Category: Managing Developers

Whether we like it or not, part of being a technical leader is mastering the time-consuming, and sometimes painful recruiting and hiring process. 

To be successful as a technical leader you need an exceptional technical team but the good news as a leader, is that you own the responsibility to build and grow that team. 

While some companies have developed good processes for hiring technical teams, startup and small/mid-size companies often lack well-defined hiring strategies or use processes that aren’t effective for assessing technical hires. 

We have all made hiring mistakes that proved costly and painful so I view it as business critical for technical leaders to establish and implement an effective hiring process for building high performance technical teams. 

Earlier in my career as a senior software engineer, I was hired by the Peter Norton Computing Group, recently acquired by Symantec. 

They had the largest concentration of technical talent that I had seen up to that point in my career so I found it exciting to work with a group of such experienced technical talent and strong motivation, something of a “dream team”. 

While one of my childhood nicknames in elementary school was “the brain,” I was far from the smartest person in the room at Peter Norton. It was sufficient enough for my ego to believe that, in a small meeting, I might be a close second.

As a result of that experience I learned a few things about the technical teams I wanted to be a part of:

• I preferred working with other senior software engineers over entry-level engineers.
• I enjoyed working with other highly self-motivated people.
• I loved working with very intelligent and talented people and teams.
• I felt great satisfaction with the success in the marketplace that exceptional teams produce.

Hiring for Talent

It also led me to a philosophy about hiring for technical teams. 

Fundamentally, when hiring software engineers and all other things being equal, I value talent (i.e., innate ability) over skill (i.e., learned ability). 

Borrowing from the Agile Manifesto, while there is value in skills, I value talent more.

As a technical leader, I’ve discovered and adopted 2 tools that I have found useful in hiring for technical talent:

1. “Firing Squad” Technical Interview
2. Aptitude Assessment Test

“Firing Squad” Technical Interview

As part of their hiring process the Peter Norton Group used a panel interview called the “firing squad”.

This was not your typical subjective panel interview, which I’ve never really liked. 

The firing squad technical interview is different in that it is purely technical in content and more objective than the typical panel interview.

As I grew into becoming a technical leader and eventually CTO, I incorporated the firing squad technical interview into my own hiring process and found it to be effective in helping select intelligent and talented individuals. 

Let me explain the process and objectives as it relates to interviewing technical candidates. 

Suggested Process

• Hiring manager and selected technical staff (usually 3-4 developers) meet together with the candidate.
• Participating technical staff should have previously reviewed the candidate’s resume and have a good idea of the type of person we’re looking to hire.
• Participating technical staff should have a broad representation of technical skill sets, so that they can effectively drill down on all relevant technical areas.
• The candidate is informed that we’re going to ask questions of a technical nature to get a better feel for his/her technical strengths and weaknesses. They will be told it’s ok to respond with “I don’t know,” venture a guess (e.g., “I’m not sure, but I would think…”), or think through the question and problem out loud.
• Participating technical staff will ask technical questions, starting at a high level and then drill down on the specific topic until the topic is exhausted. Here is an example of a drill down into one specific topic:

“Your Resume mentions that you have some experience with SQL. Would you tell us more about your work in this area?”

“Can you give us an example of an SQL query?”

“Ok, so it sounds like you’re familiar with SQL queries. Can you explain what a Join is?”

“How about a Left Outer Join?”

“Ok, so if a row from the first/left table doesn’t have a match, does it show up in the result?”

• Asking general computer science questions can be useful in assessing the candidate’s technical capability (e.g., “what is inheritance?”), however, it is generally not beneficial to do research to come up with questions and answers. The collective knowledge of the interviewing team should be sufficient to assess the relevant technical capability of the candidate.
• Move from topic to topic until running out of time or exhausting relevant topics.
• After the candidate has left, each team member shares their thoughts and opinions of the candidate (i.e., what they liked/disliked).

Target Objectives

• How much of the candidate’s resume is fluff vs. real (e.g., did they just work on a project that used JavaScript or did they write JavaScript code, and how proficient are they?). 
• Insight into how the candidate thinks (i.e., we’re not just hiring for skills, we’re hiring for talent).
• Insight into the personality of the candidate and how they interact with others.
• How the candidate responds under pressure.
• Opportunity for the candidate to get to know members of our team and give them a feel for our personalities and how we interact with each other. The candidate is evaluating fit from their perspective as well.

