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I feel like the whole genre of 'How to tell if someone will perform well' is trying to squeeze blood from stone. I've worked with a lot of different people, and

I feel like the whole genre of 'How to tell if someone will perform well' is trying to squeeze blood from stone. I've worked with a lot of different people, and the more broad my experiences become, the less I think I am able to tell who is good and who isn't. I've worked with people who have extraordinarily high output, but slowed everyone around them down because they filled absolutely no-one in on their decisions and changes, so we were all left trying to beat the next code-base warping idea. I've worked with people that accomplished almost nothing, but lifted morale so much that they more than made up for their lack of productivity. (I wouldn't recommend looking for this scenario though, most low-output individuals drag morale down...) How many marriages do you think would make it 5 years down the road with only a month of knowing each other? A week? A handful of 1-hour interviews? I mean, that's the kind of time commitment you are looking at with a job. Just filter out people who are obviously bad fits, and fire fast. The diminishing returns of trying X, Y, and Z, to me, just aren't worth it, and if you are a small company, you've got better things to dedicate brain power to.

hobs 5y ago
Also another thing is that someone's circumstances play decently into their work ethic and their team pose - I have seen people play out poorly at one company and then excel at another - at this point unless the person is actively harmful I try to avoid too much overthinking of the whys they dont fit in a job.
danielovichdk 5y ago
Totally agree. And it has become this quest for presumably so-called high performers to enable themselves and tell others how to spot something or someone. Not only is it boring to listen to, but very much subjective. You cannot measure quality. Its simply too difficult with all the variables in play over time.
Gravityloss 5y ago
I've also seen people whose output changes. Some people really not developing fast at the start but after a few years, finding a new steep and steady upwards trajectory.
sweetheart 5y ago
> and fire fast. I'd straight up not work for a place that took this approach. Seems like a great way to fuck over the folks who made a big life change to join you. Though this philosophy is probably super effective, as long as you're willing to not think about the effects it has on others. Yikes!
- forbiddenvoid 5y ago
  Yep. Power dynamics are a real thing. The relative risk for an employee joining a new company is WAY higher than it is for that company.
  - BobbyJo 5y ago
    Not in software. At least not in the US. I have very little fear of being let go. If it's not a good fit, I'd personally rather spend my time elsewhere.
    - 8note 5y ago
      If you're working on a visa, that means you're in rush mode to find a new company and a new visa, otherwise you need to start moving country
    - Bud 5y ago
      You left out the vital third part of that, which is "not for you in your particular set of applicable privileges and life circumstances".
      - BobbyJo 5y ago
        I believe the post was mostly aimed at employers seeking highly paid, highly skilled, professionals. I was responding in the same vein.
        jlokier 5y ago
        I believe the thrust of the GP's point is that your position is quite particular to you, as there are plenty of highly-skilled, highly-paid professional software developers, even in the US, who struggle to find good, well-paid work quickly after being laid off, so have legitimate reason to worry about being let go. For example, that may be due to any combination of age, skin colour, geography, ethnicity, visa/citizenship, neurodivergence, gender, family dependents, or other factors outside the person's control, helpfully summarised by the umbrella word "privilege". After all, as is often said here, hiring is broken. It's not enough to be highly skilled.
vletal 5y ago
> fire fast My former company fired bunch of people at the beginning of COVID, because of the reaction of markets and our clients, some of whom left us. The fired employees were either new hires or bad apples. IMO it cleaned up the air a lot at the time. On the other hand firing people is costly. For small to mid size companies, this advice might not be a as viable as it sounds.
greggman3 5y ago
> How many marriages do you think would make it 5 years down the road with only a month of knowing each other? A week? A handful of 1-hour interviews? I mean, that's the kind of time commitment you are looking at with a job. I've heard people claim arranged marriages last longer, on average, then non. Of course there are all kinds of confounding factors. The number one though seems to be the expectation to make it work instead of just giving up and moving on if things aren't perfect.
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  > The number one though seems to be the expectation to make it work instead of just giving up and moving on if things aren't perfect. Cultures that arrange marriages typically do not allow divorce. Even if we carry that comparison through, the marriages are normally arranged by family, people who have known you your whole life, and probably want you to not hate your spouse. Hiring via references from people that have worked together for a long time are much more useful than interviews and personality tests.
- erdos4d 5y ago
  I took a year of sociology in college. One bit of wisdom that out professor gave us was how arranged marriages happen in countries where there is immense pressure to conform to traditional gender roles. He literally described these societies as hammering a person through a form to get the requisite shape the society wanted. In societies like that, you can pair up any two people and it will likely work because both know precisely what is expected of them, and there is immense pressure again to make it work, no matter what.
- macksd 5y ago
  And going to another extreme - I know couples who have lived together for years before deciding to get married, and the marriage really didn't last very long at all. A lot of sociological explanations but the point I really want to make is you can't always look at something that doesn't work out and assume that you would have made a better decision with more time. We could double the size of our interview panels and still get people that weren't right.
polote 5y ago
Your objective is to create good teams, but the goal of Daniel Gross it to find unicorns. That's not the same thing. You could really have the worst culture and the best mismatch of talent and still have a unicorn. That's the whole job of seed VC investors to be better than random at selecting people who will end up creating unicorns. So I disagree it is "trying to squeeze blood from stone"
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  > Your objective is to create good teams, but the goal of Daniel Gross it to find unicorns. That's fair. In the context of placing bets, the dynamic is different, but VCs have the benefit of simply not investing in follow up rounds, which is as close to 'firing' as they can get. > You could really have the worst culture and the best mismatch of talent and still have a unicorn. True. However, I'd be willing to bet there is predictive power in how horrible a company's culture is in the early stages. > That's the whole job of seed VC investors to be better than random at selecting people who will end up creating unicorns. So I disagree it is "trying to squeeze blood from stone" Of the VCs I know and have met, the successful ones don't give much (almost no) weight to personality tests, outside of more obvious 'red-flags'. The checklist I've seen is: 1) History of entrepreneurial success. This is probably the best way to get in anyone's door. 2) History of domain success. They want to see that you know what you are talking about and come with the connections necessary to make the venture successful. 3) Does the founder's approach to the problem align with the firm's. Most high-quality firms look to invest in areas where their partners have deep domain knowledge, and they look for companies who they believe are making good bets. There are very "impression" agnostic measures. I wouldn't put a lot of weight on "energy", but hey, I'm not a VC, so what do I know :P
drewcoo 5y ago
> 'How to tell if someone will perform well' is trying to squeeze blood from stone Well, there seems to be an awful lot of blood . . . Oh! I bet it's from the wringing but not the stone. Nice illusion, though.
monksy 5y ago
Thank you for saying this. I was going to say the same but in a shorter and more incendiary manner. The only thing I full heartedly disagree with you is on the fire fast part. It's a lot better to move them into another department.. sometimes it's not the person it's the environment they're put in. If you're too small... this is the part of doing business is to leave them better than you found them.
orev 5y ago
> people who have extraordinarily high output, but slowed everyone around them I’m pretty convinced that most high performers follow this pattern. They’re really good at making it very visible all the stuff they’re doing, but they only focus on what’s visible, and leave all the underlying details/maintenance for the “lesser” employees to clean up after them. Management jumps them from project to project because of how “good” they are, meanwhile every team they leave behind has to pick up the pieces. This has the perverse result of making everyone else appear to be low performers, because they’re too bogged down bailing out the leaky boat.

