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Comment by cpwright | Hacker News Reader

Under the important things they've learned, "A startup is a war. ... lots of life changes shouldn't be made together", and then a biblical quote saying that a newly married man should not be set to war.

Doesn't strike me as truly the bias-free process they were earlier promoting.

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Yeah, was wondering in retrospect if that would be a bit bizarre without the context of the talk.

Essentially, we were saying that this idea of making sure we're not hiring people who are undergoing lots of change in other areas of life isn't a new idea, and has been recognised by ancient cultures long ago (hence the quote from the Old Testament). If you can find any similar quotes from a long way back, let me know and we'll add them!

Don't change the airframe and the engines at the same time ;)

The fact that it happened in ancient times and worked doesn't mean that it's fine to replicate. I know that people who work in start-ups tend to be of younger age because companies want them almost exclusively for themselves and not for their girlfriend/potential wife/family but acceptable forms of discrimination are still forms of discrimination.

This seems unwise to publicise. There are a few common life changes for which you cannot legally discriminate against a candidate in hiring (in the US.)

I'm not even sure why you would allow hiring manages to ask the questions necessary to discriminate against these candidates.

More fundamentally, there seems to be a conflict between candidates who assure that they are committed to the position and hiring managers who assume they cannot be.

"We were willing to hire you and put the success of our company in your hands, but we don't really trust you when you say you'll work hard, because you'll probably just go sneaking off to go spend time with your family."

I think candidates would prefer a company that trusts the judgement of its employees.

Hmm, we're not going to kill your application on this alone, but we are going to ask you about it, and talk in depth about how you're going to manage whatever it is. Many people underestimate how hard working in a startup is vs. a more established company. We're not talking in terms of hours either - we work a normal 40 hour week and never weekends. We're talking more about taking responsibility, etc.

If someone is moving to a new place, changing jobs, starting a family, or something else major, we just want to make sure they've really considered yet another factor. It can be no big deal, but we have had some candidates remove themselves from consideration after thinking about this, even if we were willing to move forward.

It's interesting seeing this through the USA lense - we're absolutely not talking about time commitment (which I guess is the default American perception of what we'd be referring to) but instead more talking about general quality of life and sanity for everyone.

And yes, I realise I misspoke a bit on the parent by using "making sure we're not" - more like "making sure we're intentionally addressing it and discussing it"!

As this is the UK this is very unwise stating that you discriminate against those with young kids or those planning to start a family is insane.

If that came to court you would lose automatically.

It strikes me they need to hire some one with a basic knowledge of employment law.

Yeah, we're definitely sending almost exactly the opposite message that we intended, on a slide that had a lot of verbal context put around it. I just updated it to make it more clear and remove the quote. No point to it that can't be conveyed in a clearer way. Thanks for the feedback!

> we're not hiring people who are undergoing lots of change in other areas of life

Having a child? Coming to terms with a mental illness? Coming to terms with some other disability? Coming to terms with newly discovered genetic information? Going bankrupt?

Yes, it comes of as a bit bizarre, and something of a red flag (due to the bias aspect).

But it was generally good advice, otherwise. It's amazing how many companies don't get the "Respond to every CV, always" and "Have the CEO personally involved in every hiring decision" parts, for example.

After seeing how this is being misinterpreted (there was quite a bit of verbal context around this) we've decided to just remove it. Definitely don't want to send the wrong message or perception!

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