SN's Hiring Trial and Energetic Solutions to Problems Created by My Shortcomings \ stacker news ~meta

SN's Hiring Trial and Energetic Solutions to Problems Created by My Shortcomings

5588 sats \ 43 comments \ @k00b 30 Mar meta

We are hiring another engineer or two and I suck at hiring. Or, as I would say to someone in my situation who isn't me, hiring is hard, even people who are world class at hiring say so, and we haven't done much of it yet.

In our attempt to hire, SN conducted what I've called The Trial, taking on five engineers for a month long contract hoping to hire one of them. We could've copied the traditional technical interview process, which is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of the way reputable technology companies have hired for a long time. The Trial attempted to reduce the bloodletting of modern technical hiring.

The Trial ended in February and we didn't hire anyone as a result of it. Trial member (A) had a family emergency and dropped out, (B) had trouble finding time to contribute, and (C) took a job at another bitcoin company before the trial ended. Of the remaining trial members, (D) didn't produce enough to qualify for an offer and (E), after receiving our offer, took a job at another bitcoin company. It cost us ~$20k. All trial members but (A) did real work that lives on the site today, and all motivated improvements to our open source contributor incentives and DX.

The trial intended to produce a hire, but the result is mostly present as an improvement to the trial process itself. Open source contributors to SN, whether looking to get hired or not, no longer need permission to participate and get paid. We've also tried to make it really easy to begin contributing with custom tooling. The trial reminded us to use our unique advantages - incentives games, global money, transparent development - and supplied a repetition of solving the problems created by our shortcomings.

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1473 sats \ 0 replies \ @rheedi0 30 Mar

Hiring is hard. Based on my own experience and talking to others, I take some solace in the fact that even the best still never get it right every time. I would hazard to guess it's like baseball, where if you're batting .300 that's still pretty damn good.

Is it possible the terms of the contract may have skewed the outcome? In other words, were candidates less motivated to give their best effort because the outcome was uncertain? In your defense, I also would expect people to do their absolute best to secure the best chance of landing the full-time job, but it sounds like the uncertainty led some people to keep one foot out the door so to speak, and keep exploring other options for themselves as a hedge. It makes a lot of sense but I would not have factored that in ahead of time if I had been in your shoes.

Some of this reminds me of the behavior of consultants, where making short-term wins usually takes priority over the long-term goals of the client. And while a consultant always has an eye on selling more work to the client long-term, the reality is they'll always be playing the field for the best opportunity available.

One question: did you use references at all? In my experience that has usually been the most valuable source of info for making a hiring decision.

Such an interesting account, thanks so much for sharing.

182 sats \ 3 replies \ @grayruby 30 Mar

We are hiring another engineer or two and I suck at hiring. Or, as I would say to someone in my situation who isn't me, hiring is hard, even people who are world class at hiring say so, and we haven't done much of it yet.

Between my years in corporate management and running my own business I have interviewed many hundreds of people. Hiring is hard enough in a non technical arena, I can only imagine the difficulty of it in a highly technical role.

I commend you for trying things. Sorry it didn't work out but better to find out those 5 were not fits than finding out 6 months from now after they have produced poor work or been a bad culture fit.

You have to wear many hats (unfortunately not just cowboy hats) when you steward the ship and hiring the correct deckhands is a huge part of that. Don't be discouraged by this failed attempt.

110 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 30 Mar

I had a managerial role at a previous academic stop and had to do a lot of student worker hiring, as well some non-students.

I agree that it's largely a crap shoot and when it goes wrong it's not often for reasons you could have inferred from the hiring process.

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 30 Mar

Thanks for the encouragement! I'm disappointed my first idea wasn't fruitful but I'm not discouraged. It's just another obstacle on the obstacle course.

42 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 30 Mar

Indeed and maybe it leads to a better path with open source contributions.

Sadly, I think most of us who have a lot of time on our hands are technically inept and cannot help SN in that way but maybe as the site and business grows we will be able to assist in other ways in the future.

357 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury 30 Mar

This is so cool.

One thing I've learned over time is that innovation happens in places where you might not have intended, and what turns out to be really high-leverage is not what you would have predicted. This whole process sounds so much like that. The trick is to suck all the juice out of the orange you just peeled.

Imagine the advantage that would eventually accrue, somehow, if SN was in the very upper echelon of knowing how to hire in the modern world, with the affordances of modern tools, and btc as a secret weapon? Or even re-defining the meaning of what it means to "hire" at all?

Bullish.

