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> If the readership on HN is plugged into the startup scene, hiring mediocrity is not fine. i'm curious what this means exactly. having worked for startups in

by jheriko 11y ago

> If the readership on HN is plugged into the startup scene, hiring mediocrity is not fine. i'm curious what this means exactly. having worked for startups in my area of things (graphics, games) i can say that 99% of the startups i see here only require mediocrity in my specialty area at best. most of them would do fine with a bunch of juniors and just one moderately experienced engineer to keep them focused. solving a simple problem with a sledgehammer language on top of a tower of web stack is not the place you find the exceptional engineer, at least from my native code, down to the metal perspective, but its what most tech startups are about, and lots of them are doing very well with positively mediocre engineers. i understand there is a different skill set involved in the really niche areas of pretty much anything... e.g. where you need to squeeze the most bandwidth efficiency out of some obscure type of database query by juggling SQL and PHP or .NET libraries or whatever... but that sort of 'excellence' is pretty mediocre from my perspective too. its like mechanics who prefer working on the F1 car to the tractor. its not even specific to software. however the vast majority of mechanics will have to suck it up and do day-to-day work on pretty normal stuff, just like programmers at tech startups. so from my perspective it seems like there is no choice but to hire mediocrity actually...

loopbit 11y ago
Most of my experience with startups, including my own, is that the technical team is usually built around 1-2 intelligent people (and I say intelligent, not geniuses), usually without a lot of experience and a lot of cheap labor (free interns from local universities, low-paid junior jobs..) For most tasks that fall out the real core of the business, mediocre developers will do just fine.
trhway 11y ago
> lots of them are doing very well with positively mediocre engineers. while they believe that these are really A-level engineers. It is called placebo effect elsewhere.
azernik 11y ago
And I would go even farther and say that the article is even more applicable in the startup setting: you can get good work out of a decent engineer, but one actively bad hire can be very costly in very small company.

by jheriko 11y ago

loopbit 11y ago

Most of my experience with startups, including my own, is that the technical team is usually built around 1-2 intelligent people (and I say intelligent, not geniuses), usually without a lot of experience and a lot of cheap labor (free interns from local universities, low-paid junior jobs..) For most tasks that fall out the real core of the business, mediocre developers will do just fine.

trhway 11y ago

> lots of them are doing very well with positively mediocre engineers. while they believe that these are really A-level engineers. It is called placebo effect elsewhere.

azernik 11y ago

And I would go even farther and say that the article is even more applicable in the startup setting: you can get good work out of a decent engineer, but one actively bad hire can be very costly in very small company.