3 ms·

I was at an organization that went from doing mostly smart things to doing mostly stupid things. One of the smart things they managed to do was recognize that

I was at an organization that went from doing mostly smart things to doing mostly stupid things. One of the smart things they managed to do was recognize that they were top-heavy with senior+ talent who were fixed in their thinking & behavior and aggressively began recruiting new graduates and reaching out to CS/Engineering/Science seniors. They also added some pretty impressive mentoring programs to bring the new people up to speed quickly. Then they switched to doing stupid shit that mostly undermined all that and the newer people started leaving. But it was pretty good for a couple of years.

pc86 2y ago
Ok so let's say for the sake of argument it's a Smart Thing to focus on hiring a bunch of 22 year old fresh graduates. Is that necessarily going to change anything at the leadership level? The GP is talking about managers of managers, I don't know where you've worked in the past but in my experience Directors and VPs are not taking a lot of advice or insight from the entry level new hires.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
  Not directly, no. The point in this case was understanding that the engineering culture had stagnated and needed to be refreshed. The people ordering the change in hiring clearly understood that it would take a long time for any newly introduced behaviors to percolate through the company. But without explicitly addressing the situation, things would just have gotten worse over time. The reality was that in a fairly short time, focusing hiring on new grads actually had the intended effect of improving the way we did things. However, the company started becoming more unpleasant to work for soon after that. And a lot of those new hires, now with a couple years' experience, left. As did I, so I can't say how permanent the changes were.

3 ms·

I was at an organization that went from doing mostly smart things to doing mostly stupid things. One of the smart things they managed to do was recognize that

by HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago

pc86 2y ago
Ok so let's say for the sake of argument it's a Smart Thing to focus on hiring a bunch of 22 year old fresh graduates. Is that necessarily going to change anything at the leadership level? The GP is talking about managers of managers, I don't know where you've worked in the past but in my experience Directors and VPs are not taking a lot of advice or insight from the entry level new hires.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
  Not directly, no. The point in this case was understanding that the engineering culture had stagnated and needed to be refreshed. The people ordering the change in hiring clearly understood that it would take a long time for any newly introduced behaviors to percolate through the company. But without explicitly addressing the situation, things would just have gotten worse over time. The reality was that in a fairly short time, focusing hiring on new grads actually had the intended effect of improving the way we did things. However, the company started becoming more unpleasant to work for soon after that. And a lot of those new hires, now with a couple years' experience, left. As did I, so I can't say how permanent the changes were.