Thread by @QuinnyPig

This is a *terrific* question that deserves a thread of its own.

https://twitter.com/santi1524/status/1390746069643022339

Here at the @DuckbillGroup we're intentional about hiring. We're fully remote, we work largely asynchronously, and we solve fun / fascinating / maddening problems.

We're bootstrapped (no outside investment), so we hire slowly and with great intention / care.

There are two primary issues with hiring junior folks here.

The first: @mike_julian and I are concerned that someone new to the workforce wouldn't have a great experience here. We're not set up to guide folks who are new to office-style jobs. We worry this would set folks up to fail.

The second: "junior" doesn't always mean "new to the workforce," it can also mean folks switching career tracks.

That's likely a lot more tenable here--but that doesn't get around the "mentoring someone intensively" problem.

To be clear: we *want* to hire junior folks, but we want/need to be able to do that responsibly and well or we're setting them up for pain that isn't their fault.

I agree wholeheartedly with this position. As a small ~10 person company, it makes sense. As a publicly traded company it's failing to give back to the ecosystem / train the next generation.

Somewhere in between those two points it shifts.

https://twitter.com/rkoutnik/status/1390805222759489544?s=20

No, and this is probably incredibly unkind to someone somewhere: we're what the AWS Cloud Economics team really should be, but just isn't. AWS TAMs want to join us because they see the Cloud Econ team and wish they were what we are.

https://twitter.com/agirlis30572063/status/1390806665461698562?s=20

Specific to Cloud Economist roles: Solid devops / ops / SRE backgrounds. 2-3 years experience is too junior. "Seen and done a lot" is a prerequisite to understanding our clients' situations.

"I have SEEN some shit" is something all of our CEs will say.

https://twitter.com/UrenaLuis2/status/1390809294241603605?s=20

For all roles, we still hire experienced people. We generally look for people with more than five years experience, and prefer 7+.

Honestly? Nothing. Today it would require a fundamental rethinking of how we run our business, and we're just too small for that. We're still early enough that product-market fit is an existential challenge. Working on hiring juniors is a lesser priority.

https://twitter.com/MilitaryCoo/status/1390811587942903808?s=20

Because we can teach an SRE how finance works way, way, way more easily than we can teach a finance person how AWS works. @awscloud billing is ultimately about architecture, people, and trade-offs. Those things require engineering experience to see.

https://twitter.com/UrenaLuis2/status/1390812220724969475?s=20

Absolutely agree--this is *great* and I absolutely believe it.

We are not the largest online grocery store in Sweden. Yet.

https://twitter.com/lajacobsson/status/1390814366010904580?s=20

Let me give an example of an interview question we used when filling our Principal Cloud Economist role:

"You've got $1m/mo in spend for a large Kubernetes cluster. What do you do to find ways to decrease the cost?"

I will pause here; hit reply and tell me your answers.

Okay, there are basically three tiers of response.

First up, the junior answer: "Buy some RIs or Savings Plans." Sure, okay. You're not wrong,

Second comes someone a bit more in the weeds. They'll start talking about Spot and Fargate. They know what's up in that space.

But the senior folks, the folks we want, come back with "What the FUCK is on that cluster?!"

Because without understanding what's there and how it ties into everything else, you've already lost.

People who approach cost management from a finance perspective will often talk about everything except what's on the cluster, making the fatal mistake of assuming Engineering has their shit together.

(Incidentally, "what the FUCK is on that cluster?!" is basically the @DuckbillGroup core value proposition. It can't be done via software so no VC backed startup will touch it. It requires blending a bunch of skills together into very talented people.)

The kinds of people we're looking for will start talking about assessing workloads and moving them to more cost-effective locations.

Seriously, "Don't assume your client is an idiot" should be engraved on the bathroom mirror of every aspiring consultant walking the earth. Is it terrible? Maybe! But insulting them doesn't get you anywhere.

You don't have a lot of context, and your clients do. Apply your insight to their context. It may be that that $1 million a month cluster is exactly where it should be given their constraints and scale.

Exactly!

"What's that ancient piece of shit doing?"
"Oh, about $700 million of revenue a quarter, so how about you watch your mouth and show some respect?"

You just don't know without asking. This job is way more about people than technology.

https://twitter.com/0x2ba22e11/status/1390825255200075777?s=20

And this response (along with the following) demonstrates once again why @patio11 has the role in our ecosystem that he does; this is a founder-level answer.

https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1390821825727254528?s=20

Something I think gets lost in translation a lot: by default I think a lot of things in tech are wrong. By default I think anything in a client environment is correct.

Both statements are in fact internally consistent.

Exactly. Expensive consultants need to be highly skilled in their specialty. “I don’t know but I’ll find out” is valid and expected, but it can’t be used as a substitute for baseline knowledge in the field.

https://twitter.com/rnelson0/status/1390841353492385792