out-of-the-blue and asking for an appraisal of the person they may-or-may-not have once worked with. Is there any truth to this rumor?
  • clay_the_ripper 8y ago
    Is there something wrong with doing this?
    • trevelyan 8y ago
      Yes. They may not want people to know they are considering leaving their current job. And they may not keep their job if people find out they aren't fully committed.
    • godzillabrennus 8y ago
      It’s immoral behavior on the employers part to not ask for permission. IMHO it shows how they will be to work for if you take a job.
      • eloff 8y ago
        I don't get why people downvoted you. It is definitely expected that potential employers ask permission. People may apply while having a current job, and not wanting their boss to find out.
        • wsinks 8y ago
          Wow, I didn't realize my expectation was so different. I've always assumed people wouldn't contact my current employer, but why not my previous employers? You're right that it's better to ask permission, then you gain more information about the relationship too. Hm.. good food for thought.
          • scaryclam 8y ago
            Not everything on linkedin is up-to-date or correct. Then there's the issue of some people personally knowing others but the information not being on linkedin. It's pretty easy to accidentally cold call someone for references who will talk to the candidates current employer, and this may even be the reason the candidate left them off of the reference list in the first place.
  • justus87 8y ago
    I interviewed there in August 2017 and they used a service for reference checks that I provided several contacts to.
  • bryanh 8y ago
    We use a service called SkillSurvey for reference checks. It asks the candidate for references in an automated fashion and then the feedback is collected fairly anonymously. We try to be respectful of people’s situations — EG: it’s never appropriate to contact a current employer without permission. We don’t do that.
    • hitekker 8y ago
      Cool, makes sense to me.
    • freedomben 8y ago
      So to be clear, you only contact references that the candidate provided to you and not others such as connections on LinkedIn? Your answer doesn't seem to specifically deny that you contact people not specifically provided, other than employers. By the way I read a little on your job site and Zapier sounds like a great place to work :-)
      • pbreit 8y ago
        “Indirect” references are common in SV.
      • paxys 8y ago
        It would be weird if they randomly found and messaged people from LinkedIn etc. I have, however, seen interviewers and recruiters at a lot of companies reach out to mutual contacts if they find any, and because the SV network is so tight this happens a lot.
        • bryanh 8y ago
          > randomly found and messaged people from LinkedIn We definitely do not do that. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I'll double check internally and make it super clear that isn't acceptable.
      • rajacombinator 8y ago
        In situations like this, lack of explicit denial is generally confirmation.
  • SnootyMonkey 8y ago
    This is something I've never really thought about, the ethics of reference checks. Is anyone aware of a good guide or thoughtful article on the subject?
• roberttod 8y ago
  I've worked as a remote tech lead for a couple of years and I often find myself at 6pm New York time asking an important question to someone in London, 11pm their time. Slack is bad for this, I wonder what people make of me DMing them that late, also I rarely get a response the next day. How does the "Async" blog you mentioned solve these sort of issues? Is it just a regular blog or does it have special features?
  • samastur 8y ago
    Have experience working in teams up to 9 time zones apart, but not working at Zapier. I have phone set up to not disturb me with notifications between 10pm and 7am so I wouldn't mind as long as nobody expects a response before next working day morning. Before I could do that I simply did not have company's chat/email on my phone. My day starts with reviewing any received messages (no matter what channel -- email, chat...) and responding to them. I would find it unprofessional if someone did not. If this wasn't just an occasional oversight, then I would take it up with them.
  • viraptor 8y ago
    Not from zapier. I think it's up to them to disconnect from work chat on their private phones, or silence it out of hours. I worked in TZ 11h away from the rest of the team and unless I was on call, I wouldn't see any messages until morning/Monday. If you don't want it to look like you expect an immediate response, you can always add something like "..., when you start your day."
  • mseebach 8y ago
    Slack has a scheduled do not disturb feature, you can set a period every day when you don't want to be disturbed by notifications. If someone DMs you, Slackbot tells them that you're in do not disturb (and gives them the option to "poke through" and notify you anyway). I work for a company with offices in both Europe and US (and people travelling frequently between them, so you don't always know where they are), and this feature is broadly used.
    • scaryclam 8y ago
• lasersox 8y ago
  Thank you very much for your openness! I am curious if you are you still using Slack or you rely entirely on Async at this point? Thanks!
  • matthewheath 8y ago
    We still use Slack for internal every-day communications. Personally, I treat Async as a summary of things that have gone on around the company this week so I can keep up to date with different departments (Slack is not ideal for doing this.)
    • bryanh 8y ago
      This is how I view it as well!
    • lasersox 8y ago
      It could be a full-time job just keeping track of everything. Do you have a dedicated person for this? Are most of your people in the Western hemisphere? I find that with Slack I need to pay close attention to the stream which can be a major distraction. Also it can be kind of a pain going through scrollback if I was asleep for a few hours while others are working.
