Adam Wathan: how small startups hire employees (Tailwind CSS)

Justin Jackson: This podcast is hosted by Transistor fm.

Adam Wathan: Um,

Justin Jackson: Hey everybody, welcome back to build you'd SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of what it's like to run a, uh, web app in, in 2024 or a software company or any sort of small independent tech company. And today I'm talking to Adam Wavin. He had me on his podcast Hackers Incorporated and I wanted this discussion over here on the build you'd SaaS feed as well. We talk about hiring and how hard it is to hire for a small team. Most small teams don't talk about their hiring process and, and most small teams honestly don't even go through a hiring process. It's uh, very ad hoc. But Adam decided to actually do a full, like open it up to the universe. He got 1600 applications for two positions. He had to process them all. It took him two months of full time work to get through even processing all those applications. And then eventually he uh, tried to connect with 100 people and interview many of them. And he just talks about what that was like. And then the result of who he ended up hiring really surprised him. I think this is a really transparent look at, ah, what it's like hiring for small independent companies. And I think whether you're hiring yourself as a founder or you're looking to work for a small company, I think there's lots of tidbits in here. So let's get into it.

Adam Wathan: How's it going, Justin Jackson?

Justin Jackson: I'm doing well. I'm doing well, man. It's been a while since we chatted.

Adam Wathan: I, uh, was gonna say that probably. I bet you it's been over a year. No, because, uh, on a real call, I don't know, man. I'd be surprised if not a year is not very much time anymore.

Justin Jackson: Here's the problem. I hired a web developer, so Josh Anderton is building all my tailwind stuff. So I don't need to bug you all the time.

Adam Wathan: I just don't have any questions anymore and I barely podcast anymore, so I don't really have lots to talk to you about.

Justin Jackson: I gotta get back to building some stuff just so you can get some noob questions for me and have to jump on a call. You were always like super patient with me or at least like visibly patient. But I did a call a couple times with Taylor and he was just like sighing audibly every time. I'd be like, so what do I do here? He's like, just big sigh.

Adam Wathan: That's funny. That's good. Yeah, I Thought it'd be fun to chat because we just ran this big hiring process, um, to add a couple people to the team. And you guys are a really small team too, so it's very similar sort of vibe. And I wanted to sort of talk about this process while it was fresh and chat a bit with you about how you guys are doing things these days and, um, just sort of capture it all. Like before, I kind of forget all of the sort of feelings that I have after having gone through the entire

Justin Jackson: thing in our past interactions. I think you and I are different in our spirit towards hiring. I think we have a little bit of a different angle. So, yeah, it'll be interesting how I process this and, uh, talk it out.

Adam Wathan: Yeah. So I guess first thing, maybe just to set some context, I'm curious, what's the size of your team now and who and when was your last hire?

Justin Jackson: Okay, so we're technically six people, uh, five full time and one part time. Right now we hired about three years in, I guess, or two and a half years in. Um, um, actually that's not. So we hired Helen part time to do customer support for us pretty early on. And then she was our first full time hire. That was in 2021. And then we hired another engineer to work with John that same year. That's Jason. And then we waited a little bit and then I was watching John and Jason have this interaction on the engineering side and. And so I was like, I want that on the marketing side. So we hired Josh in 20. Well, he just had his one year, so that must have been 20, 23. I was still doing a lot of customer support during the day and I was like, john, I want somebody to help, uh, me in North American hours so I don't have to be thinking about this. And I'd met a guy locally who was looking to break into tackle. He used to be like a manager at a Safeway and was like looking for his first tech job. And I said, well, we can hire you part time for now. And so that's Michael, and he's, um, been working for us for maybe six months or something like that.

Adam Wathan: Nice.

Justin Jackson: That's how it breaks down. It's like two people in engineering, and one of those is John, who's an owner, two people in marketing, and, um, one of those is me as an owner and then two people in customer service.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, got it. So one thing I'm curious about, I guess, is how you met all of these people. You just explained how you met the most recent person that you hired. But what about Helen and Josh and Jason?

Justin Jackson: Almost every time I've hired in my entire life, it's been somebody I knew before, almost always. Um, so before transistor, I was hiring people at the various startups I worked at. Before startups I was working in the nonprofit world and I was hiring all sorts of people, um, for like entire areas and regions, like Northern Alberta region and all that. Like, I've hired a lot there. And then I was, uh, when I had our snowboard shop in my early 20s, I was hiring just vandals to work there. Uh, but in almost, I can't think of a case when I didn't know somebody beforehand. So Helen was in this slack group that I run called Mega Maker. Also, uh, Jason worked with John before, uh, at Cards, um, against humanity. Uh, Josh I also met through Mega Maker. And then Michael I met through just local tech events. And actually in every case except for Jason, but him and John had already worked before together, um, with both Helen and Josh and now Michael. We always started part time contracting and then eventually, you know, when the time was right and if it worked, we built up to full time.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, got it. So I think maybe I'll talk a little bit about this process that we went through just now to hire this stuff and maybe some like, takeaways because, uh, that's kind of why I was curious to kind of hear what your process has been so far. And yeah, I, I'm curious to learn more about like how you think about doing it going forward too, and maybe how you think things might change. So we were hiring for two roles that took me like a year of humming and hawing to sort of just commit to and decide on. I think like, I was shocked by. It's easy to sort of just like lay out like a bunch of stuff that you sort of think you need help with. But like carving those into roles, especially on a small team where you can't just like wave a magic wand and all of a sudden be 25 people where everyone can be pretty specialized is like really, really challenging. I don't know if you've found the same thing.

Justin Jackson: Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. On your team especially. I remember seeing those job ads and I mean, you're offering good compensation. Like they stood out because it was like, oh, wow, Adam's looking for a very special person and he's willing to pay a good salary for it. But yeah, on small teams you're looking for people that can do multiple things. You're kind of looking for like mini Entrepreneurs, you know, people that can work autonomously. So yeah. And is this addition in addition to the six? You have six right now and so you're looking to become a team of eight?

Adam Wathan: That's correct, yeah. Posted these postings, you know, figuring out like what to put in each one was really challenging and what kind of captured all the things that we, that we sort of wanted, you know, eventually bit the bullet. This was like probably February. I started working on the postings sort of passively and then eventually more deliberately to try and just get these massive job posts done and figure out exactly what m needed to be in them and tell the right story and make sure it's getting people excited while also being very clear and um, you know, authentic in terms of like what the, the work is like here. But posted those two roles, kind of just following like the 37 Signals playbook, you know, like I obviously am a big fan of Jason and David's company and when in doubt, I kind of just like do what they do and hope that it like works for us too. And that's kind of how they've always done things. You know, they put up a job posting, they put like a application deadline on it and then they just kind of filter through everyone that sort of shows up. Right.

Justin Jackson: And they've created a culture over time because I applied there early in my tech career, got got invited to go to Chicago and meet them when they had that original, really cool office.

Adam Wathan: Yeah.

Justin Jackson: And um, they offered me the job and I ended up not taking it. But I remember I applied multiple times and I was just a student of what they wanted. Like I was listening to podcasts of theirs, reading their blog and I had like just seeped myself in, like, okay, this is what they're looking for, this is what they want. This is what my application, this is what a good application for 37signals looks like.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, uh huh.

Justin Jackson: I mean if you can develop that kind of culture for job applicants like that, I'm sure they get a lot of bad job applications, but they just seem to get these people who are the people who end up getting work there, understand what's at stake, how to apply, all that stuff.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, it's true. They have like a very attentive fan base, you know, um, when it comes to that stuff. But um, yeah, so I guess like something I even left out is like the reason that I decided to even take this approach is because I've sort of held this belief for a long time that there's this massive number of people out there that are incredibly talented and qualified that I just don't know exist, you know what I mean? Because they're not on Twitter or they're not. They're not. They're just, like, not in my sphere for some reason. Maybe they're paying attention to me, but I don't know about them. Like, there's a lot of people who read but don't post or, you know. You know what I mean? Like, this is a story that I'm telling myself and that, like, by limiting myself to hiring from a pool of people that I already know, you know, I'm kind of limited to, like, I don't want people's like, Twitter celebrity ness to sort of be like, to play into, like, being a positive factor, because I actually think it's like, not usually a pause, a positive thing, or it's not necessarily correlated strongly with being good at doing a specific role or being a good fit, necessarily. A lot of people are just, like, good at Twitter, you know what I mean? And that's like, a different skill. Um, but I've also, like, never worked at a real big tech company. Like, I've worked at a couple small agencies, so that's kind of my only experience outside of running my own company. So my own network of people is extremely small outside of, like, my online community that I participate in. Right. So anyways, that's like, the story I was telling myself is like, I want to put these job postings out there because I, uh, want to see who I learn about and meet that I just never would have met otherwise. And I bet you there's, like, some awesome people who would want to work here that, um, I'm going to be, like, really grateful that I posted these things and just used it as a way to get introduced to a bunch of people who I otherwise, like, wouldn't get introduced to.

Justin Jackson: I'm, like, dying to know if it works.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, it's interesting. We had like 1600 people apply in total for these two positions.

Justin Jackson: Wow.

