RFD 3 Oxide Hiring Process

As the ordering implies, there is a temptation in traditional hiring to focus on aptitude exclusively: to use an interview exclusively to assess a candidate’s pure pulling power. While this might seem to be a reasonable course, it in fact leads down the primrose path to pop quizzes about algorithms seen primarily in software engineering interview questions. These assessments of aptitude are misplaced: work is not, in fact, a spelling bee, and one’s ability to perform during an arbitrary oral exam may or may not correlate to one’s ability to actually design, build, sell, or support production systems. We believe that aptitude is better assessed where it is forced to be exercised: based on the work that one does on one’s own. As such, candidates should be asked to provide three samples of their works: a work sample, a writing sample, and an analysis sample.

We are all born uneducated — and our own development is a result of the informal education of experience and curiosity, as well as a better structured and more formal education. To assess a candidate’s education, both the formal and informal aspects of education should be considered.

Motivation is often not assessed in the interview process, which is unfortunate because it dictates so much of what we do and why. For Oxide in particular, it is critically important to find those who feel a deep and intrinsic motivation to solve the problems of a complicated computing system. This is essential exactly because these technical problems are so challenging: they push back on us all, and it takes great internal drive to rise to one’s feet again and again.

But how to truly determine motivation? For many companies, this might be tricky to assess, but at Oxide we have the luxury of a clear mission — and the good fortune that those proficient in our domain tend to be very drawn both to that mission and to others similarly motivated. So simply asking candidates the simple question of why they want to work for Oxide can be revealing: we would expect the answer to be phrased in terms of the mission that we have set for ourselves, the problems we have in tackling it, and/or the team that we have already attracted.

One cautionary note: because our mission is so clear, it can attract some who find it superficially appealing — but in fact will struggle when the problems become spiritually crushing. Motivation should be assessed as much by looking at a candidate’s career (educational, professional or otherwise): their career arc should be clearly driving them to solve the problems that we solve.

Values are often not evaluated formally at all in the hiring process — yet shared values are essential for long-term success. Some questions should be asked to suss out a candidate’s values, e.g.:

But simply inquiring as to someone’s values is insufficient, because at Oxide, our values are clearly elucidated:

We must get to the degree that candidates share our values. This can be done by asking for written answers to values-oriented questions. For example:

In an ideal world, integrity would not be something we would need to assess in a candidate: we could trust that everyone is honest and trustworthy. This view, unfortunately, is naïve with respect to how malicious bad actors can be; for any organization — but especially for one that is biased towards trust and transparency — it is essential that candidates be of high integrity: an employee who operates outside of the bounds of integrity can do nearly unbounded damage to an organization that assumes positive intent.

There is no easy or single way to assess integrity for people with whom one hasn’t endured difficult times. By far the most accurate way of assessing integrity in a candidate is for them to already be in the circle of one’s trust: for them to have worked deeply with (and be trusted by) someone that is themselves deeply trusted. But even in these cases where the candidate is trusted, some basic verification is prudent.

The candidate should submit the following:

Lest this seem arduous, note that much of this material is likely to be preexisting (e.g., samples of prior work). As for the balance, it has been our experience that candidates themselves find answering these self-reflective questions to be helpful to their own job search process, entirely independently of any specific opportunity.

Once material is submitted, it should be evaluated. The process by which materials are evaluated is substantive enough to deserve separate treatment; the details of this process can be found in [rfd147], but in short: the evaluation of materials comprises the bulk of our candidate evaluation process. Anyone interested in Oxide should be instructed that we take the materials very seriously — and that we tend to have far more candidates than available positions. (It is not altogether uncommon for candidates that are well-regarded by Oxide employees to submit milquetoast materials; candidates should not assume that familiarity with the team will be a substitute for materials evaluation.)

Where candidates are promising, they should be advanced to conversations with the team. Before interviews, candidates should be given access to RFDs, as discussed in [rfd35]. Getting complete access to the RFDs gives candidates the opportunity to understand Oxide much more concretely, with the understanding that after seeing the gritty details of our endeavor, a candidate may reasonably choose to withdraw their candidacy. There is no shame in this: we want new additions to Oxide to be well-informed about the true state of the company — and it is helpful to all if a candidate has decided themselves that they are not a fit.

Interviews shouldn’t necessarily take one form; interviewers should feel free to take a variety of styles and approaches — but should generally refrain from "gotcha" questions and/or questions that may conflate surface aspects of intellect with deeper qualities (e.g., Microsoft’s infamous "why are manhole covers round?"). Not all interviews will cover all traits, and several traits (e.g., aptitude, education) are multifaceted and nuanced: approaching these from different perspectives can be helpful. (Mixing interview styles over the course of the day can also be helpful for the candidate, who doesn’t feel trapped in a single kind of interview.) Should an interviewer learn something during their interview that they feel merits more exploration by another interviewer later in the schedule, they shouldn’t hesitate to communicate their perspective to that later interviewer: the need to fully explore a candidate’s fit trumps any desire to not have one interview influence another.

