Hi Ammon/Harj, Thank you for that effort and laying it out. Very helpful.
Just so the readers don't miss the context: By definition, most companies referred here, I'm guessing, are startups. And startups will definitely want more product-focused engineers, in order to keep moving fast.
Interviewing in general, is closer to a date, than it's to a standardized test. The smaller the company is, the more pronounced that characteristic is. For even slightly larger companies, it's a different story.
When I was a Director of Engineering at Box, the engineering team was tasked with hiring 25 engineers in a single quarter. For several quarters. When hiring at that scale, it's hard to hire based on personas and elaborate preferences. At that point, process is more important. Anyone that meets a consistent process gets hired. There are always biases at resume selection, but those are only to benefit the later process, and not so much of a preference.
When I was a Director of Engineering at Box, the engineering team was tasked with hiring 25 engineers in a single quarter. For several quarters. When hiring at that scale, it's hard to hire based on personas and elaborate preferences.
I just watched another startup in the same reference class grow at a similar speed, and I don't believe you. Suppose it takes 20 interview loops to hire one very good engineer, and each loop takes on average 10 engineer-hours. That's 200-engineer-hours per new hire, or about one engineer-month. That means if you have 100 engineers at Box (correct me if I'm way off base here, but 25 on 100 in a quarter sounds like a reasonable fast growth) you can hire 25 new engineers in a quarter while spending only 10% of your total labor recruiting.
The reason this doesn't usually work is because most engineers don't spend 10% of their time helping with recruiting. That is in my opinion an unforced error. They should.
Not sure which part you're referring to, that doesn't work.
Average 10% spend by an engineer towards hiring is quite normal, from my experience. Obviously, it's average, so there are some who spend way more than 10%, and there are some who don't spend any. 4 out of 40 hours a week including phone-screens, on-sites and deliberations is easy to get to.
I'm sure you know, that a lot of hiring at that scale is systematized and (hence) heavy-lifting is done by non-technical recruiting people.
I'm sure you know, that a lot of hiring at that scale is systematized and (hence) heavy-lifting is done by non-technical recruiting people.
Right, this is what I'm arguing against. Doing filtering with non-technical people requires a lot of systematization and strange, low-quality filters. I suggest not doing that.
The typical response is that you need to do it because engineer time is too precious, which I disagree with.
Just so the readers don't miss the context: By definition, most companies referred here, I'm guessing, are startups. And startups will definitely want more product-focused engineers, in order to keep moving fast.
Interviewing in general, is closer to a date, than it's to a standardized test. The smaller the company is, the more pronounced that characteristic is. For even slightly larger companies, it's a different story.
When I was a Director of Engineering at Box, the engineering team was tasked with hiring 25 engineers in a single quarter. For several quarters. When hiring at that scale, it's hard to hire based on personas and elaborate preferences. At that point, process is more important. Anyone that meets a consistent process gets hired. There are always biases at resume selection, but those are only to benefit the later process, and not so much of a preference.
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