New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How do I convince management to hire better? Ask HN: How do I convince management to hire better?

Ask HN: How do I convince management to hire better?
9 by canterburry | 7 comments on Hacker News.
Ironically, I am part of said management but I feel like all other hiring managers ,around and above me, don't even know what "excellent" engineering talent looks like. Most of my peers are mainly concerns with deadlines and to meet deadlines they need bodies. Once they get said bodies, they complain about how little people on their teams seem to care, how they don't read the requirements, how they don't bother asking questions when they don't understand etc I don't claim to have cracked the hiring challenge but I do have some guiding principles which seems to work: * The candidate must demonstrate passion, curiosity and personal commitment to their craft. I.e. they take time to learn or practice their skills outside of work projects. They test their code not because the process says to do so but because they themselves have strong motivation to deliver a dependable product. * They are OCD. Not only do they need to know the how, but they need to understand why...and they won't stop until they have figured out the why. This helps in many situations from understanding standards, debugging odd bugs, selecting a good stack. * The next engineer must be better than the last hired engineer. Don't hire unless the candidate is solid even if your team is struggling. Other managers check boxes next to frameworks, acronyms and spend more time telling the candidate about the company than asking questions. How can this be turned around?

Ironically, I am part of said management but I feel like all other hiring managers ,around and above me, don't even know what "excellent" engineering talent looks like. Most of my peers are mainly concerns with deadlines and to meet deadlines they need bodies. Once they get said bodies, they complain about how little people on their teams seem to care, how they don't read the requirements, how they don't bother asking questions when they don't understand etc I don't claim to have cracked the hiring challenge but I do have some guiding principles which seems to work: * The candidate must demonstrate passion, curiosity and personal commitment to their craft. I.e. they take time to learn or practice their skills outside of work projects. They test their code not because the process says to do so but because they themselves have strong motivation to deliver a dependable product. * They are OCD. Not only do they need to know the how, but they need to understand why...and they won't stop until they have figured out the why. This helps in many situations from understanding standards, debugging odd bugs, selecting a good stack. * The next engineer must be better than the last hired engineer. Don't hire unless the candidate is solid even if your team is struggling. Other managers check boxes next to frameworks, acronyms and spend more time telling the candidate about the company than asking questions. How can this be turned around?