4 ms·

> HTG: So let’s go the opposite way now. What did you do “wrong” at Atari that people could learn from today? > Bushnell: I think that I—how do I put this with

by psim1 4y ago

> HTG: So let’s go the opposite way now. What did you do “wrong” at Atari that people could learn from today? > Bushnell: I think that I—how do I put this without sounding like an asshole? I put up with incompetence more than I should have. I should have been quicker to fire. I feel two ways about this. You need to give people time to grow into a role and time to get really good at it. But you also need to watch closely and make sure that growth and expertise are occurring, and if not, get better people in. This is delicate. I think most orgs err on the side of grace. And the ones that err on the side of "asshole" and just do a lot of firing are also doing it wrong.

adam_arthur 4y ago
Having a fire fast culture creates a stressful atmosphere. It's better to have high standards to begin with to avoid needing to fire people. If you're firing a double digit percent of your hires, there's something wrong with your hiring process. Most companies use metrics that are weakly correlated with success on the job. When you've hired dozens of people, who will be successful or not becomes quite obvious.
- AceJohnny2 4y ago
  > It's better to have high standards to begin with to avoid needing to fire people. Which leads to the job interview system that doesn't satisfy anybody either.
  - adam_arthur 4y ago
    The tech interview system employed by FAANG is an example of a weak correlation style interview. Actually the structure of the interview is mostly fine, but the criteria being judged is usually off. 1) Questions should be structured such that they're modeled in a real world context, and somewhat close to the nature of the type of problems your company/division solves. 2) For most companies, coding ability and quality is more important than CS theory strength. Success on a coding problem for these companies should be judged by pace of coding and quality of solution, rather than time complexity of the result. Run time complexity of an algorithm is almost 100% orthogonal to ability to write high quality code quickly, yet this is where 99% of the interview focus is for most companies. That being said, if you're hiring somebody to design a database storage system, sure, theory is more important in that context. But 99% of jobs are not that. Can't tell you how many people I've seen join FAANG that I've worked with who are actually quite poor performers in a real world context. It's very easy to grind leetcode and game the system as its structured. Its true too that at scale the correlation is probably good enough to end up with a decent workforce though. But also very easy to tweak judging criteria to be more highly correlated to real world success. I've hired close to 100 engineers, and its immediately obvious to me who will perform well by how they carry themselves in the interview. I pretty much don't even take into consideration whether they reach an optimal runtime solution. One of the best guys I hired couldn't even implement a tree traversal/DFS/BFS in the interview
- mlyle 4y ago
  > If you're firing a double digit percent of your hires, there's something wrong with your hiring process. This feels a little optimistic. You expect more than 90% of hires to be a really good fit? I feel like it's more normal to have 1 in 5 or 6 or so eventually not work out. Some will self-select themselves out, so you don't need to fire quite 16-20%.
  - adam_arthur 4y ago
    It's very easy to achieve if your process is designed to be correlated with success on the job. Most aren't though, they're designed as a contrived game that's tangentially related to performance on the job. Which works decent enough if you fire the bottom 20%, but is totally avoidable Having an authoritative body to make the final hire/no hire decision is important too. Needs to be tightly controlled and consistent. Letting random HMs make the decision will inevitably lead to decline in quality. If somebody who's good at their job can't do well on your interview without studying, it's a sign your process is not assessing what matters. A good process will select for people who are good, despite whether they study beforehand or not. I've never had high conviction in a hire and have them underperform on the job. If you do, you need to reassess what criteria you're using to make hiring decisions. (Never recently, in the early days, yes)
