Building Teams: Hire People, Not Skills

I definitely think this is the best long term solution. I think culture is incredibly important to an organization. And, I liked the article overall.<p>But- there is some glossing over of technical ability. I am one to believe that the best software engineers and programmers are 10-100x better than the average. I think that is a belief shared on this site. Would I rather have a programmer who is 100x better who doesn't match the culture I want exactly, or the average programmer who does? Within reason, I think the 100x better guy.<p>It's easy to say I want the 100x programmer who matches the startup culture and also doesn't want to get paid a lot or take a ton of equity. But, hiring isn't that easy.

What typically differentiates the people I get excited about versus the people I'm indifferent about is their answer to: "So what books are you reading now or what's the last book you've read?" Everyone who I have worked with has had pretty good answers for this question and has gone on to be pretty impressive. It's sort of sad but most people don't bother to read anything at all.

This is real 'back to basics' stuff but the issue is how do you figure out who will be a good cultural fit in an hour long interview where nine times out of ten the person is going out of their way to impress you anyway.<p>The final paragraph really nails it. A candidate will fulfil the stereotype of an interviewee when in an interview scenario, meet them at a hacker meet-up or even for an informal coffee chat and the candidate will feel less obliged to act like your potential employee and more inclined to be themselves.<p>It's just as important for your potential employee to like you as it is for you to like them so you have a reciprocal duty to try and be yourself when meeting a candidate. Formal, stuffy interviews tend to generate formal, stuffy conversations.

This stuff is a great demonstration of the type of advantages that a small organization has over a larger one.<p>The problem with weighting more subjective assessments of people like "cultural fit" higher than more objective assessments like "experience" is that the assessor's bias will become a problem. By problem, I mean that you're going to get successfully sued for some form of discrimination.

Love the breakdown - "scrappiness and drive" at 35%. To me resourcefulness is #1 - I don't care if someone has the experience, I care that they can go out and figure it out on their own.

I'd really enjoy seeing a follow up post on this with more detail on the process. This article describes the general feeling I've had, even outside of start ups. I do feel like the "actually coming through" part of scrappiness is the most important, especially when it comes down to coming up with solutions that are elegant and not just hack work. There has to be some middle ground that mixes this approach with a set of skill/intelligence factors in the interview.

I don't think these guidelines would apply the same way at a larger established company instead of a startup. Skillset would have comparably more interest to a company already invested in legacy systems which wouldn't be the case with a start-up.

There needs to be a certain level of skill but frankly, looking at the long term and with the right individual, I'd take a carpenter over a rockstar any day.

I like the focus on people.<p>I'm wondering if salary is also selected according to this breakdown and not on skills (as it is usually done).