[PLUG] Hire the Best

[John Telford]

Linux, UNIX, and network professionals seeking work in the Portland are
are running into the "buyers" market mentality.

This is illustrated by a recent Portland Area Cisco Users Group mailing
list posting by a hiring manager, containing the following statement:

"..you are only worth what the market will bear, and what someone is
willing to pay you."

Below is a lightly edited version of my response to that posting.

==========

Most successful managers know, or learn by experience, that hiring the
best people for $X pays off *much* better than hiring less than the best
for $<X.  Usually the best people are insulted by offers of $<X.  The
manager and company making the offer soon earn the reputation of being
cheap.  This is a liability in a "small town" like Portland where the
word quickly get around.

Some managers suffering from magical thinking are applying a mythical
man-month principle by thinking that hiring two for the price of one
produces twice the work.  The fallacy of this thinking was exposed more
than 25 years ago by Frederick P. Brooks in the classic "The Mythical
Man-Month."  Twenty years later, the first revised edition of this book
reaffirms the original principles.

The best people bring a wealth of experience and depth of understanding
to a job that lesser experienced people are lacking.  It's wishful
thinking that sending a lesser experienced person off to training will
close the gap.

Anyone sent off to training may return with some more experience and a
better depth of understanding.  But even this incremental improvement
doesn't come close to closing the experience gap, and the ability to
solve difficult problems.

There's no substitute for experience and depth of understanding.  Paying
the price is a bargain.  First rate managers know this.  They know that
the best people usually out performs several lesser experienced people
combined.  What a bargain!

Being a hiring manager for several years, one phenomena that ceases to
amaze me is first rate managers hire first rate people, and second rate
managers hire third rate people.

Food for thought.

...John

-- 
John Telford - Owner
JohnTelford.com LLC
503-292-6865 - fax:503-292-3094
john at johntelford.com - www.johntelford.com