Adam Wathan: Which is honestly, like, rough because obviously that's a lot of people. But it also means that it's impossible to give everyone's application the attention that it deserves, because if you figure we spend five minutes on every single application, that's 133 hours of just straight reading applications. And you can't just sit there and do it eight hours a day because your reaction to things just changes over the course of it, you know, by like, the seventh hour of looking at it. Like, you need to be fresh with a bit more energy. You Know what I mean?

Justin Jackson: So people don't actually talk about that part enough. I've never had to process that many applications, but I've had to process 30 or 40. And the truth is you just start going through them one after the other and, you know, you might say, oh, this person's pretty good. That's like the first person you look at, and then the second, third person you're like, uh, oh, actually that first person's not as good. You're always like, exactly.

Adam Wathan: That's the thing. You don't just have to review each one once either. You have to read each one many, many times. You know, some you can just filter out. Like, we did get, like, I would say probably at least half were obviously like, disqualified because, like, for like there's three fields, it was your application slash, cover letter, which is where we sort of were hoping people would send us, like a notion doc or something that's just like crafted specifically for the application. That's like, we gave you a lot of information in the job posting, you know, tell us, like, why you're a good fit for, like, those specific things. Like, we, we gave. We provide so many specific examples of projects we've worked on, specific projects that are coming up. Do something to like, tie in your area of expertise to those things and help me build like, some confidence in wanting to like, meet you to talk about the position. Because there's so many people who are applying. Right. But anyways, that's what we wanted people to put in that field. Then I had another field for like your, um, like resume, you know, just your job history, and then another one for like, your personal site or like GitHub, you know, something where we can just go look at some stuff you've done. Yeah. And a ton of people, like half the people just didn't do that correctly. Like, they put just their like, LinkedIn bio for like all three fields. Or for like the COVID letter field, they just type like N slash A. You know, it's just like, oh, this isn't applicable to me. Like, I don't need a cover letter, but everyone else who applies does. So whatever. Like that you're gonna get that, you know, you're gonna get people who just sort of like shotgun. Applied like millions of jobs and aren't really being particularly deliberate about it. But we have to like, filter through those anyways. But then you get a bunch of really.

Justin Jackson: Which, by the way, what a waste of time.

Adam Wathan: Huge waste of time.

Justin Jackson: Like, does that work for any of them?

Adam Wathan: I doubt it. You know, uh, the only place I could see anything close to that working is at, uh, applying for positions that have like really low volumes of applicants. Maybe.

Justin Jackson: Yeah, you know, I just, what a waste of time to just spray out a bunch of applications. I always, like, on, uh, Reddit, there's always like, there's a subreddit called Data is Beautiful. And it's like how many jobs I applied for and how many callbacks I got and they're just like, you know, sending out thousands of applications. I'm like, man, uh, maybe just find a company you really want to work at and then just do a really good job of applying and you know, maybe you might need to apply two or three times and then get a chance of working for someone. Great. Yeah, that's interesting. 50%. So 800 applications left.

Adam Wathan: Yeah. But then came comes the hard part now of like, okay, now there's like legitimate applications and we have to go through and sort of like many steps, like many passes over the same things of like, do we think this one is like someone worth talking to? And then you narrow it down to like 100 and it's like, crap, now I still can't talk to all hundred of these people, you know, because that's like the other hard part of the process is just figuring out it's not realistic to like talk to every single person who like passes your like, bar for like being noticeable. Unfortunately, like you'd. I wish that was the case, that everyone who applied, that seems like they could be a good fit if we could talk to all of them. But again, if you're gonna talk to each person for like 30 to 40 minutes, just in like a quick, quick screening call, 30 minutes times, you know, 20 people, that's you know, 10 hours of time right there. And that's like not 10 hours of time across two days. That's 10 hours of time across like two weeks. Because everyone's schedule's different, whatever. And you gotta like prepare for these things. You gotta take notes from them, you gotta debrief from them.

Justin Jackson: Well, I'm curious about so much. I'm curious about, um, those original hundred. What got them to a hundred? Was it just that they had done a pretty good job of filling out the application and then this a hundred. You're like, now we gotta figure out who stands out or were these a hundred people, like everybody who got on that list of 100 had, had written you a nice follow up email or like, what were the signals that got them in or out?

Adam Wathan: Good question. So because we had to we couldn't spend tons and tons of time on reviewing the applications. Um, I would say like the most superficial like first pass thing is just like, can I get information from this quickly? So a lot of people, if they sent me like a Google Doc that was like a five paragraph, all the same text formatting, just story of stuff, it's like you have lower odds. Like you had to have done like a really, really, really good job there or have something else that like stood out because I just can't get the information out of it and I can't sit there and like process the whole thing. Like the people who got noticed in that regard like just did a good job of like highlighting things with like little examples. Like, like the best ones that I think we got for the roles were things where people would like inject links to things that they built that were related or even better was for like the design engineering role. A lot of people would, would make like a little website doesn't have to be like a crazy thing that you're like putting a lot of design effort into or anything, but website's a nice medium because you can embed like here's like a little component that I built with React or something that's kind of similar to something that you guys have done in the past. And here's some things that I thought were interesting about it. Like, like the what um, I'm looking for is like evidence that they can do this job, you know what I mean? And that they can communicate it in a very like high like signal to noise ratio way, you know, because even that skill is valuable even if that's not like the main criteria.

Justin Jackson: This is why I personally love a website. I've had posts in the past and I got pushback from this where I say the first thing I click on is if you have a custom website you've built for this application or a personal website, I always click on that first personally because it instantly gives me a flavor for who you are, what you've done, or it has the potential to give you that flavor. And I got pushback from people I think who are hiring more applicants and they're just like, you can't do that. Like there's just no way you can process that. But for me that's the highest signal to noise thing is like if you've made a custom website that like addresses things in the post the job posting directly, perfect. Just show me what you've done. Give me a flavor for who you are. Give me a flavor for what it would be like to work with you, what you've, the kinds of projects you've built, the kinds of people, you know, like, I just want like a feel for all that. And so people that did that, it sounds like they got a good, that was a star on their application.

Adam Wathan: Yeah. Because again, like, the whole thing is just about like, give me like the confidence that I need to think that you might be like the right fit so I can talk to you. Right.

Justin Jackson: Did anyone make a video that you watched?

Adam Wathan: Yes, there's a couple videos.

Justin Jackson: Good or bad?

Adam Wathan: I think I, I like the idea of videos. I think it's nice to get a sense for how someone sort of is able to sort of like communicate, um, from a video and sell themselves. I will say like, in practice they were much harder to screen because like you, you have to just watch the whole thing from beginning to end and pay really close attention. Which people deserve that attention on their applications. Like, don't wrong, you know. But again, just doing like the math, it's like difficult. It's very unbalanced in terms of like the amount of time it takes on, on either side.

Justin Jackson: This is my sense too is it's just really difficult. The job I applied for again early in my career was customer support at 37 signals. And my favorite thing that I did that they liked was they were thinking about doing phone support. And so I just recorded like 4 or 530 second fake phone calls where I would do a voice for somebody. You know, I'm, uh, having problems with my whatever. And then I would record myself answering it. And uh, okay, uh, what browser are you in? Like, I would just like go through it, but they were really short and they said they liked them because they were short. And it was just like, just this refreshing out of the blue. But it wasn't. And even like audio is nice because it gave them a sense of who I was. But they didn't have to like give their eyeballs to this like 5 minute video or whatever because yeah, I could see like whenever I get a video from somebody, even my team, it's like they're like explaining something to me in a video. I'm like, okay, I got to watch this. It's like homework. It feels like difficult.

Adam Wathan: Uh, it's not the same, but it kind of reminds me of when someone sends you like an audio message and like, uh, imessage or something. It's like I have to like turn on. I can't read this in the grocery line because I don't want everyone else listening to like, what you're saying to me. So I guess I just gotta, like, wait until it's convenient. That's not the same in this case because of course you're sitting there actually processing these applications, but same type of thing. Like, you can't consume it at your own pace or in your own order or, you know. You know what I mean? I'll say. Like, the video stuff we got that I thought was really great was when it complemented like a written application. It. And a couple people did this and I thought these were really good. They had.

Justin Jackson: They'd.

Adam Wathan: They'd point out like, a couple things that they'd worked on that they thought were like, relevant to the role. And they'd do like a quick, like two and a half minute video for each thing where they just sort of narrated, like, walking through, like, here's how I did this. This was hard because of this, this, this. Ah. Almost like doing the sort of thing that I'm gonna like, wanna ask them about in an interview, but, like, preemptively, you know, and it was nice because, like, their written application was strong enough to convince me to spend the time to actually watch that, you know. So, uh, I thought that was good.

Justin Jackson: It's so much like a landing page or a good sales page. Like, every element has to kind of draw you in. And that starts with, like, presentation, like you said. If there's just paragraphs and no structure already, it's like, okay. But if it's like, well written, that kind of draws you in. And then it has like, nice sections where it's like, here's a project I work on and here's a description and here's a screenshot. Each of those elements is drawing you further in your.

Adam Wathan: Yeah. Convincing me to make a little bit more of an investment into, like, processing it, you know?