After the interview, the candidate should be discussed by those who interviewed them. The objective isn’t necessarily to get to consensus first (though that too, ultimately), but rather to areas of concern. In this regard, the post-interview conversation must be handled carefully: the interview is deliberately constructed to allow broad contact with the candidate, and it is possible than someone relatively junior or otherwise inexperienced will see something that others will miss. The meeting should be constructed to assure that this important data isn’t suppressed; bad hires can happen when reservations aren’t shared out of fear of disappointing a larger group!

In general, those interviewing a candidate should be asked to enter the meeting with one of three positions: Hire, Do not hire, or Insufficient information.

However the meeting is mechanically run, it is important that if anyone is a Do not hire, these concerns be treated very seriously: it is saying that the aptitude, education, motivation, values and/or integrity of the candidate are in serious doubt or are otherwise unacceptable. Those who believe Do not hire should be asked for the dimensions that most substantiate their position. Especially where these reservations are around values or integrity, a single Do not hire should raise serious doubts about a candidate: the risks of bad hires around values or integrity are far too great to ignore someone’s judgment in this regard!

Ideally, however, no one has the position of Do not hire, and through a combination of screening and candidate self-selection, everyone believes Hire and the discussion can be brief, positive and forward-looking!

If, as is perhaps most likely, there is some mix of Hire and Insufficient information, the discussion should focus on the information that is missing about the candidate. If other interviewers cannot fill in the information about the candidate (and if it can’t be answered by the corpus of material provided by the candidate), the group should together brainstorm about how to ascertain it. Should a follow-up conversation be scheduled? Should the candidate be asked to provide some missing information? Should some aspect of the candidate’s background be explored? The collective decision should not move to Hire as long as there remain unanswered questions preventing everyone from reaching the same decision.

During the process — especially for those hires who are not already well-known by an employee — references may wish to be checked. Reference checking should be viewed as an opportunity to get more details on a candidate that aren’t otherwise captured in their materials or their interview. Importantly, it should never be viewed as a substitute for those things, and it should be understood that there will be conditions in which reference checks are difficult. (And in particular, candidates who plan to leave their current employer may not be able to reasonably offer their current employer as a reference.)

In terms of the mechanics of conducting a reference check, there is not necessarily one way to do it — but in the course of a conversation, one should seek to understand the conditions under which a candidate struggled as well as when they thrived. By putting a reference check relatively later in the process (after materials, work review, interview, etc.), it can (hopefully) be made more effective: by the time one is checking references, the candidate should be known pretty well — and there should be a pretty crisp idea about open questions. Similarly, if something in the reference check conversation doesn’t correspond with what is known, that should be more readily apparent.

Whenever the decision has been made to not move forward with a candidate — either because they are not a fit at all or not a fit now — a timely rejection should be sent to the candidate.

In general, the time and thought put into the rejection should reflect the candidate’s depth and effort in our process: candidates that didn’t bother with the materials or clearly didn’t take them seriously should be given a terse rejection; those who clearly put effort into it but are as clearly not a fit should be given a more thoughtful response; and those who are known and valued or those whom we interview but are deemed not a fit due to time or needs should be given a personalized, honest, clear response. For these most personalized responses, an earnest offer for a follow-up phone conversation should be included: this commitment to the candidate makes clear that despite them not being a fit for us now, we value them as an individual, or a friend, or even a potential future co-worker.

It is tautologically challenging to evaluate one’s process for assessing engineers: one lacks data on the candidates that one doesn’t hire, and therefore can’t know which candidates should have been extended offers of employment but weren’t. As such, hiring processes can induce a kind of ultimate survivorship bias in that it is only those who have survived (or instituted) the process who are present to assess it — which can lead to deafening echo chambers of smug certitude. One potential way to assess the assessment process: ask candidates for their perspective on it. Candidates are in a position to be evaluating many different hiring processes concurrently, and likely have the best perspective on the relative merits of different ways of assessing engineers.

Of course, there is peril here too: while many organizations would likely be very interested in a candidate who is bold enough to offer constructive criticism on the process being used to assess them while it is being used to assess them, the candidates themselves might not realize that — and may instead offer bland bromides for fear of offending a potential employer. Still, it has been our experience that a thoughtful process will encourage a candidate’s candor — and we have found that the processes described here have been strengthened by listening carefully to the feedback of candidates. More reflection on the history and implementation of this process can be found in [oxf-s3e31].