I meet regularly with engineering leaders. Startups to Series C. 25-30+ years in the game. WE'RE OLD, OK? GET OFF MY LAWN!
Anyway, the same topic always comes up: hiring.
Engineering leaders!!!!! Your PRs get more scrutiny than your candidate. You seem to spend 3 weeks debating a linting rule but hire people like you're picking a fantasy football team.
Strategic.
Hiring.
Plan.
Develop one.
You send a polished agenda. Then ignore it to watch someone sweat through a whiteboard problem or live coding nonsense, that you Googled that morning. The outcome? Vibes. Unquantifiable, expensive vibes.
After this bizarre game, you retreat to compare these vibes against a rubric that exists only in your head.
You're throwing darts at a board. In the dark. There is no board. Just a disco ball.
A strategic hiring plan is simple:
- Define the role (in words that mean things)
- List measurable skills (if you can't score it, you're guessing)
- Ask questions that surface them
- Score candidates identically (before the debrief, not during)
- Compare the numbers
You won't ship a button without success metrics. But a $200k hire? Vibes.
That's not strategy.
That's expensive tarot.
Or don't. Mercury's in retrograde anyway.