Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Getting bigger

Well, the time is nigh for ShuntYard to start employing drones. This is a good thing, but also rather overwhelming.

In my quest to build ShuntYard into the most kick-ass development house I've even seen, I'm faced with a bit of an existential crisis right out of the gate: should I employ people dumber than myself?

Lets reason this through: fuck no.

If I'm smarted than the people who work for me, it stands to reason I can do their jobs better*. So, if I can do it better, then I can do it faster also. sooo, why am I hiring them?

The short answer is I'm not. But, as with all things, there is a but.

The first mitigating factor here is company culture. I believe that building a successful business is all about the culture. Hire a bunch of depro losers and you will end up with a depro loser company. Hire rockstars and you will probably be in the news for an office shooting, but damn, fame is fame.

At this early stage of ShuntYard's existense, when it's mostly just me, I need to pick people almost as much for their attitude as for their abilities. So, I'm looking for smart, self-motivated, young people, who can grow into what I want/need them to be.

If I go out and hire stagnated experts with their own jaded view of the world, I'll only end up with the kind of company they want, not what I want.

So, even though I'm looking for smart people, I'm looking for people with potential, not necessarily knowledge under the belt.

So my final verdict on this is: Hire people, not skills. Skills can be learned (though dear god, dont hire complete novices, you need to get work done, not play pin-the-algorithm-on-the-noob**)... where was I going with this... oh yeah, duchebags are duchebags for ever, and ShuntYard is only needs the one.

* With in a narrow field of expertise, I don't presume to be a sales drone, for instance. So, for the sake of argument, presume we are talking developers here, people who are supposed to directly take a load off my shoulders.

**hmmmm

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