Justin Jackson: And then it's like, oh, there's a video. Okay, I'm gonna watch the video. Because this. It's like step by step, you're stair stepping the person into a. Like a, um. Deeper and deeper. Yeah, I could see that working well.

Adam Wathan: So those worked really well. And then I think, like, the other thing that helped us process things that I didn't expect to use this as much of a signal, but, like, job history, like, was definitely a factor. There was definitely people whose applications maybe weren't as strong in terms of the actual application itself not being like, doing a great job, like, convincing me. But I saw they've worked at Facebook or Facebook's not even like the best example, like, companies that are a little bit smaller.

Justin Jackson: Stripe, Vercel, anything like that, or like

Adam Wathan: Elastic or like any of these companies where. And really all that was a proxy for, for me is like, someone else at a company, like, doing stuff, thought this person was great, you know what I mean? And I know that, uh, I've not hired a lot of people in my life and. And I don't consider myself to be an expert in it. And that was a really hard part of this process. And we invested a lot into trying to figure out how to do a better job at it. So getting some evidence that someone else who's probably done a lot more of it, ah, thought this person was great, is like, okay, I'm more interested to talk to this person because they were able to convince somebody else. I think generally that was a, ah, helpful signal. But it's also like one of those unfair things where it's like ruling out people who would pass an interview at Facebook but have just never done one, for example, you know, so that. I think that's like, one of the things I've learned about this whole process in general is that there's no for better or for worse. Like, it isn't really fair, you know, like, there isn't really a fair way to do it.

Justin Jackson: Was there people that had a good application or other good signals, but you could just tell wanted it more? Did that matter at all?

Adam Wathan: There definitely were people who wanted it more. And I'm a little bit mixed on how that influenced my opinion of their application, if I'm being honest. Yeah.

Justin Jackson: Cause want it more could mean different things. They could want it more because they just, like, really want the money. Uh, they could want it more because tailwind is cool. Or, uh, they could want it more because they just know in their gut. Or they feel like I could really move the needle for these guys. Like, this would be the kind of job where I'm fully activated and I could just kill it for them if I could just convince them that I'm the right person. Did you have any in that category where they were just like, listen, I. You. I can run this marathon.

Adam Wathan: It's hard to know. It's hard to know, honestly. Like, I think the mindset that I came into it with, like, for these roles in particular in my head, I was really looking for people that I could bring on that I would feel like, um, where I felt like I was really bringing in expertise that, like, we could lean on, that would feel like they were, like, supporting leadership in a way, you know, and supporting me and People that I could really count on for a lot of, like, on the design engineering side, someone who, like, could help me figure out what we should build for Tailwind UI even, you know, and think through that stuff. And then on the staff engineering side, someone who came in with more leadership experience than me and is going to be better at kind of like, helping. Helping, like, motivate people on the team and mentoring and coaching people on the team and stuff like that. And I think we got a lot of people excited to work here because they were sort of like, really excited to kind of like, get the chance to like, absorb our environment and learn from us, which is good, but was in some ways a bit of a negative signal for me too, because it made me kind of worried that, like, they're not coming in with, like, the external experience that I think, like, we lack that I want brought to the company. They're coming in just to like, oh, I'm in the big leagues now, you know, like, I can't wait to just learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. Which obviously no one wants a job where they're not going to learn something. But the perfect people to bring in to me are people who are going to come in with like, the missing experience that we don't have that we need and want to learn stuff that is, um, maybe a little bit like, unrelated to their, like, specific experience. So for example, if we hired like, a design engineer who really liked the idea of like, writing a book one day and was excited to come work here and bring like, a bunch of experience that they had that was, was gonna be way better at this stuff than we are, but also was just like, excited about the ability to like, talk to me about like, releasing info products or that's the sort of thing that feels like different than just like coming into, like, learn how to build websites or at our level or something like that. Do you see that difference there?

Justin Jackson: Instead of, you didn't want to bring up someone from the farm team, you wanted a free agent or a veteran player that could come in and be like, hey, I've got all this experience. I've got playoff experience. You guys don't have playoff experience. Let me come in and help you at that level. And still wants to integrate with the team and learn what you're doing, but kind of could give you this perspective of like, hey, I've been in the playoffs before, I know what to do. You know, I'm. I've got experience you don't have.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, like in the staff engineering role, like that perfect Archetype that I had in my mind was like someone who had maybe become like an engineering manager at GitHub or something, and barely gets to code anymore except like in their evenings and weekends, but is still doing a bunch of open source stuff. And it's just like, man, I wish I could like code at work and I like managing people, I like doing all this sort of stuff. But I would love to be in an environment where that's like 5% of the work I do and I get to still just build and ship stuff most of the time. Someone who's sort of like got a taste of what it's like to go in that track, but wants to come back down to something small. That's the picture that I had in my head of the ideal person for that.

Justin Jackson: I wonder if you should have put that in your blog post. Uh, you've got. When I read the staff engineer, it's almost feels like you could have put like that little anecdote just that you had in there. Cause that's a very, you're painting a very specific picture. Like this is the kind of person that I'm kind of. You're, uh, kind of here in your career. You know, you don't code anymore, but you want to get back to it. You're hungry, you know, you've worked at a bigger company, you want to bring that sensibility to a smaller team. You have some examples of like here are some real examples of projects you would have worked on in the last few months. And those are like technical examples. But I love that bit you just said. It feels like that would have been added some nice color.

Adam Wathan: I don't know how much to like lead with those sorts, lead people with those sorts of things, you know. But uh, I think it wouldn't have hurt, you know, to just like paint that picture a little bit, I think, like, yeah, I mean there's a million things to talk about here, but I do feel like in general, you know, we got, we definitely got people who fit that description, I think. But what I've kind of feared, and this is like feedback I got from a lot of people too, but I don't. Didn't really know what to do about it. I feared that there would be a really. That there's kind of like a few categories of people who are going to apply. There's like people who are basically spamming us with non applications. Right. So not real, um, applications. There's people who are not qualified or not the type of, not the candidate that we're looking for and honestly like don't have the self awareness to realize it. So they do have like the confidence to apply and we definitely got like a bunch of those people too. And then I think there's this like big group of people that are a bit intimidated by the job posting because it's got a lot of stuff in there, which I'm doing it to try and be clear and helpful. But I think it especially because we're a small team and we work on a wide variety of things and you might be writing react one day and like rust the next day and at a big company, like that's never the same person, you know what I mean? But there's a lot of people who I think saw that and are way more qualified than the last group I talked about who did apply but don't apply because they're sort of self aware enough to recognize that it's going to be like a pretty competitive position. Their current job is already like quite good. They don't like really need to leave even if they think, you know what, it would actually be awesome if I got that. That'd be, I'd be pumped about that. But it's going to be like a bunch of work to apply and the odds are pretty low. And you know, so I'm just like, you know, they don't have the activation energy to go through with it.

Justin Jackson: Did they apply? Are you saying they did apply or they, you fear that those types of people.

Adam Wathan: I think there's a big group of people like that that didn't apply.

Justin Jackson: Didn't apply.

Adam Wathan: And there's some people in that group that did, you know, a small number, a smaller number of people. Um, and then, and then there's like the group of people who I think simply don't apply for jobs period, no matter what because they're very talented and they have people knocking down their door for opportunities all the time. And even if they would be like really excited about this job, they kind of, still, it still just wouldn't happen unless we reached out to them. You know what I mean? For better or for worse. And I've, I've known a couple people who sort of fit into that category who I still have heard from, but they never apply. They just kind of DM me or something and they'll just be like, hey, I saw you guys like post this. Like I'd be interested in chatting with you a bit more about this and learning a bit more about it, you know, which is like very, very different than someone who's just like applying, but I think there's probably a lot of people in that category too.

Justin Jackson: What, what's the crux? Like I, uh, uh, it feels like you're leading up to something. So I can't tell if you're like leading up to the fact that you didn't hire anybody or you did or you feel like you just couldn't attract the right applicants.

Adam Wathan: Like what's the way this all ended is we did so we've hired one person and we've put out an offer to another person and neither of these people, uh, came through the application process.

Justin Jackson: Okay.

Adam Wathan: And it sucks to even say like, I hate even like I'm a little bit uncomfortable even talking about on the podcast. But I want to do it anyways. Uh, because I kind of, it kind of feels like, man, it would fucking suck to have applied and then find that out. You know what I mean? That you put in all this work to apply, go through the interviews and stuff like that. But um, that's why I thought it'd be interesting to talk about because it was just a surprising experience for me. And my takeaways from it I think relevant to what you were talking about at the very beginning of this conversation. And that's why I wanted to talk to you about it specifically.

Justin Jackson: Let me just couch all of that to say I don't think anybody could. You definitely put in the effort. I'm not even willing to go through that effort most of the time because we're a small company and for me it's like I'm going to be working alongside these people. Ideally I want to have some former experience with them relationally, I want to know them. And so for you to feel like, you know what, I want to open this up to the universe and I know it's going to be way more work, but I want to run the experiment and give folks a chance. I don't think anybody could speak negatively about you running that experiment. That seems like, wow, like a lot of small companies wouldn't have even subjected themselves to that. We don't have the resources. Like there are divisions at Microsoft that don't get 1600 applications and they have mhm. All sorts of infrastructure, hiring departments and recruiters and process and they've got all sorts of systems for going through all that stuff. But you're a six person team like uh, to. To allocate the time and resources to do that I think is commendable. The fact that it was a bet or an experiment that didn't work out you know, that I think is fine.