hobs 5y ago

Also another thing is that someone's circumstances play decently into their work ethic and their team pose - I have seen people play out poorly at one company and then excel at another - at this point unless the person is actively harmful I try to avoid too much overthinking of the whys they dont fit in a job.

danielovichdk 5y ago

Totally agree. And it has become this quest for presumably so-called high performers to enable themselves and tell others how to spot something or someone. Not only is it boring to listen to, but very much subjective. You cannot measure quality. Its simply too difficult with all the variables in play over time.

Gravityloss 5y ago

I've also seen people whose output changes. Some people really not developing fast at the start but after a few years, finding a new steep and steady upwards trajectory.

sweetheart 5y ago

> and fire fast. I'd straight up not work for a place that took this approach. Seems like a great way to fuck over the folks who made a big life change to join you. Though this philosophy is probably super effective, as long as you're willing to not think about the effects it has on others. Yikes!

forbiddenvoid 5y ago
Yep. Power dynamics are a real thing. The relative risk for an employee joining a new company is WAY higher than it is for that company.
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  Not in software. At least not in the US. I have very little fear of being let go. If it's not a good fit, I'd personally rather spend my time elsewhere.
  - 8note 5y ago
    If you're working on a visa, that means you're in rush mode to find a new company and a new visa, otherwise you need to start moving country
  - Bud 5y ago
    You left out the vital third part of that, which is "not for you in your particular set of applicable privileges and life circumstances".
    - BobbyJo 5y ago
      I believe the post was mostly aimed at employers seeking highly paid, highly skilled, professionals. I was responding in the same vein.
      - jlokier 5y ago
        I believe the thrust of the GP's point is that your position is quite particular to you, as there are plenty of highly-skilled, highly-paid professional software developers, even in the US, who struggle to find good, well-paid work quickly after being laid off, so have legitimate reason to worry about being let go. For example, that may be due to any combination of age, skin colour, geography, ethnicity, visa/citizenship, neurodivergence, gender, family dependents, or other factors outside the person's control, helpfully summarised by the umbrella word "privilege". After all, as is often said here, hiring is broken. It's not enough to be highly skilled.