226 sats \ 3 replies \ @DarthCoin 30 Mar

I wish I know to write code.... happily will help you, even for free. But writing code is my weak point. And is too late to learn now.

But I will continue (as much as I can) to keep SN alive (and controversial) with my comments and posts.

Remember this note?

It was after I come back again to SN, for the MSM. Take it in consideration.

200 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 30 Mar

No need to code!

You've done a lot for SN over the years and keep bringing great people here for the first time! I appreciate it a bunch!

66 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xbitcoiner 30 Mar

And is too late to learn now.

😂

237 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 30 Mar

And in that moment you realized that everybody else needs Phyton language 😂😂😂

252 sats \ 2 replies \ @felipe 30 Mar

Hey @k00b

I've been using SN for almost year now and I've been trying to contribute with content and reporting issues from day one. I also contributed with code from day one but it was on my own FOSS SN native client (it ain't much but it's honest work 😄).

For the past month I've been trying to dedicate at least two hours a day to contribute to the real thing. Both for the sats and because I love open-source software.

Now I'd like to apply for an official position on the team 🙂.

PS0: Feel free to DM me in one of the linked accounts on my bio

PS1: I'm not good at coding interviews. I didn't participate in many so I never learned how to crack them. I mostly went from client to client from word of mouth so I'd prefer doing real work instead of having to go through interviews, tests and stuff. I'm good at building things :)

PS2: A little bit about my experience:

228 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 30 Mar

It's been great having you contribute! And I was stoked when you built the dart app.

Before we hire anyone from the OSCARs, we'd like to see them tackling a couple medium-hards first. I don't really care too much about someone's CV with respect to hiring. It's nice to learn more about them, but code speaks louder than words.

147 sats \ 0 replies \ @felipe 30 Mar

Thanks for the reply, @k00b :)

I'll keep contributing and starting next week I'll try to allocate more time to familiarize myself with the code base to finish the features I'm already working on before I start tackling more advanced issues

245 sats \ 9 replies \ @cascdr 30 Mar

I like the idea of doing real trial work a lot. This goes doubly for an open source project.

I have been hired this way (open source bounties) and I felt like it was the most fair way to answer the question: can I make real contributions to this project? For me it got me exposure to their tech stack & team. For the hirer it got them to see what it's actually like to work with me, how I solve problems and interact with would be teammates.

Five trial participants seems like a lot to manage. There are pros and cons. You're slightly vindicated by the fact that A dropped out. But maybe C & E took the "sure thing" with other job offers rather than a 1 in 5 chance. You no doubt know better than me their rationale.

Not only does hiring seem hard but it sucks too. I hope you figure it out and I can learn from your trials.

8 sats \ 8 replies \ @k00b OP 30 Mar

But maybe C & E took the "sure thing" with other job offers rather than a 1 in 5 chance.

It's hard to determine why people do things. The most I try to say confidently is that they made the best decision that they could for themselves, and consider that we need to get better at everything we possibly did wrong.

I have been hired this way (open source bounties) and I felt like it was the most fair way to answer the question: can I make real contributions to this project?

I agree! It's a bit of a mess upsetting people's expectation of "passing a generic test I studied for so I can get treated like a king," but it takes more than passing tests to be a king ... and all the big companies already have a lock on the good test takers anyway.

1262 sats \ 7 replies \ @cascdr 30 Mar

"passing a generic test I studied for so I can get treated like a king," but it takes more than passing tests to be a king

This is one of the least understood and pernicious aspects of public schooling. People have been conditioned to think that passing a test = competency. Competence is a verb not an adjective or a trophy you get to keep forever. You have to continually evolve and expend effort to maintain it.

Personally the two biggest factors I look for are work ethic and initiative. The former for obvious reasons and the latter because I cannot possibly predict what challenges we will face in the future. I need teammates that can solve open ended problems and even challenge my solutions if they're inadequate.

This was a lesson I learned from my dad who has 40 years of experience hiring engineers. He says whenever he's in an interview he probes to find out if they've ever made any projects themselves. It could be a home aquarium. The specifics are trivial. The intangible benefits that accrue from high agency teammates that solve open ended problems are hard to overstate.

Your hiring process is more aligned with how we should work and interact with each other. I am keen to see how that process evolves.

146 sats \ 3 replies \ @elvismercury 31 Mar

This is, to me, another aspect of the diversity of the ecosystem @k00b was talking about -- a couple brilliant-but-fickle types can really add a lot, but that's not the only type you need, and shouldn't be the main one. They're like a really strong flavor to be used judiciously.