Adam Wathan: Yeah. So that's kind of what I want to talk about, I guess, is like why I feel like it didn't work out, if it even didn't work out, because there were some positive outcomes from it. But yeah, like it was basically my full time job for like two months, you know, and that means like, I wasn't like building things here, which is what I normally am doing, you know, so it's like we're getting behind on things, it's stressful, whatever, a crazy amount of effort put into it. Like you don't even want to know. Like every morning at like 6am I call Peter while I'm walking the dog because he's always like pushing his kid around the stroller at the same time. Because in Denmark, I've learned children, babies only sleep in strollers. I don't like, they don't put kids down for naps in cribs. Uh, they walk them in the stroller until they fall asleep and then they leave them outside in the stroller to sleep out in nature. This is an interesting cultural thing I learned from Peter. But that means he's pushing the kid around the stroller fucking all the time, you know what I mean? So he's always available for conversations. Uh, we would talk like every morning about like, okay, did you read that last chapter in the who book that we're both reading? There's this book called who the A Method for Hiring. And we'd be like talking about it and like, okay, what, what screening questions should we be asking? Oh, I saw this blog post from whatever. You know, we, we spent so much time like trying to like put together like a good process here. But anyways, ultimately what happened is we filtered this down to like those hundred people. Then you go through those hundred people again and it's like, I gotta basically try and stack rank these people so I can slice off the top like however many I have time to talk to and talk and talk to those people. So we talked to all those people. Um, we did this screening interview with them. I'm trying to think like, maybe I can like go through like the questions evolved a bit over time and I think we kind of got better at them towards the end. But the questions were always things like I'd ask people, like, okay, so what kind of got you interested in this role and how do you sort of see it fitting in with like what you actually want to do with your career? Like, why is this like the next logical step for you and what you're doing, which I thought was always interesting. Um, I would ask people, what are you responsible for? Like in your current role? Like specifically what are you responsible for? And I would follow that with questions like what decisions are you allowed to make without asking anybody? You know, like things like that just get a sense for like the level of trust that other people have in them. I'd ask people about a project that they worked on that they really enjoyed recently. So we could dive into that and then we'd get into just like specifics about the project asking them, but whatever, sort of just a leading question so we could ask whatever follow up questions made sense.

Justin Jackson: Mhm.

Adam Wathan: We'd ask them the opposite thing. So like what's a project you worked on recently that you just didn't enjoy? And try to understand a little bit more about like why they didn't enjoy it. That those were kind of like the big ones. We learned a lot from those conversations, but like a very, very common thing that I kept coming away from all these uh, interviews with and these were like probably they were between 30 and 45 minutes long. Um, I would know pretty quickly if I just like didn't feel like I'm gonna really get along with this person day to day or that they just like in my head I have like a couple tests that I'm like running against people that are very like black and white that are sort of like easy ones. Um, so one is like the team retreat test. You know, does this seem like a person that I would actually like enjoy spending time with on a team retreat? Like just asking that question. You usually have just like a gut reaction pretty quickly after talking to someone if like they're going to seem like a pretty good fit. Another one specifically for the staff engineering role was we always have to work with outside companies on tailwind related issues. Maybe someone's working on an open source framework. For example, a team we interface with a lot is Vercel because they're working on something for next JS and they need to make sure the tailwind works or customers having a problem. And those communications always come into me. And one of the things I want out of the staff engineering role is someone that I feel like I can pass those conversations off too. So one of the questions I have in my head is like, okay, do they pass the Vercel test for me? Which is like, can I just put this person directly in contact with this other company and trust that it's all going to go really well.

Justin Jackson: So so far the team retreat test and Whether they could interface with external partners.

Adam Wathan: Another one that's kind of a good one that you can kind of just get from the communication with people. And this doesn't really have, it's not a job requirement, but it's just like an interesting question is sort of like the conference talk test, like does this person seem like they could go to a conference and give a talk about something we've worked on, you know, um, which it's not something you're gonna have to do every day. But again the people that I'm trying to bring on, I want to bring on people that I can trust to sort of speak for the company in a lot of different ways. Whether that's through GitHub, whether that's talking to a partner, whether that's writing a really good blog post about some deep technical thing that we did or whatever, you know. But they're just like interesting ways to sort of categorize like some of the people that we talk to. But anyways, all I was really getting into these conversations is like it was clear when like I, I knew enough about someone that uh, I don't think this person's the right fit.

Justin Jackson: Mhm.

Adam Wathan: But I never felt like I came away from almost any of these conversations feeling like, like I knew whether they were going to be better at the job than I just got from just their application. You know, I felt every conversation I felt like I was coming away with, well yeah, that was like a cool conversation. I don't, it hasn't impacted my ability to make a decision though, you know? Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense? Like is that relatable?

Justin Jackson: So this whole time you're talking I'm just thinking like all these questions you're asking and everything and I'm like, man, this is just so much easier when you're not opening it up to other, to an application process and you're just, you're just thinking of examples of people you know, that would be great and.

Adam Wathan: Mhm.

Justin Jackson: I have an antenna for this that I think, hey, how come your team doesn't have their own podcast? Head over to Transistor and use my coupon transistor FM M. Justin, you'll get 15% off. Your first year of podcast hosting is pretty well tuned. Maybe it's not perfect, but an example I've even talked to you about was I remember seeing Caleb Porzio speak at the first Laracon I spoke at.

Adam Wathan: Yeah.

Justin Jackson: And at the time he just seemed like this younger guy wearing cargo shorts. Uh, but he had this charisma that I really liked. He gave this talk that I didn't understand, but I could see how it was resonating. And I remember after he had made an impression on me that afterwards I talked to you about him quite a bit. I was like, man, this guy is just, uh. And he was doing stuff like he started making these videos in his closet with the early versions of Livewire. And there was something about him that I was like, I would hire this guy for almost anything. Like, I would just hire him to work with him because I like this whole package, this whole picture is just, you know, and he was working for Titan at the time. But I was like, this guy has got some magic that. And as you continue, you know, as I continued to follow him and then saw him release stuff and even like release early Livewire stuff and, and get kind of pushback from the community, but still be enthusiastic about it and still be willing to dig into it and describe feels like I was like dating him from afar. Like I just getting all these impressions of him and then start listening to his podcast and then I'm like, oh, I'm getting like, this guy would be fun to be on a retreat with. He'd be fun to work with. He'd be the kind of person that would just be always pushing things forward. He's got interesting ideas. Those are the kinds of people that I'm like, oh, man. And I probably even talked to John about it. I was probably like, man, it would be sweet to hire somebody like Caleb because he's just got this thing, you know, and you don't need, um, you don't need to speed date, uh, like speed dating where you're just asking them a bunch of questions and then you're doing a phone call. M. Like, somebody like Caleb, I could like meet him and then get a sense and then, you know, kind of follow his progression and then see him again.

Adam Wathan: And if he did apply for a job and you'd never met him before and you just had like a 30 minute call with him, like, you just,

Justin Jackson: you might not have known. He. He would have been nervous. Maybe he would have been nervous or.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, that's the other thing. Like, you're not. You're never meeting like the same person that you're going to hire, you know, and not in any malicious way. It's just a different atmosphere. It's a different condition, you know?

Justin Jackson: And I mean, I do miss out to your point. I know I miss out on good people. Um, especially. Cause one of the factors that I really like is charisma. And so I overrank on charisma. And sometimes this might come to bite me at some point. But I just like people who are making videos and doing podcasts and writing blogs and can give a conference talk. I like people who can be engaging and entertaining and I over index on that. But part of that's okay too, because I can't. I've got to choose a criteria. And part of that is I just like working with those people. I also like working with cranky introverts too. So I'm on both sides here. But you know, like, I do and you know, our team is definitely probably more on the very different than me. They're more introverted and more cranky kind of craftspeople. And I have a ranking algorithm in my head for that too. Getting vibes of people and being able to follow people's careers. Um, there's just some people that have a certain magic and a certain work ethic and they have a slot in my head. Jason Beggs is another one. Um, just in my head, he's just like this solid worker. Like if we needed that slot, I'd be like, man, Jason would be frigging awesome at that. He's just like solid plows ahead. It seems like everybody has hired him. Everybody has had a good experience with him. He's got a slot in my head of like, oh man, if we ever needed a person like that, he would be ideal, you know. And I just have this kind of Rolodex in my head of people that I've been impressed by. And not every role that comes up matches up with that, but you know what I mean. So that's kind of how I think about it. And it just seems like that is the way with small teams. Most teams do end up just hiring that way because it's such a risky endeavor. And to get all of that context from an application and then an interview, it's just putting a lot of pressure on a couple interactions that, you know, I've had bad days and good days

Adam Wathan: and, and even the thing is, even if it's a good day, it's just like the impression has to sort of sit, you know, it needs to. I don't think it can't be shortcut that way is what I feel like I learned. Like I, I feel like there was no way to sort of condense like 18 months of sort of passively getting to know someone through a bunch of different ways into like reading something, uh, uh, a 30 minute call, maybe like a Pair programming session or whatever. I, again, I was just not coming away from any of these things, feeling. Feeling like I knew the person well enough to hire them, you know, like that, I guess, is what it comes down to. Although, like, the, the. The two candidates that we made offers to are different in terms of, like, how I know them, you know, which I think is maybe interesting to talk about.

