Podcast · ~30 min episode

Hiring Is Not Hazing

REWORK (37signals) Free Intermediate

A useful counterweight that pokes holes in every method, including take-home projects, which can quietly exclude people who have jobs or caregiving duties. The takeaway is to offer flexibility: let candidates choose to show a code sample or take a suggested task, and design for fairness. Listen so your trial does not filter out strong people by accident.

  • Even take-home tasks can exclude busy or caregiving candidates.
  • Offer a choice between their own sample and a suggested project.
  • A bad process fit is not the same as a bad candidate.
Open on 37signals.com ↗

The question it answers

  1. How do I evaluate a developer's skill if I can't code?

Read with it

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  3. Once your bottleneck really is your hands and not your clarity, this piece covers how a non-technical founder finds, vets, and... The Founder's Corner Article · 10 min read How Non-Technical Founders Can Hire Great Developers Chris Tottman and Ruben Dominguez
  4. A Startup School talk with a YC partner and Triplebyte's co-founder on finding and hiring key engineers from scratch.... Y Combinator Startup Library Video · Around 45 minutes Building an engineering team Harj Taggar and Ammon Bartram
  5. A simple, repeatable four-step method for making hiring decisions instead of going on gut feel, which is where costly mis-hires... Geoff Smart and Randy Street Book · Book, around 200 pages Who: The A Method for Hiring Geoff Smart and Randy Street
  6. A venture firm's field guide to engineering hiring for founders, covering the full arc from defining the role to sourcing,... CRV Article · Long read How to Hire Engineers: A Guide for Founders CRV
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