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Yesterday, I fired one of my PHP developer. It is his 13th month. His team leader reported me that "He got average skills". Shame on me., Because, I hired him. After 13th month we fired him. Problem is really the hiring people (HR, CEO or anyone else). Now., I am preparing interview questions with twists & logic implementations.


> Now., I am preparing interview questions with twists & logic implementations.

Of course, I know nothing about the candidate, but...

Something tells me that fixing your hiring is going to require a little bit more than gotchas and hotseat questions.

Why not hire based on body of work?


Average skills? There was an article recently - I think by Joel on Software - that everyone thinks they're hiring in the top 1%. I have to admit I'm kind of curious as to what you were looking for in your team when you hired the guy, I can't tell unless you elaborate more. In addition, I agree with danilocampos: the problem might be in your hiring process. I'm not sure that throwing out puzzles or whatever will help you reduce your number of false positives.


The article you are referring to was recently posted on HN, but published in 2005: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html


"average" compared to what? your own team? that'd mean you've got people even below the person you fired. 'average' compared to the team leader's experiences? That's a bit... dangerous.

Frankly, an 'average skills' developer in a strong, supportive team can still be a great asset. They can do the work, but perhaps don't always know the best way to do something. However, they may be fine with being given direction. Many people I've worked with aren't good at taking directions from others - I'm not great at it myself in many situations. So the 'average skill' developer can be a blessing in many circumstances. But perhaps not on your team, which may say as much about your team dynamics as that developer.


Exactly. In fact, you NEED average people on your team to play the roles that the superstars are unwilling to play. Places like Facebook where the dirty and boring work is respected and rewarded (according to a Quora post by Yishan Wong) are rare. In a lot of places, the superstars do the superstar thing, and other people do the other stuff.

Good teams will always find a place for people. Ironically enough, this sometimes may even mean promoting someone with poor technical skills to management, among various other drastic measures. Their technical skills may suck, but their interpersonal skills and organizational skills may be off the charts, and they'll still have enough technical background to understand what the heck they're managing. That kind of thing.

When my friend first started at Google, he commented that there seemed to be a lot of underlying impatience and discontent because Google only hired superstars, and so many superstars had to stay on the bench. Not everyone can go do the glamorous job. Various anecdotal blog posts seem to have given us that even Google hasn't been able to 100% figure it out.


Yesterday, I fired one of my Middle Manager. His coworker reported to me that "He got average english skills".


And most importantly they are big whales not startups. TC is talking about two big billion vauated companies and their problems.


Losing employees like #13 is really a huge loss for Flickr.

Is Yahoo planning to sell Flickr too?


Not really. Employees #1 and #2 (Stewart, Caterina) left a long time ago. Several others have left too. But Flickr's still chugging along nicely: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mroth/5471404089/

I just wish people would stop panicking about small things.


it works. To make this even faster., Try to memcatch frequently searched domain names and flush it for every 24 hours(Incase someone registered one).

Good luck.


Thanks. I am caching domain results for a small period of time, so this does help with some of the speed/load.

The site may be a little slower than normal right now because of HN traffic, but I'm working on keeping it going.

Thanks for your feedback.


Fine., Also try to find "heat map" of user's mouse activities(hover) or click ratio. Try to give rating for those available domains for yourself and prioritize them based on it. Diff colors, Diff font size.. This will start rocking your popularity & aff earning ;)


Also try to find "heat map" of user's mouse activities(hover) or click ratio. Try to give rating for those available domains for yourself and prioritize them based on it.

I had thought of clicks, but not hover ratio--that's pretty interesting.

I may have to experiment with that, thanks for the idea.


Well, what do you think about

int main(void) { printf(" 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8"); return 0; }

I bet that 1000 was in binary and he was obviously checking the guy's CQ ( compSci Quotient)


This might be from some clever and lazy programmer.. lol

291 printf("numbers from 1 to 1000");jondavidjohn Dec 31 '10 at 7:07


Before deciding a framework., Check weather it is active or not http://wiki.python.org/moin/WebFrameworks


Dropbox is the last solution for filesharing.

Once they integrate a way to sync google docs & docs.com then they are done!


Is that because, Google docs or docs?


Onion?

Why so under valuated?


What makes you think $5 million is undervalued?


Because., It is Delicious. If they made an internal bid between Digg, Reddit, Google & Bing. They could sell it between $15-20 million. Because., It is the #1 social bookmarking service.


When someone says "There is a Bubble". Which means they are feared, got mass hysteria, jealous of early investors in future hot companies & may actually have some valid point."

Valid point is always about 20% of all over hype.


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