3 ms·

There are many, many bogus things about this post. First of all, I'm ready to stab myself in the eye every time I have to see someone they only hire "A" player

There are many, many bogus things about this post. First of all, I'm ready to stab myself in the eye every time I have to see someone they only hire "A" players. This is getting tiresome and unbelievable - I don't know of any startup that has nothing but "A-player type work" to do. Almost every plausible startup has some work that will be comfortably addressed by a range of abilities and the idea that you're going to stuff your startup full of absolute super-stars (and do well as a result) is just posturing. I am also not entirely sure that someone whose references are, I dunno, busy doing actual work or "on holiday" deserves to be penalized with respect to someone whose references are all hanging around in their office with nothing to do but promote the living shit out of each other in some kind of mutual admiration society. Speaking from experience, I have seen many such cliques of utterly mediocre, self-serving people who would unhesitatingly tell happy stories of how wonderful everyone in their clique was to anyone who asked - even if a more conventional response from further up the management chain would have given a very tepid review of the actual performance of said people. Finally, if you're going to contact a bunch of people out of the blue, adding self-promoting line about your blog is not appropriate. Under the signature line, maybe, but putting it the body text is a dick move.

vellum 15y ago
>mutual admiration society That's very true. I browse Linkedin sometimes, and I'm often surprised to find out x# of people have recommended a terrible ex-coworker.
incongruity 15y ago
Yes. Thank you. I'm glad I'm not the only one who wants to retch when I read posts like that. The underlying ego and assumptions are laughable, at best. Beyond that, however, the poster needs to learn about ROC curves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receiver_operating_characteristic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receiver_operating_characterist...) – for just a moment, let's assume we're genuinely only hiring "A" players – then the challenge is a signal detection problem, pure and simple – sorting the signal from the noise and avoiding both false positives and false negatives. While I have huge issues with the post's method, it's clearly only focused on avoiding false-positives – avoiding hiring someone who's bad but is sold as good/great. Unfortunately, there are real issues with false negatives as well – you may miss out on a fantastic candidate, first and foremost... But, of course, decisions aren't that simple. Anyone who understands decision making knows that decisions depend highly on context – including the context provided by the other options... and if you systematically fail to account for eliminating some number of options, you may well be (foolishly) limiting the range of options and the context of your decision. In short, "A players" are relative... And that idea goes even further. Many stellar employees, innovators, coders, etc. don't start out that way. Sure, some do, but those aren't the people applying and giving you references. Your job, when hiring from a resume pool, is precisely to find those diamonds in the rough – those false negatives.
- mwd_ 15y ago
  This is particularly interesting because it is common to hear complaints that (A) it is hard to find "good" people, and (B) it is hard to go through huge quantities of resumes. If those are both true then clearly it's time to worry about false negatives. Maybe failing to hire isn't such a big deal? Maybe there's an element of bravado in claiming that nobody's good enough? Or is a lot of tech hiring just horribly misguided? I'm not sure. Personally I've got to say that I also find the "rock star" rhetoric to be a huge turn-off. When I see it in a job ad I think of how horrible it would be to have to work with a club of self-described "A" players. The gruelling interviews are another perverse system that I think has a negative effect. If you can easily get lots of interviews are you going to bother with the five stage interview with four hours of quiz questions and "homework"?
  - incongruity 15y ago
    Well – the one thing I'll say is that interview processes like that screen out people who are both good and know what they're worth – which is one of the subtle subtexts in much of the hiring processes being discussed/described here – everyone wants the cheap rockstar – not the rockstar that expects rockstar prices and rockstar access... or well, few people do and those people don't use these sorts of hiring mechanisms.
jakejake 15y ago
Agree. Hiring all A-players is something people say who do very little hiring (or have ridiculous amounts of money, though I've never had the luxury myself). Hiring all A-players means your paying way too much for your staff. A great manager with a great process will be able to get results from a team of all skill levels.
jaylevitt 15y ago
There are indeed many bogus things, but I do like the idea of an opt-in vs opt-out email. Reference checks, as they exist today, are useless. Doing them as an opt-in email at least gives you a small chance of getting some signal. No, you can't use it to sort them into your A-B-C rock star instant hire buckets. But it's a signal. Signals are good.
ertdfgcb 15y ago
I thought the line promoting his blog was amusing - he put it on an example letter for the reader to use (it says "sincerely (you)" at the bottom) as a joke. I don't think it was a actual e-mail that he would send out.
jasoncrawford 15y ago
Eric Paley had a great post titled "The Curve of Talent" in which he said "Those who suggest that startups should only hire A players are grade inflators": http://epaley.posterous.com/the-curve-of-talent http://epaley.posterous.com/the-curve-of-talent

