Awesome memorial day backpacking! Now back to business :) (Taken with instagram)
Judging young promising startups at the Startup Weekend in Prague at 5pm today! Good luck everybody! #excited http://prague.startupweekend.org/event/
“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny. What we think, we become.”
Facebook acquires Instagram for a $1B https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10100318398827991
Amazing - Google’s Art Project - Art, collections, interactive museums… http://www.googleartproject.com/collection/moma-the-museum-of-modern-art/museumview/
I just love this ad…
Amazing- The Scale of Universe! http://images.4channel.org/f/src/589217_scale_of_universe_enhanced.swf
Searching for a new Geo Charting solution for @GoodData. Tips anyone?
In NYC till Sunday, who is around?
GoodData raises $15M from Andreessen Horowitz. Thanks to the amazing team for a great b-day present. Yep, I am 33 today! http://tcrn.ch/nIu1Qr #gooddatarocks
5 reasons why not to “hire above” in startups
My friend, a CEO of a growing internet startup is hiring more people and so am I at GoodData. We were swapping stories over lunch and he told me: “I just need to hire some young and eager employees for now and then will find someone with more experience later to hire above them. You know, I will hire managers now and then hire directors, I will hire VPs now and then put EVPs above them…”
I hope you are smart enough to hire only A players. So many blog posts were written on that topic, that I don’t need to emphasize the importance of that. However, especially early stage startups with more experienced founders often hire young motivated A players who are risk takers, and let them work their butts off without giving sufficient feedback, without investing in them and without focusing on their longer-term potential. Then, when the founders raise money, they hire more experienced people to manage the young risk takers and thus extinguish the spark of ambition, excitement and motivation of the early team.
I have worked and consulted for over 30 companies on three continents across multiple industries. I was lucky enough to see many different company sizes and cultures, to experience different leadership styles, to conduct hundreds of job interviews and I am persuaded that this approach is wrong for so many reasons:
1. It kills the culture
A great company must be built on transparency and trust. Motivation and skills are much more important than years of experience. Great culture is not created over-night. Culture, it is a very gentle creature that if once hurt carries deep scars and often never heals. Hire someone “experienced” above a less-experienced but motivated and ambitious A player and you can be sure that motivation, trust and excitement will be gone. You create a precedence that will spread disgust and fear throughout the company and will hurt the culture deeply. Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh talks in his book Delivering Happiness about the importance of hiring people not for one role but for a trajectory and how important this is for company culture. I highly recommend reading it.
2. It kills the innovation
Young A players are innovative. They are not afraid to take risk, experiment, be agile and fail fast. They out-innovate people with years of experience who “have done it”. Hire experienced people above them and you might get expertise in best-practice processes, but you lose on innovation. Which one is more important to you? I know my answer.
3. Experienced people are not so motivated
Experienced professionals might be less motivated, they often have the mantra “I have done it already, I don’t need to prove myself.” They might not work as hard and be as eager to “change the world” through your company. Think about it, someone who is in a new role/capacity is eager to prove he/she can make it much more than someone who went from one company to another with the same role and title.
4. You lose people
This one is obvious, young A players are motivated by opportunities, by being able to show that they can do more, prove themselves, grow. They are eager to learn, they are eager to hear feedback. Rather then hiring above them and losing them, get them a mentor.
5. It detracts the best people
We don’t live in a vacuum. Especially not in today’s global, super-connected world where finding out about someone’s history is so easy. If an amazing job candidate finds out that you “hired above” previously because of “experience”, is he/she going to be eager to work for you?
Of course, I am not saying that all experienced people are not motivated and of course there are situations when experience is golden. What I am saying is that if you don’t believe that someone junior can grow into a senior role as the company grows, don’t hire him. You must invest into your people along the way. You should need to “hire above” only if you created great environment for professional and personal growth, provided necessary tools and feedback and some individuals are still not performing. Actually you shouldn’t “hire above” even in that case. You should fire and re-hire…
What do you think? Have you experienced “hiring above” situation? Tell me about it!
