I wonder : do you have the same engineer turn over than "regular" companies, that is developers leaving after two or three years max?
Everywhere around me, I see companies who expected to go big and profit on IPO failing. Nothing new, but I get the feeling it's getting harder to attract investors in that model (this was already a feeling I had before lockdown).
This kind of company you're building, who focus on profitability from contract work while working on the big picture between two contracts, may just be the most stable kind of company one may build, especially if you happen to have a low turn over.
Nice :) I did expect that much, if only because working on free softwares feels way less pointless than working on yet an other e-commerce company or b2b app fighting to get users through advertisement.
Would you mind telling us more about your recruitment process? I'm not in a hiring position myself, but I guess it would be of value for a lot of people here, giving how turn over is a serious blow for everyone.
> Would you mind telling us more about your recruitment process?
So, in general, I ask 2 main questions:
- talk to me about you, what you like and which project you worked on that you liked.
- a generic question, that can be a bit misleading, on purpose. Like "What is the difference between TCP and UDP, and is HTTP over TCP or UDP?" for webdevs or "What is the =0 in C++ classes headers? Since NULL and 0 are the same, can I use "=0" here?" for C++ devs, or "How would you improve C if you could?"
The first type of questions see if the person truly likes software development, and is not here just because "that's what cool kids do" and that removes a lot of bro-grammer.
The second is more to see the generic culture, and if the person was curious enough to look a bit at the core of the technology they are working on. Because there isn't a yes/no answer, you must discuss.
And also, I need to meet in person. No 1hr phone-call, no white-board, no multiple meetings, no complex CS question that anyone can prepare.
I have one big issue with recruitment process: when I meet people, after those 2 questions, I can know very quickly that I don't want to hire them. If we are in the first 5 minutes of the interview, how can I tell them "no" without being too rude?
Finally, the culture, and the political culture of the community must fit. And unfortunately, sometimes that shows on the resume/introduction mail. But to be honest, it's rarely been an issue, except for one intern once.
It sounds like your questions are calibrated to detect if the interviewee is passionate. I totally get that, 15 years ago, it was obvious everyone around was, but those last years I find myself wondering more and more if devs around me didn't get into coding just because "it's a good job", and it looked slightly more interesting than a career in law or commerce.
> I have one big issue with recruitment process: when I meet people, after those 2 questions, I can know very quickly that I don't want to hire with them. If we are in the first 5 minutes of the interview, how can I tell them "no" without being too rude?
Been there, I feel the pain :) I had briefly a job as a manager, and I knew it was not for me when I started to panic about how to tell people I won't hire them. Still better than to have to fire them, but damn, finding a proper way to say "you're not good enough" or any other reason is brutal.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time for sharing all of that with us.
> It sounds like your questions are calibrated to detect if the interviewee is passionate.
Yes, passionate, so they will work on something cool, and are going to like it. Not passionate in the sense "I can pressure 60hours from them per week" like some SV startups do.
Yes, that whole "go big or go home" model only ever made sense for highly-scalable, user facing services. Open source development and support is in many ways the polar opposite of that. Even many B2B services don't really make sense as something where "take lots of outside investment" is the focus. And if you do need some sort of one-time big push to develop something, that's what Kickstarter and other crowdfunding models can support most directly.
Everywhere around me, I see companies who expected to go big and profit on IPO failing. Nothing new, but I get the feeling it's getting harder to attract investors in that model (this was already a feeling I had before lockdown).
This kind of company you're building, who focus on profitability from contract work while working on the big picture between two contracts, may just be the most stable kind of company one may build, especially if you happen to have a low turn over.