hah. wow. my first thought is "you know, you need Engineers at a startup, too; not just sales people" -
It certainly doesn't sound like the sort of place I would want to work, but it might not be as bad of an idea as I initially thought; if you have an office full of people who play sports, I imagine that organization could translate to other kinds of teamwork.
On the other hand, you are shutting out a whole lot of really good Engineers. (not to say there aren't good engineers who play sports, there certainly are, but there are a lot more good Engineers who don't.)
agreed that it doesn't work for all employees and i don't mention it as a way of finding employees, rather a way to screen potential employees if they do happen to play sports.
i'd also mention that i play ultimate with a bunch of engineers on a weekly basis so they are out there...
You completely left out the "if they do happen to play sports" in the actual article, which heavily colors non-sports players view of the article.
I definitely agree that many engineers and programmers play sports... but I also strongly suspect that on average, an engineer or programmer is less likely to play sports than the average person, and more likely to be the kid who always was picked last to play sports as a kid and hence have negative views of sports.
I'd be all for a friendly (competitive) game every now and then, but if you intentionally play foul on me just to shit-test me, it means I don't want to work for you :)
Some of this advice is actually relevant. I believe Bill Bradley vetted an assistant in one instance by seeing how good of a teammate he was. I'd cite this, but it's from some basketball book from the 60's/70's that I don't have on my desk at work :)
I was going to write about how this article is the biggest crock of shit that I've ever seen, but you capture the point more eloquently. I'm fine with those people that enjoy sport for fun (just as I enjoy WoW) but both WoW and Sports are fucking stupid. They have nothing to do with coding ability. If you can't tell from your interview how your candidate will perform, YOU AREN'T FUCKING INTERVIEWING RIGHT. I've only participated in a few interviews, but I can have a conversation with someone and very quickly determine their coding ability, at least in broad strokes.
it is not to test "coding ability" at all! it tests, drive, passion, competitiveness, motivation... the skills that are more important in a startup than raw ability to code.
the coder who tries his hardest on every second in sports, is, more likely than not, going to be the better colleague because he/she will do whatever it takes to win.
My sport of choice is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. The person who "tries his hardest on every second" is thought of as a spaz, and is inexperienced. Such people try to overcome their lack of skill with brute force. On an experienced person, it fails.
Part of any sport is knowing when to push as hard as you can. In BJJ, it means using your strength when you have leverage, and not trying to force something when you don't have leverage. I think that has transfer to other areas.
I've spent a bunch of years in the sport, and I do indeed try my hardest every second. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm trying to neck crank a dude from the guard, but it does mean that I am always working. If you watch some of the great practitioners of our sport, Marcelinho comes to mind, they are almost always moving, always improving. Although he's not brute forcing his way into a position, I guarantee he is trying his hardest every second.
Maybe this is purely a semantic argument, but I hate when people say that as you advance you work less hard. You work just as hard, you just work in different ways.
It's semantics. I equate "tries his hardest every second" with people who are using all of their effort all of the time. I am not doing that, yet I am always working hard. I would call that "doing the best that I can every second" to differentiate it from someone going wide-open all the time to make up for lack of skill.
Knowing when and how to conserve energy is an important part of the game as well.
I think the same is true of all martial arts, based on my experience with traditional karate (I trained with a man who received his black belt from Funakoshi)
Total nonsense. I don't care about sports, I find the exercise banal, so I'm not going to be invested in it. It's even easier to determine someone's passion by talking with them than it is their coding ability.
ive hired people at three companies, just for context, but thanks for reading.
my theories are based on observation, and working/playing with hundreds of teammates and employees over the years and how ive seen on-the-field play translate to in-company behavior.
my theories are based on observation, and working/playing with hundreds of teammates and employees over the years and how ive seen on-the-field play translate to in-company behavior.
No. Your theories are based on the well-known principle that we tend to fairly rapidly imprint on a certain type of candidate as being "good" and then confirm our bias at every opportunity. These people are usually like ourselves in some key way. Because of this your initial biases tend to become fixed in stone no matter how much subsequent experience you get.
In this case your advice is particularly obviously wrong. For example you entirely discount people like me, who grew up in a family that doesn't play sports and who has a mild coordination problem on top of that, would have no chance at such an "interview". However my actual on the job performance has been extremely good.
