[HN Gopher] Learnings of a CEO: Matt Schulman, Pave, on Hiring
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Learnings of a CEO: Matt Schulman, Pave, on Hiring
Author : gmays
Score : 34 points
Date : 2022-10-25 15:57 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ycombinator.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ycombinator.com)
| mparis wrote:
| Matt is a force of will and one of the hardest working people I
| have ever met. Great work thus far and good luck on the journey
| ahead!
| pavethrowaway wrote:
| thorncorona wrote:
| s/Learnings/Lessons/g
| dsr_ wrote:
| It's an old form, implying more that the person is going to
| tell you about what they learned than that they will teach you
| things.
| manv1 wrote:
| Is "learnings" a real word now
| monknomo wrote:
| yeah, it's business jargon. I can only imagine someone
| somewhere forgot the word "lesson" and was high enough status
| that the malapropism stuck
| Justsignedup wrote:
| unrelated to the article, looking at pave it seems ripe to
| connect a fake company to and mine their data to publicly share
| compensation bands that are accessible.
|
| Their data can really help a lot of individuals negotiate
| salaries.
| [deleted]
| hmtb02 wrote:
| Matt is one of the best, most ethically-driven founders I've ever
| worked with - there are a thousand easier, cheaper decisions Pave
| could make in how it operates (especially given the space) that
| he chooses not to do, in service of customers & data integrity.
| Pave is special!
| throwawayment wrote:
| how ethical is it to spam people's inboxes with unsolicited
| interview requests, especially when one has never shared their
| contact info with his company, nor shown the slightest interest
| in working for it?
| dsr_ wrote:
| When a zero-karma 1-hour old account says things like this, one
| should beware.
| esel2k wrote:
| I don't like the try-and-hire approach, we have trial periods in
| europe for this. And even these don't really give you as employee
| the free choice as finding a job takes time. If I commit to a job
| then I expect them employer to his part: Pension fund, insurance,
| onboard etc and not have unfair some leverage over me.
| pizzaknife wrote:
| this 100%
| neilv wrote:
| > _There are two types of executives you can hire - either a high
| slope (an up-and-comer) or a high Y intercept (a veteran in the
| industry). The veteran has been around for a while and knows what
| they're doing. The up-and-comer is riskier, but this person is
| going to have more of an appetite to learn, more of a bias to
| take action, and a do-whatever-it-takes mentality. There is a
| time and place for both types of hires, but as a 35-person
| startup, almost always go for the slope, not the high Y
| intercept._
|
| There are two types of HR manager you can hire -- either one that
| would advise not putting that in writing and publicizing it, or
| one that would advise not betting the company on theories pulled
| out of who-knows-where.
| hellolemon wrote:
| Look at his LinkedIn profile and you will quickly see how
| unqualified he is for the CEO role. He is the slope as he puts
| it. And no high Y would work for him.
| JamesianP wrote:
| It's easy to make this policy objective. Give them a test of
| ethical principles. Hire the person who fails it...
| LewisJEllis wrote:
| The idea of slope vs y-intercept as applied to people/hiring is
| not some random unknown made-up theory; it's quite commonly
| discussed/repeated among founders, VCs, etc. I think it may've
| originated with John Ousterhout.
|
| https://twitter.com/search?q=slope%20y-intercept
| tmpz22 wrote:
| There are two types of blog poster - either they categorize
| people into two simple groups or they talk out of there mouth
| versus a different orifice.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| It's not pulled out of nowhere; his mental framework comes out
| of the management consulting playbook where you divide up the
| subject into groups A and B (usually only two groups) and try
| to glean superficial insights about one or the other for your
| customers.
|
| Perhaps unsurprisingly, according to LinkedIn, Matt Schulman
| has a degree from Wharton. He is the archetypal tech bro
| wearing the trappings of nerddom. 15 years ago he'd have been
| spewing something analogous from a stone-clad building on Wall
| St
| xapata wrote:
| I'd have thought George P. Burdell would have more Hacker
| News karma. We should do something about that.
| notac wrote:
| Tell me you're ageist without telling me you're ageist.
| purpleblue wrote:
| I talked to Pave last year and bowed out after hearing how they
| do business. Their business model and their techniques could have
| changed since I last talked to them.
|
| At the time, customer companies give all their compensation data
| to Pave, including employee names, and then they use that to
| create compensation data across the list of their customers and
| share it. They were targeting startups, but I don't know if they
| have expanded since.
|
| If I remember correctly, because they have your name, they also
| scrape LinkedIn data about you and try to get as much information
| about you as possible like job titles, etc. I wasn't comfortable
| with this so I bowed out. I'm not sure how much control employees
| have to prevent this sharing to Pave, because I would not want my
| entire salary history to be shared with prospective employers so
| that they could definitively say "Well, this person got paid X in
| their previous position, we shouldn't pay more than 5% above
| that."
|
| They may have changed their data policy, like I mentioned I
| haven't talked to them since last year.
| LewisJEllis wrote:
| Hi, I work for Pave (but I don't speak for Pave, etc etc).
|
| > If I remember correctly, because they have your name, they
| also scrape LinkedIn data about you and try to get as much
| information about you as possible like job titles, etc.
|
| I am not aware of Pave doing anything like this.
|
| > I would not want my entire salary history to be shared with
| prospective employers so that they could definitively say
| "Well, this person got paid X in their previous position, we
| shouldn't pay more than 5% above that."
|
| Pave does not share specific identifiable data like "John Doe
| got paid $X at EmployerCo".
|
| Pave only shares aggregations like "people in San Francisco,
| with the title Senior Software Engineer, at companies between
| 100 and 500 employees, typically get paid $X at the 50th
| percentile, $Y at the 75th, and $Z at the 90th".