Justin Jackson: Okay, I'm curious about this too. I'm also curious if the artifact of having the job position open in public was actually helpful. And I had this other insight, which is. And a reason I'm, like, thinking about these anecdotes you've given me. Really what I'm trying to hire the staff engineer for is to be the kind of person that can talk to me about things at this level and that I can delegate this kind of work to. And like, these examples you gave. One reason I like, if you had a couple paragraphs like that, I think where those are helpful as an artifact is that the people that aren't applying and the people that might not apply because they are conscious of themselves. I think what paragraphs like that would achieve is people that work with them would DM them and say, hey, this guy's looking for someone that sounds like you. Like, you work for a big company. You're always saying that you want to get back to programming, you want to get back to grassroots stuff. Like, you know, Janet, I think you should apply for this. Because this feels like you. You've been saying for years you're kind of sick of working at Microsoft, like, maybe you should apply for this. So it's the kind of artifact that, um, gets noticed by friends of people that might want to apply. And the more that you can kind of paint a picture rather than just have some bullet points, you're painting a picture so that Bill, who works with Janet, recognizes that that really sounds like Janet, and then brings it to her and says, you should apply.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense and is true. But then you still have this problem of 1600 applications come in. You know what I mean? So maybe there's a way to do both or to kind of get the best of both worlds.

Justin Jackson: The best situation is when Bill knows you, and Bill reaches out and says, listen, I saw this application, and my friend would be perfect, but she doesn't think she's. She thinks she probably doesn't have what it takes. But I'm telling you, she's got what it takes. Like, you should. You should at least have a call with her.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, 100%. So yeah, let me kind of tell a bit of the story. Like I can't give away too much information because, you know, it's still early here. But um, I'll say like, so one of the people that we hired is someone who I've known for years and they kind of fall into that bucket that I mentioned before where they saw the posting and kind of didn't feel qualified for it, even though like I knew the whole time that they'd be like perfect for it.

Justin Jackson: M. Did you think of them initially?

Adam Wathan: Yes, definitely.

Justin Jackson: Okay.

Adam Wathan: They were like on my. It was like, it was like a person I was almost like trying to describe in a lot of ways. And I wasn't even sure that they would be like interested in the role because they had a good role somewhere. In a lot of ways I kind of felt like I missed my chance to kind of work with this person.

Justin Jackson: Interesting. Okay.

Adam Wathan: Um, but it's also someone that like we had done some like contract work with in the past, like helped us out in a pinch like when I needed like a couple bit of extra manpower on something. Mhm. And yeah, again, just someone who I'd had like a lot of conversations with over Twitter over the occasional call here or there. Just followed like their work. Just a lot of time to just like feel like you have a pretty complete picture of this person. It's obviously never as complete as when you actually work with someone day to day. You're going to learn things about someone that you don't know. Uh, um, and get to know someone better.

Justin Jackson: Did you hire Ben Ornstein? No.

Adam Wathan: But uh, so that was kind of the first person and I basically just reached out to them saying listen, we've interviewed a bunch of people for this role. I haven't found the right person in my head. I keep comparing everyone we're talking to to you and I still would rather hire you. So I'm just going to take a shot here. Like, do you. Are you interested in this? Because I'd love to talk to you about it if you are. And that kind of came together, you know, so really excited about, about that one. So that's just someone I knew that to me is a similar to like the stories you've talked about where it's like just someone that has been on your radar for like a long time and you've been able to see a lot of different stuff that they've done and feel like you have some trust built up. The other one was someone I didn't actually know though, so I think this one's kind of interesting in other ways.

Justin Jackson: Is someone trying to steal your car right now?

Adam Wathan: No. Um, I don't know why. Something's beeping out there, but unfortunately I have no control over it. But, uh, someone will do something about

Justin Jackson: it, by the way, just on that person, that first person. In retrospect, do you wish you just reached out to them right from the beginning?

Adam Wathan: That's a good question. In some ways, yes. In other ways, no. But the. The no is only because I don't think I would have, like, had the confidence that I do now and how we should hire going forward if I didn't go through this process and really learned that this is, like, not a good approach for our size of team and like, the amount of applications that we're going to get and whatever it'd be. Yeah, I would have saved myself a lot of time, probably, if I just, like, reached out to them in the beginning.

Justin Jackson: Was that person aware of the posting and had they thought about applying?

Adam Wathan: They were aware of it and had read it and didn't really think that they were the right fit in their own mind.

Justin Jackson: You wrote that for them. You wrote that posting as a love letter to them, and they didn't even.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, well, that's the. I mean, that's kind of what I was saying where I think, like, a lot of really talented people are pretty modest.

Justin Jackson: Yeah. You know, this is like writing a love poem in your school newspaper, hoping, you know, your crush sees it and they don't see it at all. Or they see it and they're like, that couldn't be me.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, exactly. So the other person, I found this person by taking the job posting and sharing it with some people that I've known for a while that I do trust. And just saying, have you worked with anyone that you think would be good for this role? And that's how I met this other person. So I didn't know them before. I probably could have found them if I turned up my, uh, sensitivity a little bit on just like, my networking, you know, over the last couple years, I met this person. They were. We had a really good conversation. And honestly, like, it's interesting to think about, like, how the conversation went differently maybe because of the fact that I just. I reached out to them versus, like, them applying. You know, maybe it's more comfortable, maybe it's less m. Nervous, whatever.

Justin Jackson: Uh, can you say which role this was for?

Adam Wathan: Uh, this was for the staff engineering role.

Justin Jackson: Okay. This is for the staff engineering role. And you went to some Other founders or some other CTROs or. Who did you go to?

Adam Wathan: Yeah, just like another really senior developer in my network that I done leadership roles and stuff at other companies.

Justin Jackson: Okay. And you said, this is who I'm looking for. And they said, did multiple people recommend this one person or just this one person?

Adam Wathan: Ultimately, yes, but in like, sort of a roundabout way. So this was just through one person. I met them, really enjoyed the conversation with them, did like a pair programming session with them, and it was, like, really, really fun. We were both kind of just laughing the whole time, trying to figure something out, and just came away. Just went really smooth, you know? Yeah. Just felt like I would enjoy, like, working with this person every day, like, based on this, but also the fact that this person that I know, like, worked with them for multiple years and speaks really highly of them and was immediately the person who came to mind and gave me a bunch of evidence of examples of, like, when this person did things that, like, check the boxes. Uh, like, I think one thing I learned from this whole process is that a referral or like a recommendation from somebody else counts for so much more than what the person can tell you themselves about themselves. Even if it's a referral from someone that you don't even know that well, you know what I mean? Because it's still like a real experience that person had working with this other person.

Justin Jackson: Think about the stakes. The stakes are different there, too, because if you ask for referrals in a resume, uh, of course they're going to find someone, theoretically, who's going to give them a good referral, but the stakes are just different. As opposed to talking to someone in your network and saying, like, who's been great that you've worked with? And they're thinking, oh, it's right in this dynamic. It's my reputation that's on the line here. I gotta recommend somebody that I actually, truly and even just, like, the dynamic of that conversation is totally different. I'm saying, like, who's amazing? And the people that come to mind when you think, like, who have I worked with that's amazing, or that really fits this description. Totally different. Right. It's just.

Adam Wathan: It's, uh.

Justin Jackson: The. It's the Jason begs thing. It's just like, who have you worked with? It's like, well, I've worked with Jason a bunch of times, and if you need someone like him, like, who's just a workhorse, like, hire him, like, for sure.

Adam Wathan: Yeah. So it was interesting, right? Like, to. To go through that experience and then so I was already like, really confident about this person. Um, and, you know, was hoping that we can make an offer to them. And then we were at React Conf last week and I just happened to meet someone for the first time who I'd never met before, who through conversing with them, learned that there's a chance this person knows this person. And then I asked them and they were like, oh yeah, I hired that person when they were at Job xyz. Wow, they're. They're amazing. They're good at this. This, this, this, this, this, this. And it was just like, okay, so now I've got two really strong referrals from two people who. Now this person I just met. But their like, pedigree is extremely strong. You know what I mean? Like, this person knows what they're talking about. It's just amazing, like the level of confidence that that gave me versus anything I was able to like, suss out myself from, uh, meeting strangers for the first time effectively.

Justin Jackson: You know, conference gossip is actually a great signal. Like, that's the thing is that people do talk about other people and you know, when you're. That's one reason I like, I'm going back to Larracon for this reason. I just want to get back in the mix of being around people and hearing about who's doing things. And it's almost always somebody saying, did you hear about what this person's working on? Or have you seen this thing that they just did? Or have you met this person? They've done this.

Adam Wathan: Exactly. Uh, dude, uh, it was underrated. I've never been to a conference with like a sort of a networking mindset before. I did go to this conference. More being more deliberate about like wanting to meet some new people.

