Hiring is random. There have been numerous studies that show people are highly influenced by interviews despite the fact that it's not a good indicator of abili

Hiring is random. There have been numerous studies that show people are highly influenced by interviews despite the fact that it's not a good indicator of ability. Would you have hired Systrom or Krieger (instagram) as engineers? AFAIK, they had no experience building large-scale sites, yet put together instagram. Would you have hired Paul Bucheit when he applied to Google? AFAIK, he hadn't done anything spectacular yet. A-players are by definition people who have done something big. Who hired these people to give them a chance to do something big? What about the larger group of people whose startup flamed out before they could demo their skills? It's all a crapshoot. Hiring is easy. A small startup is receiving resumes from a self-selected group of people who want to work there despite the low pay and lower job security. Most of the people reading HN could build an instagram-type system. So once you filter for ability with some stupid programming quiz, just pick the guy you like. If your company succeeds, he will magically be considered an A-player.