Re:Hiring technical talent: An exercise in clarity, patience...
by lapcat on Friday May 13, 2022 @09:48PM
(#31374374)
> a company that claims only to hire the best and brightest
That's what they claim. It seems unlikely, especially seeing some of the things they produce. ;-)
A less sarcastic point is that a company with a uniform hiring process tends to get a uniform workforce. What this means is that all employees tend to have the same strengths, and also the same weaknesses, because the hiring process is always looking for the same exact things. The result is that the team ends up not being more than the sum of all the parts but rather less than the sum of all the parts. The same strengths added together are redundant, and the same weaknesses added together create giant corporate blind spots.
When you go about trying to "minimize the bad hire", what you're really minimizing is any sort of difference or diversity among the workforce, thereby missing the forest for the trees.
We always talk about the so-called "10x engineer", but it's not clear that 2 10x engineers with the exact same skills would be better than 2 other engineers with different but complementary skills. Maybe 10x + 10x effectively adds up to much less than 20x.
That's what they claim. It seems unlikely, especially seeing some of the things they produce. ;-)
A less sarcastic point is that a company with a uniform hiring process tends to get a uniform workforce. What this means is that all employees tend to have the same strengths, and also the same weaknesses, because the hiring process is always looking for the same exact things. The result is that the team ends up not being more than the sum of all the parts but rather less than the sum of all the parts. The same strengths added together are redundant, and the same weaknesses added together create giant corporate blind spots.
When you go about trying to "minimize the bad hire", what you're really minimizing is any sort of difference or diversity among the workforce, thereby missing the forest for the trees.
We always talk about the so-called "10x engineer", but it's not clear that 2 10x engineers with the exact same skills would be better than 2 other engineers with different but complementary skills. Maybe 10x + 10x effectively adds up to much less than 20x.