I’ve heard this story from a friend.
Sometime about 1-2 years ago, a small firm was trying to create a new team to update their existing infrastructure, and there were a few existing employees, including my friend, in the soon to be formed team. The company hired a new leader (let’s call them, Josh) to try to lead this new team. When he came in, he promised that things would be revamped and that they would move on to try new systems and frameworks. My friend and the team were eager to start on this new project given that most of their tasks were usually routine at that point in time. Josh hired a few more team members and tried to get started with work.
Unfortunately, the job was not to the expectation of what Josh came in for. He couldn’t adapt to the culture and while he had knowledge of some infrastructure, he didn’t agree with the tech direction with where the infrastructure should be headed, which he was hired to fix. He tried to talk to several stakeholders on the ideas he had, but they were quite busy and didn’t see the value in his ideas and he didn’t get to produce a lot of work that he felt that he was proud. As a result, he left about 6 months in.
Not long after, one month after another, many of the team members also left the company as well, my friend included, and the whole original team had to be restructured from the ground up. The main reason my friend and the others like him left was that he quoted that he didn’t feel that he had a future in the company given what was promised was not delivered. He also saw how his new boss was treated, and was not happy about this and felt that this was not some place he could grow in. The idea that one person could make or break the small team was probably one of the most surprising things I found from this whole story because he was perfectly happy 8 months ago, but what happened in 6 months changed his whole perspective.
The emperor’s new clothes. He should have hired better, and everyone would agree that the emperor would have looked less foolish.
Another one of the takeaways of the story on reflection now was how important the hiring process is to everyone: employees, the candidates and the company. Getting the incorrect person can set a bad example for other people; and conversely, getting the right person will uplift everyone and inspire them as well. I have found that getting good data scientists can be extremely difficult. Given Josh’s story up there, and how important it is for the hired person to at the very least not do harm, we should make an effort to figure out how hiring works and aim to build better data scientists for the future. So what else do we learn from this example?
A few different perspectives
Like managing people, I do think hiring is a skill that the people who are interested have to work on to get good at. It may or may not come naturally to some people, but it’s something that needs to have some consideration into it. I have observed that trying to get hired for a position can be extremely difficult, economic conditions aside. I think if we take the above example for a deeper analysis, we can understand what happens when we don’t do it correctly.
From Josh’s point of view, there could have been incorrect expectations set for him. While there may be people out there to game the system, I’d like to think that most people would want a better purpose that they would achieve for most of their week rather than playing chess in 4D. They may not be a fit with the working environment, they don’t have the correct hard skill sets, or they just do not get along well with their peers; but, this does not mean they’re bad. You could easily imagine if we put Josh in another environment, he could do well in there.
I do think that hiring is a matter of aligning expectations of the company and the candidates, and we’ve set them up by failure by not correctly communicating and having the appropriate handshakes with them. Josh may have left quite a stable position, only to come to a new place where he doesn’t feel at ease, and then he’d have to find a new commitment to replace the one that did not work out. He may also have left with a negative impression of the company, and that news spreads and can come back to cause issues in the future such as negative reviews, especially in a small industry like ours where everyone will have heard of one another.
On the other hand, Josh could genuinely be lacking in the correct skillsets, and having the wrong person can significantly affect the entire team and change the way they work. The general agreed upon sentiment that I’ve been exposed to so far is that bad culture can spread very quickly: there have been a few studies (see 1+2) that show that a person who displays cues that signal a lack of interest can drop group productivity or alter the mood of the room significantly. If you look at Josh’s example, the moment he left because it did not work out, there were deeper issues that spread because of what he embodied as a promise to the new team. I have also noticed that bad culture can be surprisingly difficult to weed out once it takes root. It spreads quickly on small cues and it takes a great deal of courage and self awareness to A) notice it, and B) to even be in a position to call it out. For example:
- If we want to foster an open community of sharing here. If one person ends up dominating the room, why would anyone else want to share their thoughts? They would probably discuss most of my points, so I don’t think there’s anything for me to contribute. What you end up with is one person continuing to talk in the room, while the rest feels disengaged.
- High stress is also one of these things that can be picked up on and passed down easily. When one person feels pressured, especially the lead, they can inadvertently signal it to their peers who may feel they have to compensate. Even if the lead tries their best to hide it, because they do not want to worry their team, it still can be quite visible.
For hiring, these examples above don’t necessarily apply, but they illustrate the general point. Many of these seem obvious in hindsight that a manager should handle, but when you’re dealing with lots of stakeholders, all of them with requests, the easiest thing is to hope that your newcomer is performing above your expectations and give them a chance. But humans are creatures of habit and it is not so easy to change them even if they’re willing. Do you consider that the time to get a new candidate is better or to work with a candidate that probably will take a long time to change? It’s rare, from both a personal experience, and others (3) . Given all of the above, hiring can be quite conservative, and a good amount of effort has been placed into finding the right sort of person for the company.
We can do better
To keep aiming for the best, we have to analyze and think through our thought processes first. If hiring good data scientists is still difficult, then the next question would be on how we could improve on this. In the next follow up, I’ll go through more of a thought process I use to vet and evaluate some candidates. I feel that it would be a good process to share for both candidates to understand what a hiring manager could be looking for and how we could build upon this as well. One must also have a solid foundation to build on, and what could be a better starting place than hiring?
References
- The Culture Code. Daniel Coyle. Pg 3-4
- How to Have a Good Day. Caroline Webb.
- Building Analytics Teams. John K Thompson. Chapter 3, p117-121.