How I hire great engineers

Whenever I need to hire someone new onto my team, I put myself through a miniature bootcamp. Here are the broad strokes.

Know what you're looking for before you look for it. If you can't articulate what your expectations of this team member will be for the first 30, 60, 90 days, you're putting a low ceiling on the experience for all.

Remember that a healthy outcome comes from a healthy pipeline. Recruiting isn't transactional - build relationships with engineers before you need them. (This isn't just for recruiting.)

Generally engineers work for the following reasons: growth & development, impact, money. Figure out what priority order these are in for your candidate.

Look for people who can be trusting, approach conflict in a productive manner, are comfortable holding their peers accountable, and focus on the results of the team over their personal goals.

Dig deep to find values. Ask the candidate to tell you their life story. Assess the potential flight risk. Can this person get emotionally invested in their work? On a scale from 1 to 10, how badly do you want this person on your team? Is that rank contingent upon anything? Is this person a bullet or a barrel? What are their super powers? What are their deadly risks?

Paid trial projects > technical interviews.

One outstanding engineer gets more done than several mediocre engineers. Pay well. I like to give candidates a choice between high equity / low salary, or low equity / high salary and let them choose. Maybe even provide a number in the middle to balance the two.

What are your top recruiting and interviewing strategies and tactics?