    - mlyle 4y ago
      I don't like the excessive puzzling and contrived interview processes with excessive whiteboard coding, grilling, etc. I still think outperforming 1 in 10 is very hard. Especially since I've had to hire more people than I've had "high conviction" in. And beyond that, you just can't assess work ethic, diligence, attention to detail, etc, from an interview. You can get some secondary indicators that are correlated with that on the job, but imperfectly so.
      - adam_arthur 4y ago
        If you're hiring people you don't have high conviction in, then of course you'll get relatively worse outcomes. I would question why. I do think companies need to set a target aptitude percentile they're trying to hire, as it has to be somewhat aligned with comp percentile to have success. You can't try to hire 99th percentile engineers with 50th percentile pay and expect to land any hires But if you set a lower target skill percentile to match lower comp, then you're actively choosing to lower the bar, so there should also be a lower bar for considering somebody a poor hire. At least in our case we were able to get by targeting ~80th percentile engineers at like 60th percentile comp. Mostly through hiring people that didn't know their worth in the market, but also being a good place to work, with low attrition (non comp factors)
arinlen 4y ago
> I feel two ways about this. You need to give people time to grow into a role and time to get really good at it. But you also need to watch closely and make sure that growth and expertise are occurring, and if not, get better people in. I found the way you chose to frame this to be a bit disturbing. You framed the employer as a passive watcher of a process where they invest zero and provides zero input, except for the part where they feel entitled to terminate staff for the sole sin of not blossoming greatness in the vast desert of growth that was your creation. How about this: if what you seek is growth and expertise, why not explicitly nurture that in the environment you create?
- manmal 4y ago
  I agree about culture & environment. There are people though who barely manage to write fizz buzz, and I believe you wouldn’t want to pay them for programming work.
- psim1 4y ago
  I'm sorry I wrote it in such a way to give you that idea. I fully agree with "explicitly nurture [growth and expertise] in the environment you create."
antiterra 4y ago
Atari treated their employees poorly, which is why Activision was formed. I give Bushnell zero credibility on this point. In fact, it could be argued that Bushnell’s poor treatment of employees was the harbinger of the first video game crash.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  My understanding is that Bushnell treated developers better than Warner. Activision was founded after Bushnell left Atari.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - antiterra 4y ago
    My mistake. I think you’re right and it was Ray Kassar who was so dismissive of talent. Bushnell was around after Warner but likely in the typical ‘keep them on as advisor in case they have some piece of critical knowledge’ role.
- hgfhgfhgf 4y ago
  You have your history wrong. Activision's founders were upset with Warner Communications, not Bushnell.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  It really couldn't. https://kotaku.com/sex-pong-and-pioneers-what-atari-was-really-like-ac-1822930057 https://kotaku.com/sex-pong-and-pioneers-what-atari-was-real... > Over the last week, Kotaku interviewed 12 of Atari’s earliest female employees, in the hopes of hearing their stories—good or bad—about working at Atari in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. The culture they told us about was certainly, as Playboy described it, one of “sex, drugs, and video games,” but one in which all 12 employees say they freely participated, if they participated at all. Many interviewees said it was the best job they ever had, adding that news of Bushnell’s rescinded award struck them as shocking or unfair.