Justin Jackson: Yeah.

Adam Wathan: And it's just, it's uh, it was awesome. You know, basically like, I think like the takeaway. So couple things I learned from talking to a bunch of people even at this conference and outside of this conference who've done a lot of hiring. You know, I've been asking a lot of people, like, how do you hire at your company?

Justin Jackson: Yeah.

Adam Wathan: And especially at like somewhat bigger companies. Like even like 50 people and up type of companies. It's so the, the most common answer from everyone was we, we basically exclusively hire from employee referrals. We just ask people who already work here, who have you worked with before that you liked? And that's basically where they find everybody. So which kind of lines up with the experience that I'm talking about here, you know? Mhm. I think the other. Yeah, the other thing is just like, I think what I recognized is if I'm going to have the most confidence and sort of the most luck hiring people that I know and there's people that maybe I like. This person that I made this offer to for this staff engineering role, like, if, if, like I said, if I turned up, like, the sensitivity on like my paying attention to people thing just a little bit higher, I think it's like pretty high already. Like, I think I. I somehow know a lot of people and I've never really tried to meet people. You know what I mean? So what happens when I don't know if this is true, but harder?

Justin Jackson: I don't know. No, you're like, I don't feel like

Adam Wathan: I've ever deliberately tried to, like, I want to make friends with. You know, to me, you're the king

Justin Jackson: of the cold dm. Like, hey, I'm working on this thing. Let's. I'd love to dig into this with you. Or back when you had Full Stack Radio that was like your bit is that you would DM people that you wanted to, like, get in with. I think you're very good at this.

Adam Wathan: Uh, personally, I must be because, like, I. I consider myself like, friends with a lot of people that I never would imagine I'd be like, friends with. Now. Like, I, like, me and M DHH message each other on signal like every week about random stuff, you know, and, you know, Jason freed DMs me about things. You know, it's like a wild spot I feel like I found myself in. I do think I could be more deliberate about it. Like, I'm already like, following more people on Twitter. Like, even at the conference I was meeting people and like, it's almost like. You know what it kind of reminds me of is something that, like, I've always advice I always give people who like, want to work in public is to just turn on this little background process in your brain that's like paying attention to everything you do and trying to notice. Actually someone else might think this was interesting. I should, like, share it. You know what I mean? Um, that's how, like, we've always marketed. Everything that we've done is just find ways to sort of like find little takeaways and share them with people. I feel like I'm now doing the same thing with, like, meeting people.

Justin Jackson: Yes.

Adam Wathan: It's just like this extra little thing I've turned on in the back of my brain that's not just meeting people. And I meet People, someone I met, someone, whatever. There's a little bit more of, like, paying attention to, like, where I should put this person in my little, like, personal CRM in my brain, you know, this is.

Justin Jackson: I. Actually, one of the first apps I built on my own was this first startup job I had. I was helping hire, and we went through the same thing. We were getting cold applications. And then at the end I'd be like, I've known this person forever. Let's hire them. They're going to be great. And they ended up being great. Um, and I said, what I need is a CRM, but for, uh, tracking relationships for people I could hire or work with. Now that's in terms of a market. There's not a big enough market there for there to be a product. But it's the spirit of that is actually, I think, the right spirit. You kind of file it away in your own little CRM, like, okay, yeah. And it almost happens. Um, well, it totally happens organically. It's like you interface with people a few times and then it's like all of a sudden they're on your radar. Oh, man, this person, I would love to work with that person. Or, man, they would be super good at whatever. And then what I also love doing is I love making a note like, that's the kind of person I would hire for whatever, and then tracking those people. And invariably, I mean, maybe there's a confirmation bias, but in my head at least, I have a high hit rate of people that I noticed and end up.

Adam Wathan: End up doing pretty good stuff.

Justin Jackson: Yeah, really cool stuff. I felt like this, um, I mean, a lot of people felt like this with, um, Aaron. So Corey Griffin was this other guy I just noticed, and I just loved his vibe. He was like, making videos, he was explaining stuff. Ended up doing a phone call with him. We were interested in hiring him, but I think he got hired by. I think it was. I think he got hired by Shopify and then Apple, and he was just like, out of our. But he's just had a great career. Yeah. So I like turning this background process on and then you just notice it and then start tracking people kind of just in your head and then noticing, oh, look what happens. And then at your level, what's great about your level is I feel like you have the resources to hire, uh, and are doing interesting work that has such a massive, uh, surface area that you could hire, uh, your pool of people that I think would want to work with you is bigger than most. Like, you have the resources to Hire them. And you're doing the kind of work that attracts people that want to do that kind of work, you know, like, the impact is big.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, it's like pretty high impact projects that we work on, for sure. Yeah. Like, outsizingly compared to the size of the team, for sure. So it's an interesting, interesting spot. I'll uh, say, like, one thing. Even running this, like, hiring process, like, even though I don't think we're going to do it this way in the future, and I actually, I know with certainty I'll never do it again this way in the future. It's tough, though, because, like, Robin, who works here, I did find him put through this process, you know, and, um, that's worked out really well. He's been here for years and he's awesome. Um, so I know it can work. And I bet you it could have worked here too, because we did meet, like, a bunch of people that I knew were skilled and talented people, but I just, like, never mustered up enough to feel like certain, you know?

Justin Jackson: Um, I think the difference is that the risk with hiring someone like Robin is greater. Like, you're taking a bigger risk on making a fairly big decision. And I know you don't like hiring and firing. And so if you have an aversion to that, in my experience, I mean, there's always going to be the chance you're going to need to let somebody go at some point. That is just the way things work. But if you've had multiple touch points with somebody in the past and they know people you know, and people you know, know them, and there's this kind of just simmering of getting who they are.

Adam Wathan: If this isn't enough, what is enough? You know what I mean? In terms of confidence, it's kind of like.

Justin Jackson: And there's also the counterfactual, which is you could have met Robin if you'd run this playbook. You might have still found them.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, that's kind of what I mean with the sensitivity knob thing, because he was at, like, larakhan eu that I was at, um, once. He was already following me. He was already in our tailwind CSS discord, you know what I mean? Uh, I never noticed him before, but I think I maybe I would notice someone like that now, you know, because I'm paying a bit more attention. And the other thing is, like, when we hired him, like, I was a lot more naive. Like, the very first person we hired, man, I just emailed him and was like, do you want to work here? Like, we have too much work to do. I'd never done a call with him. I'd never had any conversation with him. He just worked on an open source thing that I thought was good, and he's like, sure, I want to work there. Then we did, like, one call where I, like, answered some questions for him and then he took the job. And it worked out great. For many years he was not with us anymore, but it was awesome. And that was just like, wow, this hiring shit is easy. You know? Uh, and then same with Robin. He joined when I was in that total naive stage where I never had any issues or never had to make any hard decisions yet or any of that stuff. So maybe now I still wouldn't have even felt confidence to hire him, even though of course it worked out the first time. But now maybe I'm more fearful and I wouldn't have been willing to take the chance. And that's the thing. It's not like the people we interviewed were definitely not the right people. It's just I just didn't have enough confidence and I don't think I could have, like, gone. I don't think I can get it without just, like, knowing them for a longer period of time. So, like, a nice takeaway is now there's like, a bunch of people that I did meet through this process that, like, I'm following on Twitter, looking forward to, like, paying attention to what they do for a longer period of time and building relationships with more people like that and. And maybe that'll turn into something eventually.

Justin Jackson: You know, I mean, for me, I think there's a few things. One, this is a perfect Hackers, Inc. Type conversation, because you often will go and do these hard things and then report back and you just ran the hard playbook. Like, maybe I am missing out on somebody. So that was the hypothesis. Maybe I am missing out on somebody. I should really make this, like, um, agnostic, uh, fully open, fully accessible, fully. Uh, anybody can apply. It's democratic. Um, and I'm going to see how it works out. And your conclusion was, for a team our size and for me personally as the owner, this isn't the best playbook to run. Right.

Adam Wathan: It's shocking, though, or hard in some ways, because it's hard for me to reconcile that with the fact that it works for 37signals. It works really well for them. But I also wonder, if they were our size, would they be doing things differently than me?

Justin Jackson: I also think they have the benefit of people are in their ecosystem. And even I applied twice, I applied the first time, and maybe that was when they started checking me out. And then I played the second time and that was what got me a call. And so I think you can also use that process as relationship building like you do. You know, you get a bunch of applications and you're like, oh wow, these people are folks I want to keep an eye on. And then, you know, you keep an eye on them and then the next time they come up, you've got all these subconscious interactions with them and you're like, oh wow, this person looks interesting. So you can play that playbook if you want to, you know, open it up that way. The other thing is that doing a company, you're often playing to your strengths. And so.

Adam Wathan: Mhm.

