hiring, interview, triathlons, and the braves w/eng mgr colin lord
guest: colin lord, engineering manager at smile direct club
- when hiring, look for people who stay calm and solve problems when production goes down instead of panicking or blaming others
- identifying the problem is the hardest part of any outage, fixing it is usually the easy part once you know what broke
- you do not need to match every bullet on a job posting, be honest about gaps and show willingness to learn
- good communication and humility set candidates apart more than technical skills, since technical skills are easier to teach
- during take home assessments, write comments explaining your thought process to show humility and communication even without live interaction