But you would never consider hiring me so you'll never see that. Nor would I want to work with someone like you because your desire to have people "110% committed" probably blinds you to learning how to properly manage software developers. (I'd be willing to take money on a bet that you're prone to "death march" projects.)
There is one good thing about your strategy. You're selecting for a strong culture which improves the odds of a good cultural fit. But you will only accidentally select people on the basis of actual competence.
> For example you entirely discount people like me, who grew up in a family that doesn't play sports and who has a mild coordination problem on top of that, would have no chance at such an "interview". However my actual on the job performance has been extremely good
I obviously interpreted the article very differently than you did. I don't see the fact that you've never played sports before as a disadvantage in such a hypothetical screening process at all. You say that you have a mild coordination problem, but again I don't see that as a disadvantage. The definition of "sport" is very loosely applied these days. Even poker is considered by many people a "sport" these days (at least in North America). So replace ultimate frisbee with poker and your coordination argument is no longer meaningful. I've played sports with many people who have physical disabilities ranging from muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, to blindness or deafness and in every case I've seen it's very easy to separate those who are willing to put in effort, willing to try something new, willing to take risks, and show sportsmanship from those who aren't.
I believe what the author is advocating is the use of a sport (I'll call it a competitive game to be more accurate) to screen for the ability to persevere in the face of adversity, show drive, and most importantly show willingness to learn in an unfamiliar, unexpected situation. I could easily make an argument for why each of those traits are desirable to have in an employee.
> But you would never consider hiring me so you'll never see that
I think the author would choose not to hire you, not based on your lack of coordination or inexperience in sports, but would do so based on your stubbornness and unwilliginess to participate in something new. I equate this to the same attitude that I occasionally see in programmers who dismiss new technologies without even giving them a fair chance.
That said I can see how it would be possible to misinterpret the author's use of the word "sport" for a physically competitive game - and if that's the case then what I said above doesn't apply. Nonetheless, in my opinion even if the author had strictly meant a "sport" in terms of a physically competitive game there are some valid points that can be taken from the article.
The list of characteristics you are pulling out is different than the list the OP listed. Which are competitiveness, aggression, focus on the game, and fair play. (I score 1/4, I have a strong sense of fair play.) And my opinion about the OP is based on comparing the characteristics that mattered to him versus my professional knowledge of what matters in software development.
As for your opinions of me, you're projecting from rather limited data. Let me give you some more data points. 3 of my last 5 jobs were at small to medium startups. (I was only at the 4th for a few months before getting an offer from Google, which is the 5th.) Of those one sold for about $80 million, one sold for over $400 million, and one is getting by reasonably well. (Admittedly it won't sell for anything like the valuations of the others.) Now it is impossible to say what the contribution of any one person is to a gelled team, so there is no reasonable way of quantifying my individual contribution. But the two that sold sold for around $4 million/employee, and the founders of all three would be happy to write me a glowing recommendation any time I asked saying that they thought I was a key part of their teams.
Furthermore if I was unwilling to participate in something new, then I wouldn't have jumped at a job at Google, working with a whole mess of technologies that I've never worked with before.
I submit that a process for hiring developers that won't even consider people like me is somewhat flawed.
What of those who play for the love of the game? Those who think a good match is one in which everyone enjoyed themselves? Those for whom the score exists only as a by-product of what they see as the point - to have a good time? They're not competitive and they it more fun for everyone else. If that translates into their work, they'd surely be far better employees than hyper-competitives.
To be clear, I am not advocating playing sports as a mandatory part of any interview process.
What I am saying is that IF a prospective employee does play a sport, it is a HUGE value add to watch/play with them to be able to see and judge their personality in that context.
Agree with others that this seems like a really bad idea. I'll throw another reason into the ring - the "Make terrible Foul calls on him" part. An interview is a two-way process. If my would-be co-workers are calling Mickey Mouse, ticky-tack fouls, _I'm_ going to think that _they_ are (to use a word from the article) dicks and less than fun to work with.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 79.0 ms ] threadIt certainly doesn't sound like the sort of place I would want to work, but it might not be as bad of an idea as I initially thought; if you have an office full of people who play sports, I imagine that organization could translate to other kinds of teamwork.