vellum 15y ago

>mutual admiration society That's very true. I browse Linkedin sometimes, and I'm often surprised to find out x# of people have recommended a terrible ex-coworker.

incongruity 15y ago

Yes. Thank you. I'm glad I'm not the only one who wants to retch when I read posts like that. The underlying ego and assumptions are laughable, at best. Beyond that, however, the poster needs to learn about ROC curves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receiver_operating_characteristic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receiver_operating_characterist...) – for just a moment, let's assume we're genuinely only hiring "A" players – then the challenge is a signal detection problem, pure and simple – sorting the signal from the noise and avoiding both false positives and false negatives. While I have huge issues with the post's method, it's clearly only focused on avoiding false-positives – avoiding hiring someone who's bad but is sold as good/great. Unfortunately, there are real issues with false negatives as well – you may miss out on a fantastic candidate, first and foremost... But, of course, decisions aren't that simple. Anyone who understands decision making knows that decisions depend highly on context – including the context provided by the other options... and if you systematically fail to account for eliminating some number of options, you may well be (foolishly) limiting the range of options and the context of your decision. In short, "A players" are relative... And that idea goes even further. Many stellar employees, innovators, coders, etc. don't start out that way. Sure, some do, but those aren't the people applying and giving you references. Your job, when hiring from a resume pool, is precisely to find those diamonds in the rough – those false negatives.

mwd_ 15y ago
This is particularly interesting because it is common to hear complaints that (A) it is hard to find "good" people, and (B) it is hard to go through huge quantities of resumes. If those are both true then clearly it's time to worry about false negatives. Maybe failing to hire isn't such a big deal? Maybe there's an element of bravado in claiming that nobody's good enough? Or is a lot of tech hiring just horribly misguided? I'm not sure. Personally I've got to say that I also find the "rock star" rhetoric to be a huge turn-off. When I see it in a job ad I think of how horrible it would be to have to work with a club of self-described "A" players. The gruelling interviews are another perverse system that I think has a negative effect. If you can easily get lots of interviews are you going to bother with the five stage interview with four hours of quiz questions and "homework"?
- incongruity 15y ago
  Well – the one thing I'll say is that interview processes like that screen out people who are both good and know what they're worth – which is one of the subtle subtexts in much of the hiring processes being discussed/described here – everyone wants the cheap rockstar – not the rockstar that expects rockstar prices and rockstar access... or well, few people do and those people don't use these sorts of hiring mechanisms.

jakejake 15y ago

Agree. Hiring all A-players is something people say who do very little hiring (or have ridiculous amounts of money, though I've never had the luxury myself). Hiring all A-players means your paying way too much for your staff. A great manager with a great process will be able to get results from a team of all skill levels.

jaylevitt 15y ago

There are indeed many bogus things, but I do like the idea of an opt-in vs opt-out email. Reference checks, as they exist today, are useless. Doing them as an opt-in email at least gives you a small chance of getting some signal. No, you can't use it to sort them into your A-B-C rock star instant hire buckets. But it's a signal. Signals are good.

ertdfgcb 15y ago

I thought the line promoting his blog was amusing - he put it on an example letter for the reader to use (it says "sincerely (you)" at the bottom) as a joke. I don't think it was a actual e-mail that he would send out.

jasoncrawford 15y ago

Eric Paley had a great post titled "The Curve of Talent" in which he said "Those who suggest that startups should only hire A players are grade inflators": http://epaley.posterous.com/the-curve-of-talent http://epaley.posterous.com/the-curve-of-talent