Justin Jackson: I'm a relationship person. Like I like meeting people, uh, I like meeting people and almost instantly I'm like impressed by what they can do or, or the vibe they give off or whatever. And so I'm tracking that stuff and I have fun working with people. Like I like doing projects with people, I like pair programming with people, I like that stuff. And so if I have those experiences with folks and it's super fun, then you know, I kind of file that away. And that's just part of my personality. I don't want to open it up to the universe and then get thousands of applications and be like, I just have no idea who this person is beyond this 180 pixel avatar that I'm seeing. That to me is not as fun. And so as a founder, I just want to play to my strengths, which is I'm good at this, I'm good at going and meeting a bunch of people and um, increasing the lux surface area for potentially meeting people that I could collaborate with in the future. And so if you're the kind of founder that likes that or wants to get good at that, then that's what you should do.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, yeah, I mean I feel good about like where we, I've sort of landed in terms of like, I feel like I know how I want to do things moving forward. I do still have a little bit of that concern of like who we missing out on, but maybe not. Uh, again I kind of think I can compensate for that with just like a little bit more, just again, just paying a little bit more attention than maybe I've uh, paid in the past. The advice that everyone has been giving me, which is like hard to accept but I know is true. Uh, it's just like the reality is in when you're running a company, you're taking chances on people and it's not always going to work out. And the odds of it working out are actually sort of lower based on the conversations I've had with people than maybe I thought. Like a fairly common number that I've been hearing is like if you have like a 70% hit rate on someone you hire working out, like that's pretty good. Which means like a lot of companies are firing like 3 out of 10 people that they hire within like of the first few months that they're at the company. That just like, uh, I'm glad to know that's the reality because it like helps me feel like my sort of paranoia is like reasonable. But I also am just like, I don't know that I can like ever get good at being comfortable. Like just like letting someone, letting that percentage of people go and taking chances like that, you know.

Justin Jackson: Yeah, that's hard. That is a hard reality of running a company. There's all sorts of reasons you might need to let someone go too. Like sometimes, you know, the company's not doing as well or whatever.

Adam Wathan: But I guess I just mean in terms of just like being wrong about someone. You know what I mean?

Justin Jackson: Yeah.

Adam Wathan: And I don't want to be wrong about people because I don't want to put people through that. And um, yeah, I mean this is

Justin Jackson: a bad metaphor for me because I haven't dated since I was 18. But um, the thinking about dating is like if you're on the apps, you're just getting all the people on the apps and it's like you put out all the, a job posting for yourself and then you just see who applies and you get these like very your interactions. All of the depth of your humanity is just reduced to chatting and like pithy one liners that you're going to start with. I always think like, like here and where I live, we live in this ski resort town. The dating advice I hear people giving is like, if you like are really into skiing, for example, you just get to get up to the resort and just hang out at the ski resort all the time. Join some group skis, go to some events. Like you just got to put yourself in that.

Adam Wathan: It's like a luxurious area thing, you know?

Justin Jackson: Yeah. That sphere. And, and rather than sitting in town on the apps and just saying like having skier in your bio, it's like you're not gonna get the fullness of really running into people and having interactions and you know, going for some runs with them and sitting on the chairlift and then going in for Coffee. And, you know, I've met tons of people up at the ski resort just hanging out. And, um, you know, you meet one person and then all of a sudden you're riding the chairlift with some more people, and pretty soon you just know all these people. And, you know, if I'm looking, even if I'm just looking for some friends to go riding with, it's kind of the same, like, who's about my level, who, like, do I vibe well with who? You know, there's all this checklist and eventually it kind of sorts itself out through multiple interactions. And, uh, I think it'd be a lot harder for me to get the right people if, um, you know, every once I see people posting on Reddit in like, our city's subreddit, like anybody here into knitting, you know, it's like, well, you're just opening yourself up to whoever's on Reddit.

Adam Wathan: Yeah.

Justin Jackson: I mean, even that is at least increasing your luck surface area. But I'm just saying there's something about getting out of your house and for both job applicants and people looking for to hire. For me, it's like almost all about going to conferences. That's actually the biggest one. It's just going to conferences and meeting people. Um, and you don't need to be a celebrity even. Like, I've met so many cool people that have never given a conference talk. Have never, you know, they don't have a big Twitter following, but they're just like super cool. And then eventually you realize they're doing cool stuff. Uh, but they're super understated online or not giving talks or whatever.

Adam Wathan: Exactly.

Justin Jackson: That's kind of the. I think that if I had applied for the tailwind job and I'm listening to you right now, I personally wouldn't be upset. I would just be like, oh, wow, okay. What I need to do is I need to increase my luck surface area and just get out more. I just need to be in the sphere of Adam Wavin and you know, not in a try hard kind of way, but just in a, like, I'm gonna. I feel like him and I would get along. I feel like I, uh, would love to hang out with him and talk shop. Those kind of activities are what. That's a relationship. Then you're starting to, you know, eventually you get into the orbit of those folks and if, if they find you cool, then, you know, it'll get reciprocated and, you know, maybe opportunities will come out of it.

Adam Wathan: Totally. Yes. Uh, something I've thought With this whole thing is I almost wish we were like, a local company because I feel like it'd be even easier to hire people then, because you could just go to meetups and meet people and, you know, like, it's like, it's easier to get a little taste of people that already live near you than to have to, like, travel to conferences and stuff like that.

Justin Jackson: Um, this is why I almost think either you need this role or, like, if you ever do another tailwind event, depending on how much energy you have to give to things. But one of my favorite thing about, like, emceeing, um, at Larracon is it wasn't even something Taylor told me to do, but I just loved, like, being on stage, but then thinking, like, I'm actually, like, just a host at this event and just going around in the hallway and just asking people if they're having a good time and, you know, where'd they come from? What are they working on? I just love that role. And your next tailwind event feels like you could do that or somebody at your team could do that. They're just being the master of ceremonies, but for the community. And you're just like, hey, where'd you come from? What's going on? And thinking like, this is my first interaction with this person.

Adam Wathan: I.

Justin Jackson: Of what could be many, you know, like, I'm just, like, meeting this person and there could be. This could start. Like, that was like, uh, I met Jack McDade that way. I had no idea who Jack McDade was. Don't know what he can do, don't know what he does, nothing. Just sat at a table with him. You know, I worked on. With him on doing my personal website and it was like, still one of my favorite things that has ever been, you know, I've ever worked on. And he did most of it, right. It was just like, yeah, uh, there's certain people you can meet and get a sense of. And these are. The other thing is these people just tend to keep bubbling to the surface. It's like, again, maybe I'm over indexing for charisma, but again, I. Again, most of my team is introverts, so I don't think this is true. I've just. There's certain people that can, even as introverted people can still keep bubbling to the top. It's like, you just keep seeing them. Keep seeing stuff they're putting out. They touch base every once in a while. That rule seems to be. It's almost like the number of impressions, of positive impressions is what ends up getting you reach this benchmark and then it's like, oh man, that's the kind of person I want to hire.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, it's totally true. It's uh. Yeah, I don't know.

Justin Jackson: I guess.

Adam Wathan: Yeah. This process has made me a lot more comfortable with just like putting that constraint of just like hiring people that this isn't the first time I've seen their face. You know, at a minimum, like there's some sort of history there. The thing I was thinking about too, like, it's so funny. I have this like vivid memory of this being true and it turns out it wasn't true at all. Okay, you remember like, when, uh, when um, Jason Newstead quit Metallica, right? And they needed to find like a new bass player. I swear I remember them doing this like worldwide bass player search where like they were holding auditions in like big cities and people were lining up the door like, you know, like, uh, fucking, what's that show that Kelly Clarkson was on and shit?

Justin Jackson: You know, like American Idol or something like that.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, like American Idol style for like auditioning to be like the bass player Metallica. And everyone got like 30 seconds to like play something. And. And I remember, I remember. I swear I believe that that happened and that they didn't pick, uh, anyone. Turns out that never happened. What it's worth, I have no idea like how that got planted in my brain. Never happened. It's one of those bear seen bears things. Yeah. Like, I, I swear I believe this happened to the point where I feel like a guy, I know his cousin auditioned, you know what I mean?

Justin Jackson: Um, but. Yes, yeah, yeah.

Adam Wathan: But then I went and watched like, you know that they did that like some kind of monster documentary DVD years ago. And like a big part of that DVD is them, like finding a bass player. And you just look all the dudes that they brought in that they auditioned for the band, it's like none of these people are people. Like, they don't know. It's like the bass player from bands that they've toured with or that was like referred to them from a band that they toured with or someone that they knew from like back in the 80s when, you know, when they, when they were a lot smaller and they was a little bit more relatable. And uh, that was just like, I've always thought of the art company as a band, you know, like, that's kind of what I want it to be in my head. So to find these like, these like, comparisons is always, is always interesting to me. But it Also kind of speaks to the point we were talking about earlier, where it's like, there's something that feels, like, a little tricky about, like. Like, a Metallica was to bring on, like, someone who's just like, a pure fan into the band. It would feel like a weird dynamic for a long time. You know what I mean? Whereas if they bring on, like, Pepper Keenan from Corrosion of Conformity, it's like, yeah, he might be, like, a little bit. Oh, man, this is the big leagues compared to, like, what I was doing before. But it's still like, oh, like, we played shows with these guys in the 80s and, like, I've known them forever and I see them at parties and,

Justin Jackson: you know, there's so much more in that, too, which is, like, if you're hiring someone that's been referred to you or that you've worked with, you just have so much more context of, like, yeah, like, a fan has never done any of the work to be in a band. They haven't been in the van, they haven't put in. They likely haven't put in the hours. So they might be great technically, but there's, like, all these other things that you need for a role that kind of speaks to what you're saying. Like, it's like your vibe check was like, would I go to a conference with them and could they give a conference talk? And there's like, all these other things. Like, can these guys last 48 hours in the tour bus with us?