On the other hand, you are shutting out a whole lot of really good Engineers. (not to say there aren't good engineers who play sports, there certainly are, but there are a lot more good Engineers who don't.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act...
i'd also mention that i play ultimate with a bunch of engineers on a weekly basis so they are out there...
Save yourself some time and read something else.
the coder who tries his hardest on every second in sports, is, more likely than not, going to be the better colleague because he/she will do whatever it takes to win.
Part of any sport is knowing when to push as hard as you can. In BJJ, it means using your strength when you have leverage, and not trying to force something when you don't have leverage. I think that has transfer to other areas.
Maybe this is purely a semantic argument, but I hate when people say that as you advance you work less hard. You work just as hard, you just work in different ways.
Knowing when and how to conserve energy is an important part of the game as well.
my theories are based on observation, and working/playing with hundreds of teammates and employees over the years and how ive seen on-the-field play translate to in-company behavior.
No. Your theories are based on the well-known principle that we tend to fairly rapidly imprint on a certain type of candidate as being "good" and then confirm our bias at every opportunity. These people are usually like ourselves in some key way. Because of this your initial biases tend to become fixed in stone no matter how much subsequent experience you get.
In this case your advice is particularly obviously wrong. For example you entirely discount people like me, who grew up in a family that doesn't play sports and who has a mild coordination problem on top of that, would have no chance at such an "interview". However my actual on the job performance has been extremely good.
But you would never consider hiring me so you'll never see that. Nor would I want to work with someone like you because your desire to have people "110% committed" probably blinds you to learning how to properly manage software developers. (I'd be willing to take money on a bet that you're prone to "death march" projects.)
There is one good thing about your strategy. You're selecting for a strong culture which improves the odds of a good cultural fit. But you will only accidentally select people on the basis of actual competence.
I obviously interpreted the article very differently than you did. I don't see the fact that you've never played sports before as a disadvantage in such a hypothetical screening process at all. You say that you have a mild coordination problem, but again I don't see that as a disadvantage. The definition of "sport" is very loosely applied these days. Even poker is considered by many people a "sport" these days (at least in North America). So replace ultimate frisbee with poker and your coordination argument is no longer meaningful. I've played sports with many people who have physical disabilities ranging from muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, to blindness or deafness and in every case I've seen it's very easy to separate those who are willing to put in effort, willing to try something new, willing to take risks, and show sportsmanship from those who aren't.
I believe what the author is advocating is the use of a sport (I'll call it a competitive game to be more accurate) to screen for the ability to persevere in the face of adversity, show drive, and most importantly show willingness to learn in an unfamiliar, unexpected situation. I could easily make an argument for why each of those traits are desirable to have in an employee.
> But you would never consider hiring me so you'll never see that
I think the author would choose not to hire you, not based on your lack of coordination or inexperience in sports, but would do so based on your stubbornness and unwilliginess to participate in something new. I equate this to the same attitude that I occasionally see in programmers who dismiss new technologies without even giving them a fair chance.
That said I can see how it would be possible to misinterpret the author's use of the word "sport" for a physically competitive game - and if that's the case then what I said above doesn't apply. Nonetheless, in my opinion even if the author had strictly meant a "sport" in terms of a physically competitive game there are some valid points that can be taken from the article.
As for your opinions of me, you're projecting from rather limited data. Let me give you some more data points. 3 of my last 5 jobs were at small to medium startups. (I was only at the 4th for a few months before getting an offer from Google, which is the 5th.) Of those one sold for about $80 million, one sold for over $400 million, and one is getting by reasonably well. (Admittedly it won't sell for anything like the valuations of the others.) Now it is impossible to say what the contribution of any one person is to a gelled team, so there is no reasonable way of quantifying my individual contribution. But the two that sold sold for around $4 million/employee, and the founders of all three would be happy to write me a glowing recommendation any time I asked saying that they thought I was a key part of their teams.
Furthermore if I was unwilling to participate in something new, then I wouldn't have jumped at a job at Google, working with a whole mess of technologies that I've never worked with before.
I submit that a process for hiring developers that won't even consider people like me is somewhat flawed.
What I am saying is that IF a prospective employee does play a sport, it is a HUGE value add to watch/play with them to be able to see and judge their personality in that context.