Long ago, a boss told me: "Hire into your weakness." That's a tough pill for managers to swallow. If we hire people who are stronger than we are in certain areas, we run the risk of looking incompetent. We may look foolish, or be in a position to have to ask for advice more often than we like. If we hire people who are better than we are in some realms, they may not respect us.
good lord. do people really think like that? if so, i think they've got much bigger problems than merely hiring people like themselves.
The process doesn't have to be conscious. People who are competent in areas one doesn't understand can come across as vaguely intimidating, while being weak in areas where one is stong might be interpreted as stupidity. As such, unless you are extremely honest with yourself you run the risk of underestimating those that differ from you, and overestimating your mirror image.
what surprises me is to see an article like this on hacker news, and to see it getting serious upvotes.
if you ask me, the author of that article is not part of the solution, she's part of the problem. she's describing a framework where decisions are made based on ego and pride. exactly the sort of environment that the average hacker news reader wants to avoid.
then she goes on to describe how you might fix one small part of this -- by deigning to hire someone not exactly like yourself. while leaving the rest of the ego-based framework intact, no doubt.
i'm guessing the real problem she's describing is deep insecurity. i'd prefer to see her tackle that one, rather than some tiny insignificant facet of it, as she's chosen to do here.
she's describing a framework where decisions are made based on ego and pride
So, how does your company hire people? Double-blind standardized testing?
Humans don't make every decision based solely on ego and pride. But ego and pride are always there. Just because you don't mention their names doesn't mean they've gone away. And it's not like they can be surgically removed, even if you wanted to.
What the article describes is how to acknowledge that your ego and your pride may be tending to steer you in a certain direction, so that you can compensate for them.
i've worked at only one company in my life that i'd personally describe as A-level. i was pretty close to the stupidest programmer working there. not coincidentally, it was also the only place i've ever worked where hiring was very definitely not based on ego and pride.
having said that, some of the follow-on comments are showing me how you guys might get something out of this article that i didn't. it sounds to me like a place where i'm glad i'm not anymore.
The degree of Hackerness on HN has been going down since that techcrunch post, now days it's a lot like reddit a few months before the condenest sale. Of course, this is my subjective opinion.
These days the challenge with any community is that once the masses find out about it, it's all downhill in a matter of months, unlike years before.
I sympathize. In an attempt to help I wrote and submitted the item below, but I think it got zero visibility on the site due to my newness and lack of karma. As far as I can tell it's the sort of thing you want to see more of, but if not please tell me.
Let me tell you sonny... let me set you straight
You kids today ain't never had it rough
Always had everything handed to you on a silver plate
You lazy brats think nothing's good enough
Well, nobody ever drove me to school when it was ninety degrees below
We had to walk buck naked through forty miles of snow
Worked in the coal mines twenty two hours a day for just half a cent
Had to sell my internal organs just to pay the rent
Let me tell you something, you whiny little snot
There's something wrong with all you kids today
You just don't appreciate all the things you've got
We were hungry, broken and miserable and we liked it fine that way
There were seventy three of us living in a cardboard box
All I got for Christmas was a lousy bag of rocks
Every night for dinner, we had a big 'ol chunk of dirt
If we were really good, we didn't get dessert
Didn't have no telephone, didn't have no FAX machine
All we had was a couple cans and a crummy piece of string
Didn't have no swimming pool when I was just a lad
Our neighbor's septic tank was the closest thing we had
Didn't have no dental floss, had to use old rusty nails
Didn't have Nintendo, we just poured salt on snails
Didn't have no water bed, had to sleep on broken glass
Didn't have no lawnmower, we used our teeth to cut the grass
What's the matter now, sonny, you say you don't believe this junk?
You think my story's wearin' kinda thin?
I tell you one thing, I never was such a disrespectful punk
Back in my time, we had a thing called discipline
My dad would whoop us every night till a quarter after twelve
Then he'd get too tired and he'd make us whoop ourselves
Then he'd chop me into pieces and play frisbee with my brain
And let me tell ya, Junior, you never heard me complain
Yes, I imagine a lot of people do think like this. Hell, I'd say that, for most people, losing authority is seen as worse than simply failing without losing face.
Good observation.. those differences probably starts with your co-founder and trickles down through subsequent hires. Reminded me of the value of tools like DISC, myers-briggs, the book 'Now, Discovery your Strengths', and the '5 dysfunctions of a Team'. Anyone else know of any useful tools or proverbs along this line?
The process doesn't have to be conscious. People who are competent in areas one doesn't understand can come across as vaguely intimidating, while being weak in areas where one is stong might be interpreted as stupidity.
it's important to remember this not just in a business setting but in a social one as well.
good lord. do people really think like that? if so, i think they've got much bigger problems than merely hiring people like themselves.