It's even more interesting when you zoom out and think of this not as a skillset (e.g., programming and the like) but as a mental configuration. What distribution of types of people are most effective, collectively? In the big companies I worked for it was never really possible to think in these ecological terms, but in one of the small ones we sort of did, and I was very aware when hiring myself. A good mix of personality types can be more important in a complex environment than the more measurable skills.

108 sats \ 2 replies \ @cascdr 31 Mar

It's even more interesting when you zoom out and think of this not as a skillset (e.g., programming and the like) but as a mental configuration.

My dad puts it this way: "You need two of every animal or else it's a boring zoo."

In other words it is wise to understand, celebrate and optimize our differences for the higher good.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury 31 Mar

That's an awesome line -- your dad sounds like an interesting guy :)

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @cascdr 31 Mar

interesting guy

If only you knew...

[He exhibited] the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament.

199 sats \ 2 replies \ @freetx 30 Mar

work ethic and initiative

Yes, my company, about a decade ago had a mythical "10x" programmer. He was very very brilliant and could come up with incredible fixes to complicated problems. He was just a super bright and intelligent person and could often grok the full nature of the problem before I even was mid-way thru explaining it to him.

His big fault was that he was temperamental and suffered from "shiny ball syndrome". That is, because he was so smart he would get bored with all the mundane task required of him (which is in reality 80% of normal work week), thus he would either not do them or invent reasons why they weren't necessary.

We eventually had to let him go and we fretted a long time about how to replace him. Eventually we agreed we would never find anyone nearly as smart as he was, so settled on a "mere mortal" developer.

In contrast, the person we found may require more back and forth meetings to understand the problem and often requires a few weeks to fix things that his predecessor could fix in a day....

BUT, he is very consistent and operates like clockwork. Week in and week out in the last decade we made consistent improvements to the product. He always manages to complete his task - even the mundane items - albeit it takes more time.

In the end work ethic and persistence trumps raw brilliance.

18 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bell_curve 30 Mar

The brilliant shiny ball syndrome guy should probably work as a consultant or freelancer

About 10 years ago I realized I was bored with my job. Wrong company and wrong field.

I am not a brilliant person, I was working for the wrong people

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @freetx 30 Mar

Thats actually what he's doing now! Its honestly a much better fit for him.

137 sats \ 1 reply \ @WeAreAllSatoshi 30 Mar

I really like the contract-style of being able to contribute on my own time without a commitment. I have no doubt being employed by SN would be a very enjoyable and rewarding experience, but it's just not the right time for me to do that right now. I'm sad to hear that your hiring experiment didn't result in hiring a new engineer. I'm sure you'll find someone!

8 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 30 Mar

I really like the contract-style of being able to contribute on my own time without a commitment.

I suspect his ideal for most people. It's kind of obvious, but we had pretty hard evidence it was true as I interview people for the trial.

134 sats \ 2 replies \ @jeff 31 Mar

I've hired dozens of engineers, and manged probably >100, as an EM at large and small companies.

I would be skeptical of any process that assumes candidates have a tactical month to spare, even if paid.

Top talent, in general, is already employed and needs to be poached away, and/or is very intenional about what they allocate time to.

A paid month trial says "we aren't committed to you, you are on thin ice".

I bet, had you just offered based on your gut at the start, and then fired faat if it was wrong... might have gone differently.

8 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 31 Mar

Great comment!

Top talent, in general, is already employed and needs to be poached away, and/or is very intentional about what they allocate time to.

Do you have any tips for poaching people? How have you seen the process work?

I would be skeptical of any process that assumes candidates have a tactical month to spare, even if paid.

Heck, I was skeptical of the process too, but nearly everyone we talked to was up for trying to do it using a few spare hours per week.

A paid month trial says "we aren't committed to you, you are on thin ice".

I know it's silly, but this was part of what I was interested exploring. I sense we have more use for people who are comfortable on thin ice at this stage, the Wim Hofs of the world.

Maybe this group's overlap with top talent is small, but we aren't looking for 100 of these people, just a few to explore the ice with us before winter freezes the ice proper (if it ever does).

I bet, had you just offered based on your gut at the start, and then fired faat if it was wrong... might have gone differently.

I'd take that bet too. But, the way I am, I don't want to tell people the ice is thick when I know it's thin.

134 sats \ 0 replies \ @jeff 31 Mar

Do you have any tips for poaching people?

Yah. Different companies, have different half-lives, for eng talent attrition. So, good recruiters will get to know the companies that tend to have turn over around say, the 18 month mark. Then do cold outreach based on that, around that time according to their LN profiles.