      • matthewheath 8y ago
        1. Not really? (In regards to having a dedicated person handling this.) We have a weekly hangout where our CEO raises important issues in the week, and most folks are pretty communicative of major issues (e.g. product will tell support what's changed this week so we can be aware when supporting customers, etc.) I never feel like I'm overwhelmed keeping track of things, since everything is so accessible thanks to Async. It frees me up to let Slack kind of drift past when I'm not working. 2. We're globally distributed. I'm in the UK, for instance, but we have folks in the Eastern Hemisphere too. I will admit that most folks are in the US so right now, we do skew towards the Western Hemisphere, but that might not always be the case. Also, in support, we have a summary channel in Slack where we post the most important things that someone coming online would need to know about. For example, outages, recent issues, policy changes, important messages, etc. all get posted to a specific channel in Slack so you can read them _without_ the noise of chat involved.
• googamooga 8y ago
  What is HyperNews mentioned in your interview?
  • bryanh 8y ago
    That should be "Hacker News", perhaps a typo or garbled phrasing on my part!
• cookiecaper 8y ago
  Experienced remote engineer here with a good deal of experience in k8s, Python, Linux, application architecture and design, the works. Applied to Zapier Infrastructure Engineer position a little over a year ago, if memory serves. Twice, actually; one time my application was closed out almost immediately. Waited several months and the same gig had been reposted and/or reactivated, so I applied again. This time I got a message once a week for about six weeks that said they were reviewing my application, and then I got a message that said they weren't interested. My only contact was an internal recruiter, and I never spoke to or received any information from anyone technical. It was a disappointment because I expected better from a YC company's process. Of course, I can't really blame Zapier for passing, as I'm sure there are a great deal of applicants and, since I never talked to anyone, I can't know whether we'd be a good match, technically or culturally. For example, many remote companies, especially those that are primarily staffed with offshore employees, are just trying to pinch pennies and paper over it by talking about the hipness and uniqueness of their remote workforce. Zapier is a custom Q&A intake application [or, at least the applications I filled out were], so it's irksome to write real answers to those Qs and get nothing back. I'd much rather write an HN post where I can wear my rightly-deserved downvotes and critiques with pride -- then I at least get something for the effort! ;) So, note well, potential applicants: "would love to talk" seems to mean "would love to have you languish in our HR system after you've taken the time to fill out our bespoke long-form questionnaire". Like I said above, usually it's hard to fault companies too heavily for this, but when the CTO is making a personal appeal on HN, I feel like a counterpoint is warranted. Hiring in general seems to go very slowly these days. I don't know if everyone is flooded with fake resumes from "bootcamp grads" or what now, but 5 years ago or so, you could normally expect to hear back within a few days if someone was interested. It's a different ball game now. In the last couple weeks I've gotten two replies to applications I sent in around Christmas time -- one "an invitation to interview" from a well-known company (which I ignored), and one a message from another company that they'd closed out my application in their HR platform. Disclaimer: my experience from memory. Intervals and dates may be fuzzy. Not going to dig up the correspondence.
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• otakucode 8y ago
  Given that you're not handicapped by having your talent pool reduced to those physically close to you by happenstance or willing to uproot their life to get physically near an office, does each opening result in a flood of applicants? Do you find this to be a boon, or a hindrance? You might not be able to compare, but do you think that it makes hiring easier or harder?
  • bryanh 8y ago
    We definitely get a lot of applicants and of course that makes it very difficult to manage at times, but we're also very lucky that so many people want to work for Zapier. We try to be good stewards of that privilege -- which means being prompt and clear in our communication and giving everyone a fair shot. It does make it harder to hire, but it would be even harder at the other extreme -- if no one applied!
• cerebrum 8y ago
  Hello Bryan, you started the company having already a pool of people you knew and trusted. What if you don't have that? I'm worried about security aspects, hacking, etc... How is it possible to start a company with remote hires and still have trust that they won't run away with your code, etc... Especially if the remote hires are in another jurisdiction where legal recourse might be hard or impossible? Thanks
  • bryanh 8y ago
    That is a hard question -- unfortunately it is something you can never be 100% safe on. In the end, you have to trust people to do anything interesting. Generally, we're very careful in hiring, we have basic internal controls, and luckily -- people are generally good. :-)
  • eloff 8y ago
    I don't know what you're so worried about. What's to stop anyone in the office from running away with your code? I mean you could have some problems if you're hiring in China or Russia - but even then most of the time people just want an honest, steady job. Your source code is not usually something that anybody else wants, it would be almost impossible to find a buyer. If you're really worried, just stick to people in developed countries with a sane legal system. But honestly finding people with great communication and technical skills should be a much more important criteria to the success of your company. You're company is much more likely to die from self inflicted wounds than because someone sold your source code to a competitor.
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• zengid 8y ago
  What is your opinion on hiring Juniors for remote work?
  • bryanh 8y ago
    We haven’t done it that much before — but might try to do that more now! You really need a strong foundation of senior engineers to help mentor and support junior engineers so most smaller organizations will generally tend to not hire junior engineers until later.