Subject
16 entries
Hiring
Bookmarks
Shepherd — Overseas Talent Agency
Shepherd is a headhunting agency specializing in placing overseas talent at 80% cost savings vs US equivalents — primarily Latin America and Southeast Asia. A go-to for early-stage startups needing to stretch runway on operations and support hires.
InterviewThis: Developer Questions for Prospective Employers
InterviewThis is an open-source list of questions for developers to ask prospective employers — covering engineering culture, team dynamics, technical practices, and company health. Reverses the usual interview direction: candidates evaluating companies.
hirethePIVOT: Second Career Developer Job Board
hirethePIVOT is a job board for second-career developers — people who switched into software from other fields. The hypothesis: career-changers bring real-world domain expertise, motivation, and maturity that traditional CS grads often lack.
How to Conduct A+ Reference Checks
Ryan Breslow's viral Twitter thread on conducting A+ reference checks — 10,000+ checks at Bolt revealed specific questions that surface truth that candidates and polished references won't volunteer. The most useful hiring signal most teams underuse.
Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued
Patrick McKenzie's canonical essay on salary negotiation — arguing that employees systematically underprice themselves and that negotiation is always appropriate, always safe, and leaves large amounts of money on the table when skipped. Probably the most widely-cited piece on this topic in tech.
82 Remote-First Companies That Actively Hire
A curated list of 82 companies that are remote-first by design, not remote-tolerant by accident — saved in 2021 when remote work was reshaping hiring. Useful as a reference for companies where remote is a first-class mode of working.
Hiring Without Whiteboards
The Airtable-based Hiring Without Whiteboards list — companies that use practical, work-sample interviews instead of algorithmic puzzles. A valuable reference for engineers who find whiteboard interviews a poor signal for the actual job.
How to Build a Data Team
A practical guide on building an effective data team — roles, hiring order, organizational structure, and the common mistakes companies make when scaling from one data person to a full team. Shared by Ryan Orban from his Galvanize network.
Keys to Understanding: Data Scientist vs. Data Engineer
Domino Data Lab slides on knowing when to hire a data scientist versus a data engineer — clarifying the distinct skills, responsibilities, and organizational needs each role fills. From the Data Popup Seattle conference, when this distinction was still being established.
How Zipfian Academy Hired a More Diverse Workforce
NYT profile of Zipfian Academy's approach to building a more diverse tech workforce through its data science bootcamp. Notable for its 2014 context — before diversity initiatives became standard corporate practice — and for featuring Ryan Orban's thinking on the problem.
Elusive Data Scientists Driving High Salaries
KDnuggets article on data scientists being scarce and commanding high salaries in 2014 — a snapshot of the early hype cycle, when the Harvard Business Review had recently called data scientist 'the sexiest job of the 21st century.'
Zipfian Academy Hiring Day
Ryan Orban tweet after a Zipfian Academy Hiring Day — the event where student cohort members met with prospective employers. A proud moment from the program's job placement pipeline.
Thumbtack Data Scientist Challenges
Thumbtack's public data scientist hiring challenge — real analysis and modeling problems used to evaluate candidates. A window into what applied data science work looked like at a 2014 marketplace startup.
Questions I'm Asking in Interviews
Julia Evans's list of questions she asks companies during technical interviews — focused on understanding engineering culture, code quality, and whether she'd actually grow there. The kind of due-diligence list that flips the interview dynamic.
Benefits Matter — Why I Won't Work for Your YCombinator Start-up
Infrastructure architect Michael Halligan's essay on why experienced engineers won't join YCombinator startups that don't offer real benefits — health insurance, 401k, PTO. A grounded critique of startup compensation culture from an infrastructure practitioner's perspective.
How to Disrupt Technical Recruiting: Hire an Agent
A 2012 argument for disrupting technical recruiting by treating engineers as clients rather than candidates — using agents who represent developers the way Hollywood agents represent actors. Ahead of its time: this is roughly what emerged years later with developer-focused talent platforms.