What You Want in a VP Eng from the Recruiters Behind Twitter and LinkedIn

This is a fantastic interview, and highlights the most common mistakes that I see early stage companies making:

1.) Seeking someone in their own image who is willing to work 18 hour days, including an unwillingness to look at candidates who have a different (or non-startup) background or are a missing a few buzzwords from their resume.

It might work for your first few engineering hires, but scaling it becomes incredibly difficult and brings with it huge lost opportunity costs. The faster you move out of your comfort zone, the better.

I know one well known start-up who has been trying to fill a role for over 4 months, and has gone through two dozen candidates, simply because of a strongly held philosophy by the founder who mandates 80-hour work weeks which effectively eliminates anybody who is married or has kids.

2.) Using fizzbuzz technical coding challenges as a proxy for how effectively someone will contribute to the team & your company hitting its product roadmap goals.

3.) Accurately & honestly assessing where you stand, and realizing that if you're a 7, trying to hire a "10" can be a recipe for failure. This is especially true if you're trying to pay below market rates.

4.) Moving with a sense of urgency and speed. If hiring is really your #1 priority, being willing to skip lunch with your monthly lunch with mom in order to make time for a hot candidate. In general, working under the assumption that anybody good is going to have multiple paper offers in hand, is a good philosophy.

5.) Decisiveness. "Making the offer when you've found the right house" vs. changing your mind because the color of the window boxes is wrong. Avoiding decisions by committee.