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How to hire A players: Offer way above current market value. How to hire B players: Offer market value. How to hire C players: Offer below market value. You

How to hire A players: Offer way above current market value. How to hire B players: Offer market value. How to hire C players: Offer below market value. You do two things when you offer more money. 1) You are more careful about who you hire. 2) You actually attract good people who would make a move for that kind of money. I would love to hear an inverse argument against this.

DanBC 15y ago
I don't know what GCHQ pays for programmers or mathematicians. I imagine that Cliff Cocks (invented public key crypto before RSA) didn't get the many millions of dollars that RSA did. So; offer an environment where people want to work. Give them interesting work. Add a dollop of patriotism.
- bbwharris 15y ago
  Work environment definitely matters. If the environment isn't any good, then the pay had better be great. Ultimately, if you had an interesting product, a great environment and offered extremely competitive salaries then you would most likely end up with interest from more people in the "A" range.
eric-hu 15y ago
The finance industry tends to offer way more for people with a strong technical background to do quantitative analysis work. To use real world examples, no amount of money you offer Salman Khan now would pull him away from his non-profit Khan academy to go back to the hedge fund industry. If you're going to point to your step 2, then that sounds like a tautology. "Attract good people who would make a move for more money. Offer them more money"
- bbwharris 15y ago
  That's actually an excellent point. Uber personal success would completely remove the desire to make a move for money. Isn't that what acquihiring is about though? Purchase the talent that wont make the move for money.
- anonymoushn 15y ago
  I suspect you can get by with only the A players who are not yet loaded.
adrianhoward 15y ago
Silly money isn't a good recruiting tactic in my experience (from the original dot com boom days - which was the only time I ever had silly money available :-): * It motivates B and C players more. So you get a lot more chaff to filter out in your application process. You also get many more D players (the ones who are knowingly incompetent and are actively trying to deceive you into recruiting them). * The major motivation of A players usually isn't money (once you reach the "fair wage" stage). So you don't attract that many extra A players. * Some of the A players who do get tempted by the extra cash discover that it's not quite as wonderful as they expect and leave for more interesting work. Wasting large chunks of your time and money. * It may turn some A players off. There's a unwritten rule that you get more cash to make up for dull work. So offering silly money implies to some that the work is going to be exceptionally uninteresting. The absolute best way I know to recruit A players is: 0) Understand the role that needs filling and the kind of person that needs to fill it 1) Have a really interesting job 2) Know how to access the A players (I'm amazed at the number of organisations I come across that skip step 0...)
- pacaro 15y ago
  Silly money may not be a good recruiting tactic, but the importance of understanding what the market actually is for the A players cannot be understated. So to add to your excellent list 3) Be prepared to be truly market competitive in salary - your target A player may have a 20 year consistent track record of getting sh*t done, respect their sense of self worth. Being immodest I consider myself an A player, when a startup offering "competitive salary and benefits" low-balls my current income by 50% they've wasted my time and theirs
  - jquery 15y ago
    > the importance of understanding what the market actually is for the A players cannot be understated. This can't be emphasized enough. What you consider "silly money" probably isn't silly money to an A player. In fact they may even find it low.
    - adrianhoward 15y ago

DanBC 15y ago

I don't know what GCHQ pays for programmers or mathematicians. I imagine that Cliff Cocks (invented public key crypto before RSA) didn't get the many millions of dollars that RSA did. So; offer an environment where people want to work. Give them interesting work. Add a dollop of patriotism.

bbwharris 15y ago
Work environment definitely matters. If the environment isn't any good, then the pay had better be great. Ultimately, if you had an interesting product, a great environment and offered extremely competitive salaries then you would most likely end up with interest from more people in the "A" range.

eric-hu 15y ago

The finance industry tends to offer way more for people with a strong technical background to do quantitative analysis work. To use real world examples, no amount of money you offer Salman Khan now would pull him away from his non-profit Khan academy to go back to the hedge fund industry. If you're going to point to your step 2, then that sounds like a tautology. "Attract good people who would make a move for more money. Offer them more money"

bbwharris 15y ago
That's actually an excellent point. Uber personal success would completely remove the desire to make a move for money. Isn't that what acquihiring is about though? Purchase the talent that wont make the move for money.
anonymoushn 15y ago
I suspect you can get by with only the A players who are not yet loaded.

adrianhoward 15y ago

Silly money isn't a good recruiting tactic in my experience (from the original dot com boom days - which was the only time I ever had silly money available :-): * It motivates B and C players more. So you get a lot more chaff to filter out in your application process. You also get many more D players (the ones who are knowingly incompetent and are actively trying to deceive you into recruiting them). * The major motivation of A players usually isn't money (once you reach the "fair wage" stage). So you don't attract that many extra A players. * Some of the A players who do get tempted by the extra cash discover that it's not quite as wonderful as they expect and leave for more interesting work. Wasting large chunks of your time and money. * It may turn some A players off. There's a unwritten rule that you get more cash to make up for dull work. So offering silly money implies to some that the work is going to be exceptionally uninteresting. The absolute best way I know to recruit A players is: 0) Understand the role that needs filling and the kind of person that needs to fill it 1) Have a really interesting job 2) Know how to access the A players (I'm amazed at the number of organisations I come across that skip step 0...)

pacaro 15y ago
Silly money may not be a good recruiting tactic, but the importance of understanding what the market actually is for the A players cannot be understated. So to add to your excellent list 3) Be prepared to be truly market competitive in salary - your target A player may have a 20 year consistent track record of getting sh*t done, respect their sense of self worth. Being immodest I consider myself an A player, when a startup offering "competitive salary and benefits" low-balls my current income by 50% they've wasted my time and theirs
- jquery 15y ago
  > the importance of understanding what the market actually is for the A players cannot be understated. This can't be emphasized enough. What you consider "silly money" probably isn't silly money to an A player. In fact they may even find it low.
  - adrianhoward 15y ago