|
| From Pave's website,
| https://www.pave.com/products/compensation-benchmarking-data:
|
| > Benchmarking can never be traced back to an individual or
| employee.
|
| I am not aware of any of these things having changed at any
| point.
| jondeval wrote:
| Sometimes I daydream about starting a product company and my
| thinking goes like this:
|
| Do you have a decent idea that solves a real problem? - yes,
| check.
|
| Do you have respect for the iterations and learning required to
| find product market fit? - yes, check.
|
| Do you have years of relevant engineering and product experience
| and can you build and execute on stuff? - yes, check.
|
| But then my thoughts turn to what seems to actually matter (re-
| enforced by articles like this):
|
| Are you an extravert who wants to spend all their time talking to
| investors and raising money? - no, fail.
|
| Are you an extravert who wants to spend the other half of all
| their time interviewing and hiring new employees? - no, fail.
|
| Have you ever actually met an extravert who you would trust
| enough to delegate these two critical responsibilities above? -
| no, fail.
| vecter wrote:
| The first three things you mentioned are still requirements for
| a successful startup. They're not sufficient, as you've pointed
| out, but if you have those three then you're off to a decent
| start.
|
| Building a successful company is about far more than just
| building a product. If you're one of the lucky few that find
| product-market fit, you still need to scale the company and
| build up an organization that execute on the opportunity that
| exists. That is mostly a people and leadership problem, and not
| a technical one.
| Kranar wrote:
| That sounds about right, as someone who started and runs their
| own company. Having a decent idea for a product, being able to
| learn and having experience are good skills to have but they
| are not important towards the building of a company and leading
| a team. You could potentially build a product in a niche area,
| but you're not going to build anything beyond a very small
| business with those skills alone.
|
| Running or building a company is about allocating capital,
| hiring good people and being able to manage them effectively,
| and being comfortable with delegating tasks to competent
| experts instead of trying to micromanage everything. That's how
| you get scale.
|
| If you don't have those skills, nothing wrong with that, most
| people don't. Instead you find an existing company that has
| that, and you join them and offer them the skills that you do
| have.
|
| One thing you quickly realize when you start a company is just
| how chaotic it is in ways you never expected from legal
| aspects, financial aspects, coordinating things internally
| within your company and externally with third party vendors and
| your customers, and you begin to feel the pressure of having
| competition that is constantly trying to shut you down,
| especially as you get bigger and bigger. It's very fierce and
| you are reminded that every single dollar you make is a dollar
| that someone else is fighting for.
|
| If what you want to do is focus mostly on a product and employ
| your particular area of expertise then do not start a company,
| join one. Finally this extravert vs introvert stuff is
| nonsense, don't use it as an excuse or let it deter you. Plenty
| of introverts are incredible leaders that have managed to run
| some of the most wildly successful companies ever known. Look
| at some interviews with tech CEOs before they became
| successful; they are some of the most socially awkward and
| uncomfortable looking people you can imagine who seem to really
| hate giving talks, heck check out the infamous Zuckerberg 60
| Minutes interview or other interviews from around 2004. Early
| Bill Gates interviews are only slightly less awkward as are
| interviews with Google's Larry Page.
| harryvederci wrote:
| I don't know the details of your skillset, but maybe you can
| try launching a product that doesn't need investors and
| employees. So make your daydream about a product, not a product
| company.
|
| Not all companies have to be big, and maybe you don't even need
| to create a company to create something helpful / beautiful /
| profitable / whatever floats your boat.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| WRT hiring, I've been looking for a job and had a number of
| interviews, perhaps 15-20. Odd thing is they've almost all
| asked for touchy-feely things such as my values, what's my
| favourite language and the like but no actual hard questions
| that tested my knowledge or capabilities.
|
| The only org that did that said I beat everyone else and
| they're interested in having me (currently in progress in
| fact). Make of it what you will; I don't know what to think.
| They all want innovative problem solvers with deep knowledge
| but don't ask the interview questions that would show that up.
| It makes no sense.
| jondeval wrote:
| Good luck to you. Going through a job hunt is tricky. It
| sounds like you have an interested company and I hope it
| works out. Keep pushing.
|
| > They all want innovative problem solvers with deep
| knowledge but don't ask the interview questions that would
| show that up.
|
| The hiring process is a quintessentially human process so
| you're going to experience many different types of people.
|
| Keep focused on enthusiastic service. Focus on showing how
| you can help the company out with their mission. Research the
| company ahead of time and build a case that you are ready to
| communicate to the hiring team. Answer their questions
| honestly and directly but if they don't ask great questions,
| no big deal, just proactively fill that gap with good reasons
| why they should bring you on.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| Companies want mainly decent tech skills, or so they claim,
| but don't ask the tech questions to pick out those
| candidates (again, IME). How does that add up?
|
| > Research the company ahead of time and build a case that
| you are ready to communicate to the hiring team
|
| Yeah, to do that you need to know the companies'
| requirements. As an outsider you can't know them.
|
| > proactively fill that gap with good reasons why they
| should bring you on.
|
| I've even offered to work free for companies to start with.
| I got not one taker in the past few years. I offered to
| work paid - I go through the interview process where I
| don't asked get asked tech questions, just the touchy-feely
| stuff which I can't stand out in (who can?).
|
| Point is, interviewing could be made a lot simpler and more
| effective I think; per
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33334492 I don't think
| you need to spend "half of all their time interviewing and
| hiring new employees". You should be able to filter far
| more efficiently. That's my point, not whingeing about my
| particular case.
| tdullien wrote:
| Something that the interview unfortunately does not address: in
| their contract-then-hire setup, how did they deal with engineers
| (that usually have crazy broad IP assignment Agreements on their
| day jobs)?
| 10g1k wrote:
| Or "lessons".
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