app/notes/20160722-0846.md
Tech Hiring Misperceptions at Different Companies
tech-hiring-misperceptions
1469177213
I've seen many companies' technical interview processes and I feel many of them
are wrong. For almost any advice about technical interviewing, you're likely to
hear the opposite advice from a different person. What people don't realize is that
different types of companies need different types of engineers, and that you
can't select the correct type of engineer if you're interviewing for the same
qualities.
Many people, especially those firmly in the Silicon Valley
[Blogosphere](https://xkcd.com/181/), opine that you should only
hire ninja rockstar jedi engineers (nobody calls them that anymore, but the
mindset is still there) for your startup (because you obviously work at a
startup, right?) whether your startup is trying to sell a static program
analysis engine or be an Uber for X company. The fact is that for most
companies, good software will not save a failing company and bad software will
not sink a successful company (case in point: Yahoo and your typical government
contractor, respectively). Therefore, if you're in the category of companies
whose success doesn't depend on the strength of your engineering organization
(which is most companies), I think you should stop trying to attract really good
engineers - they're going to get bored writing yet another CRUD app and you're
going to be paying a lot more money.