The Four Reasons Companies Hire Consultants
There are only four reasons why companies hire consultants. Learn to identify which scenario you're in or pay the price.
Book Notes - Zero To One by Peter Thiel
Mike's notes on Zero To One by Peter Thiel
Book Notes - Richard Branson: Virgin King by Tim Jackson
Mike's notes on Richard Branson: Virgin King by Tim Jackson
2019 Annual Review
Conducting my 2019 Annual Review: what went well, what didn't, and setting goals for 2020.
When interviewing engineers, how deep should you assess their technical chops?
Probably not as deep as you’d think.
The Focusing Email
You’re a professional consultant. You’re an expert in your problem domain and great at learning more about a client’s challenges and proposing solutions.
That Time I Interviewed With 22 People AT ONCE
Some years ago, I interviewed for a position and was invited to the on-site. My recruiter walked me to the conference room where two people were waiting. After exchanging greetings, one of my interviewers says, “We’re still waiting on a...
No More (Third Party) Recruiters
We are all familiar with third-party recruiters. You may have used them to find a job, and many of you have probably used them to source candidates. Third-party recruiters (both individual and agencies) serve a very needed function in the...
Interviewing someone when you don't know anything about their role
It’s not uncommon to find yourself in a position of having to hire someone for a role you know little-to-nothing about. Perhaps the most common occurrence of this is when engineering managers have to hire their first DevOps Engineer. Hiring...
What's the difference in interviewing a contractor vs FTE?
There is, but that not big of a difference. Let’s make a distinction first.
Interview processes in a small team
Hiring for a small team can be tough when there aren’t enough of you on the team to do what’s usually thought of as a standard interview.
How To Recruit Senior Engineers
One of the biggest challenges in our industry is how to hire more senior engineers. It’s a big challenge in a fallow market and perhaps counter-intuitively, even tougher in a strong and competitive market (eg, San Francisco, New York City,...
How to hire for highly specialized roles
This depends on what your situation is. Do you need someone who can immediately begin teaching your team how to improve at the speciality, or do you need someone who will take the share in the work with the rest...
How I interview engineering candidates
“What the hell do I ask the candidate?”
Building An Engineering Interview Process
Creating an interview process can be tough. An effective interview process is a series of hard tradeoffs. On the one hand, you want to figure out how well a candidate will into your team and their ability to the do...
Four Mistakes You're Making With Your Meetup
I ran a large professional meetup group for two and a half years, with attendance consistently over 30—sometimes over 50 people–with regular meetings every month. Through the success of my group, I’ve had the opportunity to coach others on their...