vletal 5y ago

> fire fast My former company fired bunch of people at the beginning of COVID, because of the reaction of markets and our clients, some of whom left us. The fired employees were either new hires or bad apples. IMO it cleaned up the air a lot at the time. On the other hand firing people is costly. For small to mid size companies, this advice might not be a as viable as it sounds.

greggman3 5y ago

> How many marriages do you think would make it 5 years down the road with only a month of knowing each other? A week? A handful of 1-hour interviews? I mean, that's the kind of time commitment you are looking at with a job. I've heard people claim arranged marriages last longer, on average, then non. Of course there are all kinds of confounding factors. The number one though seems to be the expectation to make it work instead of just giving up and moving on if things aren't perfect.

BobbyJo 5y ago
> The number one though seems to be the expectation to make it work instead of just giving up and moving on if things aren't perfect. Cultures that arrange marriages typically do not allow divorce. Even if we carry that comparison through, the marriages are normally arranged by family, people who have known you your whole life, and probably want you to not hate your spouse. Hiring via references from people that have worked together for a long time are much more useful than interviews and personality tests.
erdos4d 5y ago
I took a year of sociology in college. One bit of wisdom that out professor gave us was how arranged marriages happen in countries where there is immense pressure to conform to traditional gender roles. He literally described these societies as hammering a person through a form to get the requisite shape the society wanted. In societies like that, you can pair up any two people and it will likely work because both know precisely what is expected of them, and there is immense pressure again to make it work, no matter what.
macksd 5y ago
And going to another extreme - I know couples who have lived together for years before deciding to get married, and the marriage really didn't last very long at all. A lot of sociological explanations but the point I really want to make is you can't always look at something that doesn't work out and assume that you would have made a better decision with more time. We could double the size of our interview panels and still get people that weren't right.

polote 5y ago

Your objective is to create good teams, but the goal of Daniel Gross it to find unicorns. That's not the same thing. You could really have the worst culture and the best mismatch of talent and still have a unicorn. That's the whole job of seed VC investors to be better than random at selecting people who will end up creating unicorns. So I disagree it is "trying to squeeze blood from stone"

BobbyJo 5y ago
> Your objective is to create good teams, but the goal of Daniel Gross it to find unicorns. That's fair. In the context of placing bets, the dynamic is different, but VCs have the benefit of simply not investing in follow up rounds, which is as close to 'firing' as they can get. > You could really have the worst culture and the best mismatch of talent and still have a unicorn. True. However, I'd be willing to bet there is predictive power in how horrible a company's culture is in the early stages. > That's the whole job of seed VC investors to be better than random at selecting people who will end up creating unicorns. So I disagree it is "trying to squeeze blood from stone" Of the VCs I know and have met, the successful ones don't give much (almost no) weight to personality tests, outside of more obvious 'red-flags'. The checklist I've seen is: 1) History of entrepreneurial success. This is probably the best way to get in anyone's door. 2) History of domain success. They want to see that you know what you are talking about and come with the connections necessary to make the venture successful. 3) Does the founder's approach to the problem align with the firm's. Most high-quality firms look to invest in areas where their partners have deep domain knowledge, and they look for companies who they believe are making good bets. There are very "impression" agnostic measures. I wouldn't put a lot of weight on "energy", but hey, I'm not a VC, so what do I know :P

drewcoo 5y ago

> 'How to tell if someone will perform well' is trying to squeeze blood from stone Well, there seems to be an awful lot of blood . . . Oh! I bet it's from the wringing but not the stone. Nice illusion, though.

monksy 5y ago

Thank you for saying this. I was going to say the same but in a shorter and more incendiary manner. The only thing I full heartedly disagree with you is on the fire fast part. It's a lot better to move them into another department.. sometimes it's not the person it's the environment they're put in. If you're too small... this is the part of doing business is to leave them better than you found them.

orev 5y ago

> people who have extraordinarily high output, but slowed everyone around them I’m pretty convinced that most high performers follow this pattern. They’re really good at making it very visible all the stuff they’re doing, but they only focus on what’s visible, and leave all the underlying details/maintenance for the “lesser” employees to clean up after them. Management jumps them from project to project because of how “good” they are, meanwhile every team they leave behind has to pick up the pieces. This has the perverse result of making everyone else appear to be low performers, because they’re too bogged down bailing out the leaky boat.