There is also seasonality to successful poaching by industry. Eg. Finance in North America, best month of the year to poach is around April/May, because annual bonuses have paid out, and they haven't started accruing for next year yet. For instance.

118 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei 31 Mar

I’m curious to know why (E) flipped to another Bitcoin company despite receiving an offer. The trial would have been successful if he had followed through with it.

In any case, it sounds like a fruitful experiment since you know the unique combination of ingredients - technical expertise, your competitors’ appeal, timing - that will make someone the right fit for SN.

Keep iterating!

118 sats \ 2 replies \ @mo 30 Mar

I understand SN is a FOSS product, I'm not sure SN is incorporated or has any duties that need to satisfy third parties or external investors. Delegating is always a tricky skill to learn, and no one will be doing the job as if you were doing it.

Does SN really need to officially "hire"? Why falling into the traditional fiat routines and admin loops? You are doing great with the Open Source Contribution Award Rules 🕴️ (OSCAR?) and I think the system is working... from what I've been reading here. There are continuous releases and this is great!

Why not continue improving and making more efforts to improve the OSCARs?

218 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 30 Mar

I love the initialism!

Why not continue improving and making more efforts to improve the OSCARs?

We will! We want a diversity of improvers though because at least until OSCARs are perfect (which I suspect isn't exactly possible) it makes the project more anti-fragile. Hiring someone long term gives them a different set of incentives than someone completing bounties. Neither is absolutely better or worse, but the kind of impact they'll have on the project is different.

286 sats \ 0 replies \ @mo 30 Mar

I'm glad you like OSCARs! I totally agree, incentives are different. Well you have now tested both and look's like hiring hasn't work, maybe next time? I'm sure the right candidate will pop up with some amazing PoW through the OSCARs.

Bounties are only one part: I also understand people can submit new features and actively contribute. If aligned with yours and the community vision, they could go merged or not. It will be nice to have community members voting on features requests coming from the community itself

536 sats \ 0 replies \ @nout 30 Mar

One lesson I learnt is If you see someone good, you have to go for it quick. Like call in the next 30 minutes to confirm, papers ready the same day, signed the next...

Good people have options and you need to be the best option.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @davidw 30 Mar

Sounds like you had some pretty unfortunate luck, but great to hear their contributions live-on. In any other quarter, you might have had 3 out of 5 solid candidates with the conditions and drive to continue.

Also it's pretty cool that you're attracting talent that is being scooped-up by the bitcoin industry. Don't be disheartened. Might want to generate some stickiness a few months into The Trial, to ensure that this isn't a recurring theme and that SN isn't just a springboard to finding more "cushty" stable work.

Be encouraged by the foundations you have laid, that it is now much more easy for people to jump-in and out to contribute and you're getting more eyes on the codebase at this point. I am sure the SN team want to see trialists turn full-on contributors & colleagues over time, but these new incentives will take their time to embed into everyone's way of working. And time preference will likely see to the rest.

62 sats \ 0 replies \ @jakoyoh629 30 Mar

Setbacks are just part of the journey. It's all about learning. We're not in a 100 meter dash, we're in a marathon. Don't stop learning from your mistakes. They are some of the best sources of learning, even if they can be costly at times.

20 sats \ 4 replies \ @Coinsreporter 30 Mar

You really gave me an idea about hiring teachers for our school.

This is the time we're hiring and I am gonna apply it straight away.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b OP 30 Mar

Cool, what idea did I give you specifically?

211 sats \ 2 replies \ @Coinsreporter 30 Mar

I will hire teachers on a trial for 2 to 7 days and judge how impactful they are.

Until now we've been hiring on the basis of interview and a subject related topic demonstration.

111 sats \ 1 reply \ @BenAllenG 30 Mar

I think trials could be a great way to hire teachers, interested to see how it works out!

Having been hired for jobs from a single zoom interview across the globe (ESL teaching in Korea) being able to see a teacher in action is always helpful!

200 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter 30 Mar

Yes, indeed. I had a phone call with the principal and mentioned this process to apply in hiring from tomorrow. He also liked the idea and added that this way we can also asses personality traits and overall suitability for the job as teachers. Previously, apart from knowledge, I always sought for people who can motivate children in some or the other way.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @BitcoinIsTheFuture 30 Mar

Wow this is super exciting news! I love to see the growth here as part of a free and open market for truth and monetary honesty! I’ll share in my network!

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 30 Mar

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8 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 30 Mar

The trial is a good idea. That would have been my approach