Hiring the Joker

If you're THE guy, like when Google hired Guido, then it's super cool story. But for normal folks when you look around for new job it's really hard to get past "oh we need either X or Y".

And when you finally get hired you susceptible to corporate politics. I personally had a few bad stints with higher ups about having low count of commits because as a team lead I would prefer to grow a team member by doing most of the work and passing the task to someone else to drive it past the finishing line.

EDIT: the irony is that small companies that can cherry pick candidates don't need jokers, and big companies who would benefit the most from having such people are deeply trenched in siloes and scripted hiring.

The trick?

> The best answer is probably just to try harder. Like, 10x harder(internal link). Figure out who did the work(internal link). Consider running work trials.

No, it’s not, lol.

I swear, some of these “authors” have their head so up their ass, they can practically see the light again.

Pay good comp and have a good product is the magic formula you’re looking for.

My point is the following: almost everyone needs a chance and an environment in which they succeed. Yet especially in tech we talk in absolutes - this person is awesome, this person sucks. This is especially prevalent in young people, which typically consist a large portion of tech, so maybe there's a connection there.

Sometimes things don't work out because the people and the organization are a bad fit, sometimes it's just chance. If you want to look at sports analogies, look at coaches. You have coaches that have been successful for a long time, but then in another job they're not successful anymore. Things happen. It doesn't say anything about their person as much as it simply did not work out.