Adam Wathan: Sure.

Justin Jackson: Do I want to spend 48 hours with them in the tour bus? Like, that's a big deal. How else are you gonna get that besides, you know, through your network and talking to other people? Like, what was it like to tour with, you know, Bruce? And you're just getting a sense of, well, this is what it was like, uh, right away. Oh, that.

Adam Wathan: Yeah. Like, we played three shows with these guys, and, uh, you know, they were around all the time. So I saw this guy a lot, but also had the ability to sort of escape from him when necessary. So it's not like the biggest crazy commitment that it's like, you know, just hire someone. That's why, like, yeah, contracting with people is nice. And we don't. We don't have as many opportunities as I wish we did for. For that. Like, it's a lot of the work we do here is, like, very ongoing work. It's not like this is, like, little project that we can bring someone on

Justin Jackson: for, although that's a good muscle to keep going. Is I personally, like, if there's a small project, I just like keeping that in play. I'm like. And I do it for company projects, but also personal projects. It's just if there's something that needs to be done now, I just want to like find somebody and hire them for something really small. And uh, I like having that in motion. Constantly be working with new people and going, how did that feel? How did that work out? Did they do everything? Did it end up blowing up later? Or you know, I just like, it's like a nice practice even if you don't really need it to bring someone in and even bring someone in for like again you have this opportunity, if you ever do another tailwind event, bring somebody in and say, why don't you MC it?

Adam Wathan: Yeah.

Justin Jackson: Or why don't you be our uh, you know, we're looking for someone to do this there.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, totally. Like, I would love to hire like a sort of a developer relations person maybe one day, you know what I mean? And that would be like an interesting example of like a way to, to test that out. Like obviously it has to be someone you already know a bit. Mhm. You know, but maybe you never met them before. You want to spend a bit more time with them, you want to see how they really do in like a real situation or whatever, you know. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's smart to like again, it's another like knob to turn up a little bit like paying attention to like really trying to pay attention to things that could be sliced off as projects. You know what I mean?

Justin Jackson: Um, and you are, I mean this is gonna be your challenge all the time, is that you're very like, you still do a lot. I would love to hear uh, how Taylor Otwell is thinking about this right now. That's interesting to me. Cause he's doing all this hiring and hiring people outside of his network, I think.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, I mean, yeah, maybe that's a conversation to have with him. I know a lot about it, but I don't know how much I could say or how much I can't say. I know in the engineering side that he still really hires people from the open source community, you know, and they have a really. Laravel has a really strong community of contributors and stuff. We've never been able to really build that. I think we have a weird tool where the people who use it are like very. It's very uncommon for them to be qualified to build it. Whereas Laravel is like, you're using Laravel to build applications with php like you can probably go into Laravel and make some changes to the PHP there. Uh, ours is like you're styling things on a website, but the tool to build that thing is like this complex node JS library. They're so different from each other. I want to believe that's the reason that we haven't been able to. There's a few, you know what I mean? But Laravel is incredible amount of people in the community doing stuff.

Justin Jackson: If that's true, then I think you need to either run two events or be involved in two events. One tailwind for the tailwind people and fans and then a Node JS conference. Uh, whatever. So you're always in that, like if that's. In some ways most things are like that. Like we're in the podcasting industry, but most podcasters can't build a product. And so we have to be in two worlds. We have to be in the tech product world and then we have to be in the podcasting world.

Adam Wathan: Yeah.

Justin Jackson: And developing both at the same time. Um, so maybe that's how you got to think about it. And that's why I want to start going. You know, I've just been going to podcasting events and I'm like, I got to get back to tech events and business events because I want some of that juice too at the same time.

Adam Wathan: Did you go to microconf this year? No.

Justin Jackson: I thought about it. The other thing I like about tech events is it's like the nerds I want to hang out with, like the really technical people. But then there's always the kind of business people I like are often there. So it's like this nice slice of the ecosystem. You just get business people and you get tech people and you get a mixture of both. Um, but I would love to go back to another micro conf too.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, yeah, I definitely want to do a lot more conferences in general if I can figure out how to do it. The hard thing is like got a six year old, a three year old and a nine month old. So like getting away, leaving my wife with that crew on her own for uh, extended periods of time is, ah, a hard one.

Justin Jackson: This is why I'm curious about the staff engineer. If there's people on your team that can do part of that for you too. Um, I haven't really figured this out on our team. Like I'm definitely the most, I'm the most equipped to go out and network. Um, John is pretty good at it too actually. Uh, so when he gets out, uh, he's good at it as well. Um, I started going down the path of, like, oh, this would be a cool thing to delegate. But in practice, I think it is just harder to delegate some of this stuff. It's just nice to be the person that's doing it.

Adam Wathan: Cool, man. Yeah, maybe a good place to wrap it, but, uh, glad to have the chance to get this all out of my brain while it's still fresh so I can listen to it in a year from now if we ever want to hire again and remind myself of what it was like. But, uh, interesting takeaways at least, you know, even to just feel like I know what I want to do next time, I think is enough. But, man, it was a big commitment to run that experiment.

Justin Jackson: I would definitely be curious if anyone's listening and they've had the opposite experience. Small team, opened it up to the public and found. Just had a process that had amazing results.

Adam Wathan: Some real hidden gems, you know?

Justin Jackson: Yeah, I would love to hear about that.

Adam Wathan: I mean, the thing is, I'm sure we had them apply. And, uh, that was one of the other things that sucks about having 600 people apply and having to, like, somehow get through all of them is this, like, constant worry of, like, I. I'm almost certain the. The best person for the job is somehow in the disqualified pile, you know what I mean? Because they just, uh, didn't stand out in the application the right way and didn't get a chance to, like, talk with us. But I don't know what else I could have done about that. You know what I mean? But there's just.

Justin Jackson: But I think that's kind of like thinking, like, I'm sure there's someone that would love to date me, that just never saw my profile. And so. And like, thinking about it too much is like, yeah, but in reality, the kind of person I'm going to date or the kind of person I'm going to hire or the kind of person I'm going to work with is I've interacted with them at some point. Like, that's more likely, uh, in my head.

Adam Wathan: I think you're probably right. And it's helpful, too, to just like, think about. Just start going through people I know and just think, like, I don't even know how I know this person. You know what I mean? I didn't have to try, but I know them and I'm glad I know them. And that just means that's going to keep happening no matter what.

Justin Jackson: Yes. And to not exclude people. There are lots of People running their own companies that you could actually probably also hire. You know what I mean? Like, that pool is also open.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, yeah. That's something I'm trying to learn, honestly, is like, I think I, I don't even try to recruit certain people because I'm just like, well, they only started at that job nine months ago, so, you know, that's no chance I'm going to do that. And then what happens is like, there's one person that I've wanted to, like, work with for a long time that I've held that belief in my head and now I've seen them at three different jobs.

Justin Jackson: Exactly.

Adam Wathan: Actually four.

Justin Jackson: And also don't, don't, uh, like people that are working at big companies and you're thinking, well, they'd never want to leave. A lot of those people want to leave. There's a lot of people that want to work for a small indie company where you're doing way more cool stuff and you're way more hands on and you have way more leverage in terms of what gets built. Like, you can be in there. I love small teams because if you want to make a difference, you can get in there and just work and get a lot of leverage on a small team if you're willing to go after it. So I think those people are out there. I think that's the other lesson.

Adam Wathan: Yeah, they are. For sure. For sure.

Justin Jackson: All right, dude.

Adam Wathan: Cool, man. All right, I better get to dinner before the kids start yelling at me that they're hungry. But, uh, yeah, it was good to catch up to you. I'm glad we got to do this.

Justin Jackson: Oh, dude. Yeah, let's talk again soon.

Adam Wathan: Looking forward to seeing you in, uh, whenever the hell. Laracon is August.

Justin Jackson: August, yeah.

Adam Wathan: Texas in August, baby. Bring your shorts.

Justin Jackson: Yes. Yeah, I'm gonna. I'll be dead, but yeah, I'm looking forward to it. All right, see you.

Adam Wathan: All right, see ya.

Justin Jackson: All right. Hopefully you enjoyed that. If you have feedback on any of that stuff, reach out to us on Twitter. I'm Mijustin M on Twitter and Adam is Adam Wavin. I wanna give some shout outs to the folks who support us on Patreon. We've got Pascal from Sharpen Page, rewardful.com, greg Park, Mitchell Davis from recruitkit.com Marshall Follet from Wearebold AF, Bill Condo Ward from memberspace.com Evander Sassy, Austin Loveless, Michael Sitford, Dan Buddha, Colin Gray, and Dave Junta. Uh, we'll see you next time we post an episode. Thanks, folks. Podcast hosting is provided by Transistor FM. They host our MP3 files, generate our RSS feed, provide us with analytics, and help us distribute the show to Spotify, Apple Podcasts and more. If you want to start your own podcast or you want to switch to Transistor, go to Transistor FM Justin and get 15% off your first year.