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Comment by onlyrealcuzzo | Hacker News Reader

Entrepreneurial engineer here...

If I ever hire an engineer for my business -- I hope it'd be someone I've already worked with and know -- but if it had to be someone random, I'd pursue this method:

1) Solicit Resumes

2) Pick N candidates

3) Phone screen to make sure they aren't complete assholes

4) Stack rank & pop top candidate

5) Pay them to develop a feature on contract

6) If satisfied, repeat step 5 until ready to hire; else repeat step 4.

I think it'd be important from the start to let candidates know they might need to do a week or more of work (for pay) before getting a final hire. Some people would be put off by this, sure.

But I suspect the people put-off would be people desperately seeking full-time employment. I think it might attract a lot of talented people that don't want to go through a 4-week long ceremony of an interview process that takes up days of time with no pay, though.

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This seems good on the surface, but I can't imagine top tier talent at a FANG or equivalent ever leaving their job to do this.

I feel this filter will only leave behind those who are currently contractors that are interested in maybe going full time, and the unemployed/employed who are desperate enough to go along with such a scheme. Foregoing the typical crappy interview process is one thing, but working, even for money, without any certainty as the end outcome would certainly turn me off.

To be honest, this setup seems like something that would be hatched by a scummy company to constantly string you along with a carrot that will never come. I am not implying that you are that type, but there are enough horror stories out there that I would avoid ever getting myself put into that position.

> top tier talent at...

Must be looking to get out for some reason. Doing a small side-project shouldn't be a big impediment.

> I would avoid ever getting myself put into that position.

Extreme risk-averse behavior can cause problems on the other side. Easy enough to give a small-project a try and cut out early when red-flags are actually encountered.

Just the cost of doing business, IMHO.

They may be looking to get out, but you are essentially asking them to leave their current job so they can spend a month (or whatever) on a paid interview at your company. You are not only giving up your previous job, you are essentially giving up your ability to interview elsewhere as well. If this doesn't work out, either because you don't like me, or I don't like you, your business, the tech stack, whatever, I am now in a really shitty position, I am giving up what little leverage an employee has in the labor market- the ability to look for a job and say no without worrying about paying his bills.

If you are doing well at a company, I am not sure how you make this seem like a good value proposition, especially in this tech job market. Another way to put it, with a personal spin- I don't work at an actual FANG, but a company that arguably pays better, and their would have to be a very large upside at the other end of this process to make it worth going through. Things would have to be very bad for me to give me up my deep in the six figure job to spend a month interviewing at some place unless it had some legendary track record.

This is all theoretical though and not really worth arguing over. I'd like to see OP try this out and report back the results, good or bad. I could be wrong, but I would be willing to wager that you get a lot more resumes just out of a bootcamp as opposed to people with proven track records currently at prestigious companies.

Not sure what the other guy implied, but that’s not what I had in mind. Rather a side project type of thing. Little risk for anyone. No one has to quit.

Step 5 sounds awesome and I totally understand the desire to do it, but it will screen out a lot of top-tier candidates. A really good candidate is probably already employed. They probably don’t want to quit without another job lined up and they probably don’t want to work double hours for a week. If they’re job hunting then they likely have other offers you have to compete with, and are they going to chose the “maybe we’ll hire you if we like your work” over “sign here and you start in two weeks”?

Desperate people won’t be put off by this. If they’re desperate then they’ll have time to do your contract and the money will be attractive. They can keep job hunting in the meantime so there’s no downside.

That’s not to say this can’t produce someone good. I got my first full time programming job like this and I like to think I’m not completely useless.

And alas, I don’t have any answers for how to do it better....

There's no perfect way to hire, don't let it be the enemy of better.

For example, I like this one and I'm gainfully employed. Much rather work on a real side project than useless, unpaid coding challenges any day. For me, the first has a 98% chance of success, while the second has a 2% chance.

Just to provide an alternate perspective here, this seems to tilt the incentives towards people that are not working already. I wonder how many folks have time to take a week or more off from their current job to participate in this exercise. I understand this is paid but its still a huge risk that candidates would be taking.

> huge risk

Folks do side projects all the time. How often do they describe it as a "huge risk?"

No, some folk do side projects all the time. Mostly very young folks without families or substantial hobbies.

We make time for things that are important. If not to you no problem, but not the impossible burden you make it sound.

You will never get most good talent to go contract to hire. This market is far to competitive to have to put up with that kind of risk.

> 6) If satisfied, repeat step 5 until ready to hire; else repeat step 4.

How do you mean "ready to hire"? You're interviewing and giving audition gigs before there's an actual job opening?

This is subtle age discrimination. At some age, lets say 28, there’s a cliff drop-off of people who’d be willing or able to do contract work.

“Man”-up, and fire fte early if needed.

>5) Pay them to develop a feature on contract

It will be very rare to find a good candidate willing to quit a well-paying job to go on contract for you.

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