Note to Self on Hiring: From a Hacker to a Start-Up Employer

(Disclaimer: The following post is complete fiction, some of the incidents may or may not have happened. Some of them might have happened to friends or listened to over a code/coffee review session. Yes, my friends and I review coffee)

                                                                          (Source)

 This is past me writing to present me. The past me was a stereotypical hacker, born out of necessity and carved out of a coffee-maker. The new me is about to become an employer, still confused about his identity but not too confused lest those business documents are ever to be done. This is a declaration to the world, of the promises I made to myself for whenever I become a founder w.r.t  hiring other hackers(or engineers if you are into that kind of earthly terminology). World, let me not forget.

1. Work with an equal: An equal in technical skills. Or an equal in comprehension skills. Or an equal in learning. Or an equal in the hard-ass raw determination which can move mountains. Too many times there is a misunderstanding between colleagues because one of them doesn’t get the other one technically, or lack empathy for the other’s idea. I was told that it’s because some hacker’s are cultural misfits. I think they were wrong. They were misfits alright. But an ideological one. People with respect for knowledge may shout up a storm over an architecture implementation but I have seen those same people giggling over silly code bugs like little girls. Together. 

2. If you can speak to me through your work, you are speaking to me: So I knew a guy. Brilliant Hacker. Almost a computer scientist. There was just one problem. He had a chronic fear of speaking. Like if you are walking by him and say, “Hi, how are you?”. The response would be absolutely nothing. Not because he is arrogant. But he just doesn’t know what to say. The way to talk to him would be to email him a programming problem. Then he would slowly dazzle you with amazing thinking in a well written email reply. If he was feeling good about it, he would scurry up to your desk, mute, nodding and smiling. Last time I checked he had been barely promoted while his peers were moving up leaps and bounds. This won’t happen at my start-up. Extra-awesome people need extra care and understanding. Also, one A.R Rahman > 100 Anu Malik’s, even if all the Anu Malik’s compose(wink wink: ctrl + c, v) music on a supercomputer working together.

3. Not talk about passion and pay employees well:  After spending weeks and weeks, pouring over code, living on pizzas, coffees and jaw cracking snacks, there is a guy(there is always that guy) who would come up to you and be like, “Dude, Passion!! It’s all about passion.”. It would be totally acceptable to be cheeky and cheesy except that guy is your boss and uses the same line when you go ask for some free time or extra pay. Nothing more is a killer of productivity when your passion is taken for granted. Passion, as I have come to learn is a spendable commodity. It can be stretched to a certain limit. A good salary package relieves some of the tension.

4. Forced free time: It’s not that I didn’t know that daily consumption of big amounts of pizza, coffee and sugar-drinks are not good for you. I also knew that breakfast is something about eating food in the morning. And sitting all day on a chair is going to make you flabby and weak. I knew all those things and as an adult it’s my responsibility to care of it. Isn’t it? Then why did I do it? Because that’s what a hacker is, hitting at a problem until it is solved. Few of them know how to stop, but most of them get burnt out pretty soon. But how can the captain who has asked his crew to follow him into the hailstorm forget about them? Well, I have a different solution. Let’s not be dramatic. Let’s not do the hailstorm thingy. It has been well-researched that anything above a 40 hour work week is futile anyway. You destroy more than you create. I know. I have done it. I was just not telling the captain from the fear of a personal hailstorm of his. I propose a 10×4 hour week. So if you are working with me sometime in the near future: Take breaks or I am kidnapping you and installing you on the beaches of Goa myself. 

That’s it. Those are the four things I wanted to note and record for myself. Another document written. Now, about that presentation deck…