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Comment by cloudjacker | Hacker News Reader

> very particular about people pulling their weight, so we've churned through 10 people so far. I've had a very difficult time competing for top talent.

"we're going to invite you for a fifth round of interviews to make sure you're someone in line with our vision and understands our mission"

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not at all, if anything it's been the opposite (lack of vetting): we find someone that looks good on paper and interviews well, so we roll the dice and hire them. Then end up having to let them go in a few months when they can't hack it.

what do you think about example projects, if they finish it then you've done some of the screening already

the criticism of this being that some people call this free work

We've actually attempted that a couple of times (always with pay) but have always been turned down -- People either don't have the time for an eventual maybe or already have other offers on the table. I think in a job market that had a more balanced supply/demand that would work great.

What do you think is stopping them from being able to "hack it"? It seems like if they've been there a few months already, you've essentially given them a few months training. Wouldn't it make sense to just continue that training until they're able to do what you want? Or, is there something else that is stopping them?

It's very possible they could have turned into something great and we were cutting losses too soon. That said, I have fairly high expectations and expect people to be motivated, tenacious and smart. We have such a broad spectrum of what we do (in a nutshell: infosec and data mining), it's difficult to simply train people for the myriad of scenarios they might encounter. This year I'll be stepping up my recruiting from the infosec community directly, up to now I've focused on polyglot devs with a background in security & web.

Aren't most people who are motivated, tenacious and smart trying to start something on their own?

Yep. Exactly the issue. I want people with similar traits as myself and all I find are people who just want a job with a steady paycheck.

> all I find are people who just want a job with a steady paycheck

In fairness, I think besides those who are well enough off to not need to work, a paycheck is the main reason people work.

I'm just a junior engineer who admittedly doesn't know anything so take this with a grain of salt, but firing people because they are not similar to you seems bad for the company. After all, if they do good work in a timely manner, shouldn't that be more than sufficient?

If you only hire people who are like you, then it seems like you'd get a serious lack of diversity too, even though the benefits of diversity are well studied.

Then again, you're the one running a successful business while I'm just a random guy browsing HN when I should be working!

Being honest with yourself, would an employee exactly like you really be an ideal employee? Would they dedicate all of their productive hours toward your business or might they be spending some energy working toward starting a business on their own?

can you clarify what your specific issues have been? I think many of the readers on this thread, myself included, find it hard to believe that you've churned 10 employees and are having trouble recruiting and yet its THEM that's the problem and not you.

What's the ballpark of how much you're paying these people? How forward are you to candidates about that number? If the answer is too little for either, that might be the problem.

Depending on experience but $90-$140k salary and 10-20% profit sharing ($50k-$200k roughly) on projects which they contributed.

"so we roll the dice and hire them. Then end up having to let them go in a few months when they can't hack it."

Something is wrong here.

1. You are able to hire somebody. Your salaries may be to low that you may have a bias here. But people do start.

2. After a FEW MONTHS you realize that they are not able to "hack it"

Sounds much more like a management problem than a skill problem.

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