We hired a new lead engineer named Jason recently who just finished his first week. I am really enthusiastic about having him join the team.
I received maybe 40 responses to my Craig's List posting for a Lead Engineer. 35 of the responses were crap - automated responses either by bot or people who just read the title and dumped their standard response on me. One little trick I've developed is to ask respondants to my job posts specific questions and to do certain things like 'include your resume as text and attachement so I don't have to work to find out who you are' and 'include a code snippet'. Most people don't read. I don't think it's just job postings, they just don't read so their responses show they are just dumping their resume anywhere without a thought. I try to dump those respondants faster than they applied.
Our new lead programmer, however, just nailed everything in the interview process. He responded nicely and completly. I responded to him within 20 minutes. We had an initial interview within 30. A face to face interview within 3 days and an offer was extended on the 4th day. He even told his current employer he was interviewing, which I prefer and respect both coming and going. It shows he's a person who has integrity and will tell the truth at least more so than average.
The most interesting thing to me however was that he was leaving his old job because they under delivered on their job description. He was supposed to be a lead engineer there, but did a lot of network support. They never hired the additional support they said they would and they learned it was cheaper to have one person do 2 jobs. They kept cutting ohter corners too like dumping data instead of upgrading servers. They also had a dress code and he had to be there at some precise time. They told him they respected family time and that family time was very important to everyone, then they kept him till 8pm weekly to put out fires caused by poor planning. We run our company the opposite.
I came up in business in San Francisco over the last 10 years. Now I'm in Southern California and I think this is an microcosm of the cultural differences between those two places. We're in vangard here because people can telecommute and we talk by IM. Far from micro managing, we discuss things and implement them in the same day and/or communicate the purpose and effect we're going for and leave a lot of the exact details up to people. This lets them feel and see how their contributions reflect them and our combined contributions reflect us. The top down management by force culture will continue to be with us for a long time, but things are changing. If you don't respect your reports in any situation, they leave today to find that respect and growth. Stategically, people have more options in the information economy in general than they had in the industrial economy and they use those options.
Here's my IM exchange with our new engineer today:
lloydfassett (11/3/2006 4:23:24 PM): hey so tell me
lloydfassett (11/3/2006 4:23:40 PM): did you have a 'Little Orphan Annie' first week?
jason_roberts00 (11/3/2006 4:24:41 PM): hmmm, i'm afraid that's over my head ... but yes i've enjoyed my first week very much
lloydfassett (11/3/2006 4:25:22 PM): you know, 'Oh Boy! I think I'm gonna like it here!'
jason_roberts00 (11/3/2006 4:26:08 PM): ah yeah, I think that certainly sums up my week!
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