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From the website - > Out of the people I had hired at my last startup: > 12% of hires where exceptional hires (I would instantly hire again) > 42% of Hire we

From the website - > Out of the people I had hired at my last startup: > 12% of hires where exceptional hires (I would instantly hire again) > 42% of Hire were good hires. (I wouldn’t hire again but they did a fine job) > 29% of hires were bad hires. (They didn’t do a good job and were eventually let go) > 17% of hires were very bad hires (They had a negative effect on the company culture and other staff) These seem like extremely poor numbers. I haven't hired a ton of people but all of them have been excellent, though some that I was peripherally involved in hiring have been just good. I'm curious what other people feel that their ratio is.

version_five 5y ago
This could roughly be saying half of hires are below average, and the distribution is bell shaped (or triangular to a first approximation). For many jobs, below average can be equivalent to bad. If you have money to spend, or can wait to hire, you can beat the averages. I've hired a fair amount and done well too, but only by refusing to hire anyone if there are not suitable candidates that applied, which can burn a lot of political capital (your boss sees you've spend x time and money and had y applicant and z interviews and you refuse to hire anyone). Good, cheap, available, pick two.
zitterbewegung 5y ago
The percentiles seem to fit the Pareto distribution exactly. People seem to use it to describe intelligence or performance at a task https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution?wprov=sfti...
sokoloff 5y ago
Employees aren’t scratch tickets. The on-boarding, training, engineering culture and practices all contribute strongly to whether the prospective employee will turn out to be excellent or not. (I leave it to your judgment to guess how a place where 42% “were good hires, did a fine job, but I wouldn’t hire them again” falls on that spectrum.)
shaggyfrog 5y ago
> (I wouldn’t hire again but they did a fine job) This alone makes no sense to me. It's a contradiction. So I assume the website/author thinks they're a kind of mega-hustler 1000x developer or something.
- chinchilla2020 5y ago
  Most likely. Also the extremely specific numbers provided.
peterthehacker 5y ago
Yeah, it sounds so bad that it’s probably made up. It implies that the company has 46% turnover or firing rate (29+17), but average turnover for tech companies is 10%-15% [0]. [0] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/news/is-everyone-replaceable-at-netflix-5313106 https://www.linkedin.com/feed/news/is-everyone-replaceable-a...

version_five 5y ago

This could roughly be saying half of hires are below average, and the distribution is bell shaped (or triangular to a first approximation). For many jobs, below average can be equivalent to bad. If you have money to spend, or can wait to hire, you can beat the averages. I've hired a fair amount and done well too, but only by refusing to hire anyone if there are not suitable candidates that applied, which can burn a lot of political capital (your boss sees you've spend x time and money and had y applicant and z interviews and you refuse to hire anyone). Good, cheap, available, pick two.

zitterbewegung 5y ago

The percentiles seem to fit the Pareto distribution exactly. People seem to use it to describe intelligence or performance at a task https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution?wprov=sfti...

sokoloff 5y ago

Employees aren’t scratch tickets. The on-boarding, training, engineering culture and practices all contribute strongly to whether the prospective employee will turn out to be excellent or not. (I leave it to your judgment to guess how a place where 42% “were good hires, did a fine job, but I wouldn’t hire them again” falls on that spectrum.)

shaggyfrog 5y ago

> (I wouldn’t hire again but they did a fine job) This alone makes no sense to me. It's a contradiction. So I assume the website/author thinks they're a kind of mega-hustler 1000x developer or something.

chinchilla2020 5y ago
Most likely. Also the extremely specific numbers provided.

peterthehacker 5y ago

Yeah, it sounds so bad that it’s probably made up. It implies that the company has 46% turnover or firing rate (29+17), but average turnover for tech companies is 10%-15% [0]. [0] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/news/is-everyone-replaceable-at-netflix-5313106 https://www.linkedin.com/feed/news/is-everyone-replaceable-a...