geoffroberts

7 ms·

31.
The Unspoken Hard Bits of Bootstrapping a SaaS Product to Life(outseta.com)
113 points by geoffroberts 6y ago|26 comments
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Why Coinbase Got It Wrong and Tech Leaders Need to Speak Out(outseta.com)
4 points by geoffroberts 6y ago|0 comments
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My macro-level observations after 10 years spent building tech startups(outseta.com)
3 points by geoffroberts 6y ago|0 comments
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
I understand your point—it's not about optimizing your process above all else (at the expense of speed, for example). But you can and should optimize your hiring process just like you would your sales process, onboarding process, etc a
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
These are the foundational aspects of our hiring process that we openly advocate for. https://www.qualified.io/blog/posts/the-qualified-manifesto-...
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
What we advocate for is making the technical assessment component relatively quick and painless, but using the work sample as a basis for assessing the other sorts of skills and intangibles that you mentioned. You can use your in-person tim
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
No argument there!
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
Why would it not be?
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
The purpose of this paper is to present research that's completely independent of any product, and show how the concepts apply to software engineering specifically. What's your source in saying "software engineering has one o
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
Great points—I completely agree that the human element of hiring is of critical importance when it comes to building effective and high functioning teams. This article is intended to focus on the more technical/job focused component of
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
Agreed. Ambition is an intangible that should also be assessed during the hiring process.
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
I don't think that true—what the article is saying is that different hiring activities are more or less useful in predicting the future success of a hire. And the more measures you employee intelligently, the more predictive the proces
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
That's true.... that might not be a company you want to work for. If there's not clear strategic direction and things constantly shift, it's very hard to hire anybody effectively into the org.
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
So you need to design you assessment process to reflect the real world scenarios the hire will encounter. It's surprising to me to hear so many developers push back on this notion that you can't design a predictive hiring process.
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
Love your site—thanks for sharing! And +1 with regards to the potential legal issues.
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
I love this point—the more time you can spend selling the candidate the better. And I think the more effective your interview process, candidates take notice and probably need to be "sold" that much less.
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
Agreed that interviews are both a gatekeeping and social ritual, but from the perspective of the employer I do think "the point of a job interview" should very clearly be to identify candidates with the highest probability of bein
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
I completely agree that if you're designing an sort of assessment process, you should go through it yourself or ask other engineers to go through it so it's reasonably scoped in terms of expected time commitment. You can also use
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
Yes, but not generic tests—in order to design a hiring process that's actually predictive of future job performance, the "tests" have to be designed to be directly relevant to the real world work that the engineer will be tas
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
Actually, yes! Erik Bernhardsson, the CTO at Better.com who is cited in the article a few times, does exactly that for finalist candidates that they ask to provide a significant work sample. I think that's 100% appropriate. But that sa
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Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance(qualified.io)
131 points by geoffroberts 7y ago|109 comments
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The Science Behind Making Engineering Interviews Truly Predictive of Performance(qualified.io)
2 points by geoffroberts 7y ago|0 comments
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The Science Behind Making Developer Interviews Truly Predictive of Performance(qualified.io)
5 points by geoffroberts 7y ago|0 comments
54.
by geoffroberts 7y ago
Buildium stayed pretty true to their original market, focusing mostly on serving that market with a greater level of depth through additional products and services. RealPage, the acquirer, sells to a number of adjacent markets and is moving
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
I'm definitely in agreement that having some fundamental understanding of other areas of the business is a good thing, for everyone. The point I'm making is you need to be congnizant of where you spend your time and what new skill
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
Thank you so much for the kind words! Buildium found a good market opportunity and built solid technology, but culture and how the business was run was definitely part of its special sauce and a major contributing factor to this sort of out
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
Correct.
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
You got it!
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
So Buildium makes money off of normal subscription payments like any SaaS business does by charging a monthly fee to property management companies for access to their software. They also make money by taking a small percentage of rent payme
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by geoffroberts 7y ago
Great points—I 100% agree. While at Buildium I actually built our three marketing teams—acquisition marketing, product marketing, and corporate marketing to support many of the different functions you mentioned.

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