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Comment on Aaron Swartz: How I Hire Programmersparent

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Since I wrote something questioning Aaron above, I'll take the other side with this one:

> If you and I each assessed the same candidate using your methods, we could very easily come up with 2 very different assessments. And that's the trap you'll fall into as soon as you're not conducting every interview.

...

> What's also needed is the application of some standards and metrics to give a higher probability of consistent results.

I don't think that's necessarily true. If you're Google or IBM, it might be, but if you're hiring for a smaller firm, it may very well be best to get someone that is a good fit for that particular culture.

Which actually sort of ties into my other post: I think your point about scaling is important to consider, but it only kicks in at a certain size, and I have a sneaking suspicion that Aaron has not handled hiring for, say, Accenture (nor would he want to).

I don't think hiring is ever going to be a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter, "standards and metrics" sort of business as long as you're talking about hiring people.

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