:doing_it_wrong: Blog Post: "We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else"


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @codlnghorror said:

    Given the risks, I think maybe "hire the nuttiest risk junkie adrenaline addicted has-ideas-so-crazy-they-will-never-work people you can find" might actually be more practical startup advice. (Actually, now that I think about it, if that describes you, and you have serious Linux, Ruby, and JavaScript chops, perhaps you should email me.)

    That explains so much about Discourse... 😆

    Linky

    Edit: fixed the link so you can share my amusement, although none of the rest of the article is worth reading

    Edit 2: un-fixed the link, fuck him


    Filed under: It would be funny cos it's true, but actually it's just a little sad


  • I like how you posted a Discolink


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    He doesn't deserve a proper link.


    Filed under: he just deserves to be laughed at


  • Was about to point out, the link doesn't work XD

    But really, it's no fun when he starts making fun of himself like this. That's what TDWTF is for!



  • This is an interesting graph:

    I count 299%. So, 49% of startups fail because there was no market need, BUT ALSO 29% ran out of money? Was throwing infinite money at it going to create a market need that could eventually repay infinity +1 moneys? I feel like you should have ONE top reason you failed.



  • @Kian said:

    I feel like you should have ONE top reason you failed.

    There may very well be more than one of those factors contributing to a business failure, and it may be difficult or impossible to point to a single reason. Let's say, for example, that your business is in serious trouble because your product is being marketed badly, and the reason your marketing is bad is that you don't have a good marketing person on the team. But now you've hired the right marketing team, and business is picking up, but your investors are pessimistic and yank your financing before you become profitable. Which of those is the single, exclusive reason for failure?

    I find it interesting that the number one reason for failure is no market need. Isn't that the very first thing you look at in your business plan before you even launch the business?



  • @HardwareGeek said:

    I find it interesting that the number one reason for failure is no market need. Isn't that the very first thing you look at in your business plan before you even launch the business?

    Not if you are launching a startup, it would seem...



  • I think it's more likely that this survey is self-reported reasons for failure.

    So you wind up with "MOBA after loss analysis" syndrome... Well, of course our startup failed, there just wasn't a market need. And our competitors were dirty cheaters and the initial staff morphed into not team players after the first round of stock options.



  • @izzion said:

    you wind up with "MOBA after loss analysis" syndrome

    Ah, the "blame anyone except ourselves" school of failure analysis. Right, then; carry on.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    Yeah, I was reading this article earlier. He's got a point about "cultural fit" sometimes being less important than it seems like it should be, but at the same time, he seems to confuse "That guy doesn't feel right" with "That guy doesn't understand how web browsers work and we're a web shop"; there's a lot of shitty programmers out there, and hiring them isn't really going to pay off in the long run.



  • Given the state of Discourse, I wouldn't be surprised if they hired wide-eyed idealists exclusively, all the better to come up with exciting and new solutions to problems which already have solutions, because if it's new, it's got to be better than an established solution, right?



  • @Kian said:

    I count 299%.

    That's because the one top top one reason startup blogs fail is they cannot count. That's true for 112% of them.



  • Can't be right. Doesn't include No Pie Charts/Logo.


  • Garbage Person

    great people hire great people. On the other hand, mediocre people hire candidates who are not as good as they are, so they can feel superior to them
    I consider myself fairly mediocre. On the rare occasion that somebody who clearly knows as much or more than I do turns up in the interview, they're fucking in.

    To date, none of them have ever accepted. I hypothesize that great candidates only want to work for great people at great companies.


  • Garbage Person

    So, to extend the discussion a bit, I think there are two entirely different strategies that work:

    One for Startup Culture, wherein you want a handful of the wildest eyed gadgeteering crazies you can get. By my standards none of these guys are 'good developers', because I'm not in that culture. You guys go play in your little valley and get the fuck away from me.

    One for Corporate Culture, wherein a large number of 'good enough' is just fucking fine. A few excellent developers can herd along a lot of 'good enough' developers. 'Good enough' means they produce code that is mostly good, can follow patterns, can take criticism and act on it. 'Excellent' means they can fix issues and give criticism. My team within WtfCorp thrives despite our godawful technical debt because this is what we practice. It's tough to scale, because finding Excellent developers who haven't gone all wild-eyed-Javascript-cuddler is tough.




  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Weng said:

    finding Excellent developers who haven't gone all wild-eyed-Javascript-cuddler is tough.

    This new trend is driving me fucking crazy. Unfortunately it's infected where I work.

    Whenever I ask anyone why our new site has to be an SPA the only answer they can give me is "that's the way things are going". That's not a reason! My response is "if you saw a group of people walking off a cliff, would you follow them? That's the way they were going, so it must be a good idea, right?".


  • Garbage Person

    Oh, we do some JavaScript cuddling too. But we're cynical as fuck about it: Its explicitly shiny so we can use demos of it to distract management.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Management has been pushing it on us for quite a long time. The development team have literally gone through the 7 stages of grief about it. We're currently somewhere between anger and depression at the moment. I hope to revert back to denial soon so I can live in blissful ignorance.


  • area_pol

    Is there really such a decision required? The procedure seems obvious (that does not mean easy):

    • You hire people because you need them to do some job.
    • The time for choosing the candidate is limited - if you wait too long, you will fail to complete that job. If the quality of your product / ability to complete it does not suffer without the new employee, you probably did not need them anyway.
    • So you post the job offer and interview the candidates that respond.
    • Then you obviously choose the best one among the candidates that are competent for the given task AND want to work for you.

    According to the survey it seems the dominant problem was that the product / concept itself was not profitable (no market need, ran out of cash).


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