Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.
By Anthony Stevens
I’ve had quite a few conversations lately with friends who have been through the co-founder/partnering/hiring process, at various levels and in various roles, and these conversations gelled in my head in response to a recent (and ongoing) thread on the Seattle Tech Startups list about source control and judging candidates and/or companies by the technologies they employ.
Specifically, what makes a good hire? It’s a question that everyone in tech wonders about, because at some point you’re either doing the hiring or looking to get hired. For startups, people make or break the fledgling company, so it’s doubly critical to get the right answers to the question.
I’ve personally been involved in the hiring decisions on hundreds of candidates over the last dozen years, in companies both big and small, and further, like most of you, most of my acquaintances in the Seattle tech industry have shared their own best- and worst-case stories over the years. And while I don’t think the answer can be summed up in a soundbite, at the same time, I don’t think it’s an unanswerable question.
Joel Spolsky famously summed up his two key criteria for hires: Smart and Get Things Done. I don’t think that’s all there is to it, however. I think that there are two additional sets of evaluation criteria that you need to consider. First, technical fit. If you’re a 100% iPhone development shop, I don’t think it would be wise to hire someone who was smart and got things done but had only ever worked in Visual Basic. I’m not going to go as far as some on the aforementioned STS thread and say that if you don’t use source-control technology X then you’re not worth hiring, but there are certain broad parameters within which your pool of candidates should be comfortable. Certain lateral leaps are fine and expected, since the technology changes so fast – but the notion that technology fit doesn’t matter if you’re incredibly smart is a little theoretical for me.
The second set of evaluation criteria has to do with interpersonal fit – what I’ve always called “the intangibles”, since they are very much qualitative, as opposed to quantitative, criteria. These are messy and subjective and indirect, which is why many tech people shy away from them or question their necessity. I’m talking about things like:
- Is the person friendly?
- Does she keep her commitments?
- Is she open-minded and eager to learn?
- Does she care about quality?
- Can she admit mistakes cheerfully?
…I could go on and on, but you get the idea. These are all important when you’re working day-to-day with someone, and the more “off” the interpersonal fit is with you or your team, the more friction and problems will crop up, reducing productivity and happiness in a vicious cycle.
I’d describe these last two sets of evaluation criteria – technical fit and interpersonal fit – as “Harmony”. Look for it when you’re looking for candidates, or partners, or co-founders.