by psim1 4y ago

adam_arthur 4y ago

Having a fire fast culture creates a stressful atmosphere. It's better to have high standards to begin with to avoid needing to fire people. If you're firing a double digit percent of your hires, there's something wrong with your hiring process. Most companies use metrics that are weakly correlated with success on the job. When you've hired dozens of people, who will be successful or not becomes quite obvious.

AceJohnny2 4y ago
> It's better to have high standards to begin with to avoid needing to fire people. Which leads to the job interview system that doesn't satisfy anybody either.
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  The tech interview system employed by FAANG is an example of a weak correlation style interview. Actually the structure of the interview is mostly fine, but the criteria being judged is usually off. 1) Questions should be structured such that they're modeled in a real world context, and somewhat close to the nature of the type of problems your company/division solves. 2) For most companies, coding ability and quality is more important than CS theory strength. Success on a coding problem for these companies should be judged by pace of coding and quality of solution, rather than time complexity of the result. Run time complexity of an algorithm is almost 100% orthogonal to ability to write high quality code quickly, yet this is where 99% of the interview focus is for most companies. That being said, if you're hiring somebody to design a database storage system, sure, theory is more important in that context. But 99% of jobs are not that. Can't tell you how many people I've seen join FAANG that I've worked with who are actually quite poor performers in a real world context. It's very easy to grind leetcode and game the system as its structured. Its true too that at scale the correlation is probably good enough to end up with a decent workforce though. But also very easy to tweak judging criteria to be more highly correlated to real world success. I've hired close to 100 engineers, and its immediately obvious to me who will perform well by how they carry themselves in the interview. I pretty much don't even take into consideration whether they reach an optimal runtime solution. One of the best guys I hired couldn't even implement a tree traversal/DFS/BFS in the interview
mlyle 4y ago
> If you're firing a double digit percent of your hires, there's something wrong with your hiring process. This feels a little optimistic. You expect more than 90% of hires to be a really good fit? I feel like it's more normal to have 1 in 5 or 6 or so eventually not work out. Some will self-select themselves out, so you don't need to fire quite 16-20%.
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  It's very easy to achieve if your process is designed to be correlated with success on the job. Most aren't though, they're designed as a contrived game that's tangentially related to performance on the job. Which works decent enough if you fire the bottom 20%, but is totally avoidable Having an authoritative body to make the final hire/no hire decision is important too. Needs to be tightly controlled and consistent. Letting random HMs make the decision will inevitably lead to decline in quality. If somebody who's good at their job can't do well on your interview without studying, it's a sign your process is not assessing what matters. A good process will select for people who are good, despite whether they study beforehand or not. I've never had high conviction in a hire and have them underperform on the job. If you do, you need to reassess what criteria you're using to make hiring decisions. (Never recently, in the early days, yes)
  - mlyle 4y ago
    I don't like the excessive puzzling and contrived interview processes with excessive whiteboard coding, grilling, etc. I still think outperforming 1 in 10 is very hard. Especially since I've had to hire more people than I've had "high conviction" in. And beyond that, you just can't assess work ethic, diligence, attention to detail, etc, from an interview. You can get some secondary indicators that are correlated with that on the job, but imperfectly so.
    - adam_arthur 4y ago
      If you're hiring people you don't have high conviction in, then of course you'll get relatively worse outcomes. I would question why. I do think companies need to set a target aptitude percentile they're trying to hire, as it has to be somewhat aligned with comp percentile to have success. You can't try to hire 99th percentile engineers with 50th percentile pay and expect to land any hires But if you set a lower target skill percentile to match lower comp, then you're actively choosing to lower the bar, so there should also be a lower bar for considering somebody a poor hire. At least in our case we were able to get by targeting ~80th percentile engineers at like 60th percentile comp. Mostly through hiring people that didn't know their worth in the market, but also being a good place to work, with low attrition (non comp factors)

arinlen 4y ago

> I feel two ways about this. You need to give people time to grow into a role and time to get really good at it. But you also need to watch closely and make sure that growth and expertise are occurring, and if not, get better people in. I found the way you chose to frame this to be a bit disturbing. You framed the employer as a passive watcher of a process where they invest zero and provides zero input, except for the part where they feel entitled to terminate staff for the sole sin of not blossoming greatness in the vast desert of growth that was your creation. How about this: if what you seek is growth and expertise, why not explicitly nurture that in the environment you create?

manmal 4y ago
I agree about culture & environment. There are people though who barely manage to write fizz buzz, and I believe you wouldn’t want to pay them for programming work.
psim1 4y ago
I'm sorry I wrote it in such a way to give you that idea. I fully agree with "explicitly nurture [growth and expertise] in the environment you create."

antiterra 4y ago

Atari treated their employees poorly, which is why Activision was formed. I give Bushnell zero credibility on this point. In fact, it could be argued that Bushnell’s poor treatment of employees was the harbinger of the first video game crash.

TMWNN 4y ago
My understanding is that Bushnell treated developers better than Warner. Activision was founded after Bushnell left Atari.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- antiterra 4y ago
  My mistake. I think you’re right and it was Ray Kassar who was so dismissive of talent. Bushnell was around after Warner but likely in the typical ‘keep them on as advisor in case they have some piece of critical knowledge’ role.
hgfhgfhgf 4y ago
You have your history wrong. Activision's founders were upset with Warner Communications, not Bushnell.
KerrAvon 4y ago
It really couldn't. https://kotaku.com/sex-pong-and-pioneers-what-atari-was-really-like-ac-1822930057 https://kotaku.com/sex-pong-and-pioneers-what-atari-was-real... > Over the last week, Kotaku interviewed 12 of Atari’s earliest female employees, in the hopes of hearing their stories—good or bad—about working at Atari in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. The culture they told us about was certainly, as Playboy described it, one of “sex, drugs, and video games,” but one in which all 12 employees say they freely participated, if they participated at all. Many interviewees said it was the best job they ever had, adding that news of Bushnell’s rescinded award struck them as shocking or unfair.