Special Notes

The firing squad technical interview is an unfair match-up by design. 

No candidate comes out with a perfect score. 

A key objective is to go beyond assessing the candidate’s learned skills and see how they think (i.e., innate ability). 

The idea is NOT to beat up the candidate. Once it is clear the candidate is unable to effectively drill down further on a certain topic, move on to another topic rather than continue to ask questions they are unable to address. 

In practice the firing squad takes more time with a more knowledgeable and more talented candidate.

IMPORTANT: Remember that while we have a need to assess the technical capability of the candidate, we want to do this in a professional and friendly manner. If we decide to hire the candidate, we don’t want them to decline because they think we are jerks.

Aptitude Assessment Test

Later in my career, I was introduced to an additional tool – an aptitude assessment test. 

There are numerous aptitude assessment tests out there, but the one I’ve used is oriented toward software engineers. 

The test describes a simple hypothetical computer language, and then asks multiple choice questions related to this hypothetical language. 

The 20 questions on the timed test gradually introduce additional syntax, semantics, operators, etc. for this hypothetical language, and subsequent questions build upon prior information provided about the language. 

While prior experience with computer languages would likely be advantageous, it is not required as the test itself provides everything needed to answer the questions. Which makes sense, since it is an aptitude test, not a skills or knowledge test.

Before using the aptitude assessment test with candidates, I wanted a better feel for what the scores might mean. I took the test myself and invited other members of our technical team to take it if they wanted to. The test scores from internal team members were very closely aligned with my own personal experience of their talent. 

The person I considered to be the most talented member of the technical team achieved a perfect score. We also had a contractor working for us who was a retired military helicopter pilot, and more recently a retired database administrator (DBA) from a U.S. National Laboratory. His background and work experience were non-traditional for a software engineer, but I knew him to be very intelligent, talented, and an excellent problem solver. 

He scored higher than many of the more traditional software engineers on our technical team, which I found consistent with his observed job performance. 

Interestingly, he later told me that the military had pilot candidates take a similar aptitude assessment test to screen their helicopter pilots. 

One aberration to the internal test results was a talented member of the team who scored lower than I expected, but I believe his higher anxiety personality likely made him a poor test taker. Whatever the reason, it’s important to note that a single metric can’t definitively determine future performance.

Summary

The firing squad technical interview and aptitude assessment test are just two ways to help gauge technical talent. 

The extremely intelligent and talented team member who got a perfect score on the aptitude assessment test also went through our firing squad technical interview about 8 years previously. He had just recently graduated from a college of computer science and had some intern experience. We were looking for a Java developer, but his experience was primarily with C#. 

On paper, he was an unremarkable candidate – a wild card candidate that I tend to bring in for interviews. Despite his minimal real-world software engineering experience, he worked through the technical questions and problems, often with educated guesses. 

We observed his thought process as he figured out answers on-the-fly and correlated his C# knowledge to Java-specific questions. He knocked that interview out of the park and impressed us. 

Despite some reservations from team members that he lacked Java experience, we hired for talent that day and found a “diamond in the rough.” He was one of the best hires I ever made.

Interviewing and hiring for technical teams is a challenge, made harder by the fact that resumes often lie. 

The firing squad technical interview and aptitude assessment test are not silver bullets, nor are they the end-all-be-all in assessing candidates. You also need to consider other traditional factors when hiring for our technical teams, such as cultural fit. 

Hiring for exceptional talent helps build exceptional teams.

The firing squad technical interview and aptitude assessment test are useful tools to have in the toolbox for building high performing technical teams.

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It’s a remarkable human foible that we can spot the 1 negative person in 100 smiling faces. 

Anyone who has performed on stage or delivered a presentation will recognise the sensation of spotting that face in the crowd who looks far from impressed or engaged with what you’re saying.

It’s the same in a business environment and particularly during this Zoom era where you immediately spot the individual with the negative body language, lack of engagement, constant fidgeting. 

I recently presented to 80 people and just one individual caught my eye and cast doubt in my mind, as he performed every negative body movement known to man.

It’s no different when presenting to a team where the negative body language of an individual can have an impact on how you perform and deflect a significant proportion of your energy and focus away from other positive responses. 

But it’s also a potential signal of a deeper and more destructive presence in your team with an individual who has nothing positive to say, irritates colleagues, and makes the working environment difficult for everyone.

How do you respond to this behavior? 

What feedback should you be giving? 

