[PLUG] Hire the Best

Carla Schroder pluglist at bratgrrl.com
Fri Jul 12 13:10:51 UTC 2002


Here's some real food for thought: where do all these magically experienced, 
skilled people come from? This bullshit of abusing 'permatemps', H1B workers, 
and other dodges to avoid mentoring and training real honest-to-gosh 
employees is very old and very wrong. Or perhaps there is a secret foundry 
where these top-flight people are produced?

Carla

On Friday 12 July 2002 04:53 pm, you wrote:
> 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




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