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Comment by apstyx | Hacker News Reader

* ensure that the person can acknowledge mistakes and handles criticism/feedback in a positive manner. obviously that needs to be communicated in a fair and responsible manner

* do you want to have a beer/coffee/social interaction with the person outside of work? does not mean you will but you will need to build a relationship with the person

* make sure you know what you are expecting from the hire, write that down, not in MBA speak but in a way that you will be able to review the list in 3/6/12 months

* know you are going to make mistakes, be honest about it with the team and keep on improving. it never ends but it is such an awesome journey.

(no capital letters, speed has a price :D)

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> “do you want to have a beer/coffee/social interaction with the person outside of work”

Unfiltered and unanalyzed, this is a bad metric because it essentially brings out the lowest-level mental evaluation of whether the person fits your tribe or not. It’s easily subtly biased against women, introverts, other ethnicities, etc. — not because you hate them but because your lizard-brain doesn’t automatically associate them with comfort.

Instead think about whether you’d want to hang out with the person, and then try to intellectually disregard that evaluation completely.

I think both extremes are problematic; while you (rightly) cover the cliquey/othering/representation side, the counter is the introduction of people to the team who - at best - cannot or will not socially integrate, and at worst are positively frictional and demoralizing.

You see this happen a lot when (say) poor management look too much at cost or box-ticking over team morale and competence.

"Can they do the job?" and "can we get on with them?" are both important questions for a healthy team, but yes, it is important that those questions are asked in an open-minded spirit.

Working with someone professionally is not the same as a beer buddy. In fact, I value having colleagues who are distinct enough from me that I would feel a bit uncomfortable having them over/hanging out (e.g. political views, humor, world view), as long as they are 100% professional and technically excellent. Btw .. a lot of technically excellent people do not drink (religion or just choice), and a bunch of people would likely be classified on the ASD scale. Your colleagues DO NOT need to be your buddies.

I recall when I was in a team that was super buddy-buddy and everyone would hang out and go drinking, everyone shared the same view, etc. When we had a major crisis in the office, things devolved into a shouting match in a manner that may be okay with buddies but not in a professional environment.

You've read too much into my "can we get on with them?" which is just about having common ground and relaxed relations at work, nothing to do with drinking, being buddies etc.

thank you for explaining the thought much better than i did

"(no capital letters, speed has a price :D)"

purely on this point, having two cases does seem quite unnecessary and burdensome

you have to learn the alphabet twice, for one thing

and in fact, much punctuation is also superfluous

just put each 'thought' on it's own line, for example

no need for fancy untypeable punctuation like the recently popular —

excellent "point"

will implement

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