How do you mitigate the damage someone like this can inflict?
How do you differentiate between someone just being awkward or downright toxic?

And there is a clear difference between the two because the toxic individual is likely to be spreading that negativity around the team and organisation as “There’s a pattern of de-energizing, frustrating or putting down teammates,” says Christine Porath, author of Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace. 

Hopefully you can spot someone with a toxic attitude before you hire them but attitudes can change and for lots of reasons they might have recently become a nuisance, started rejecting good ideas, putting down bad ones, generally pushing back against everything and everyone.

You might have inherited them when taking on the job and their attitude has been entrenched within the team dynamic for some time. 

The nuclear option is of course to fire them and rid yourself of the problem as soon as possible. Some people just can’t be changed.

Whilst the firing option might be superficially attractive you clearly need to explore more positive responses both in terms of the individual involved but also what signals your response will be giving other members of the team. 

Here are some steps you might want to consider when handling the negative team member

It’s Your Job To Find Out More

You need to take a closer look at the behavior and try to understand what might be causing it.

What is the source of their unhappiness?

Nobody wants to spend their days at work being miserable and it’s your job as their manager to show sufficient empathy and understanding about what else might be impacting them at work.

Struggles outside of work?
Frustrated with colleagues or with a lack of opportunity?

Can you meet with them privately and explore the real issues behind the negativity? Can you offer them coaching or even counselling, if the issues are more deep seated.

Manage people with compassion and you will generally get to the bottom of the issue and you could turn a toxic colleague into a deeply loyal one.

Double Check It’s Not You

You need to check your own biases first and understand if your managerial style and decision making is playing any role in their behaviour, particularly if their behaviour has changed whilst working with you and your team.
Could you be the cause of their discontent?

“A lot of times people will say someone’s negative, but my first question is, “So what does that mean?” – Stacey Gordon, Career Coach at The Muse, “It could be that they’re behaving in a certain way that you may not approve of, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re a destructive or bad employee. It just means that you haven’t properly defined standards with your team”

You also need to reflect on how you react to their behaviour and that you’re not making a bad problem worse. 

We’ve all been there as managers as a combination of exasperation and stress leads to us becoming negative in response.  

Time For Some Constructive Criticism?

Often they might be unaware of their impact on others or even the negative bubble they’ve got themselves into, particularly if the source of their troubles are external.

Delivering feedback is always challenging, particularly with difficult team members, so make sure it’s very specific about the issues that concern you.

You need to be able to deliver direct and honest feedback, within the framework of trying to help them, as well as you and your colleagues.

Situations like this are why it’s crucial to build a culture of trust and communication within your team, where critical conversations are handled skillfully and can take place without making a bad situation worse.

Don’t go hard with the negative, try to address this from a personal development perspective of understanding any issues and creating a measurable and clearly defined plan for them to engage again. 

Talk Them Through The Impact

Obviously there can be situations where they are totally unresponsive to any gestures of empathy and constructive feedback.

You might need to alert them to what they could lose if this behaviour continues, this is not just about the immediate impact on their state of mind and team culture, but short term misbehaviour can have long term consequences and it’s the potential losses that sometimes stimulate changes in behaviour.

What really matters to them now, or in the past?
What could they be losing if they continue like this?

Regularly Check-In

If you can move forward positively then it’s important to maintain open channels of communication and for this not to be a one-off, short term fire fighting exercise.

It’s a huge drain on your time and distraction for the team to deal with these situations so you need to be clear about an ongoing programme of support that includes regular check-ins and time set aside to measure progress.

Where Necessary, Take Action

Alas there are limits to what you can offer and how much you can spend trying to manage this individual into a more positive space and not everyone will be capable or willing to change.

Research indicates that a small minority of people actually enjoy the power and disruption this kind of behaviour can bring.

If you have tried to help but they’re unwilling to change, act swiftly because every day their toxicity leaks into the team, is a day of diminished harmony, performance and potential loss of your star performers.

Who wants to spend their working day with Mr Grumpy?

Prepare For The Worst, Record Everything

If you do act swiftly and in particular if you decide to fire this individual, make sure you have recorded everything.

Most employment tribunal cases here in the UK are not lost because of the managerial decision made by the company, they are lost because the managers failed to follow the correct process.

If the relationship has moved into awkward mode then you need to be documenting clearly what has taken place and what steps you took to help.

You need to understand clearly your firing procedure and the employment legislation in your jurisdiction, to ensure you follow the correct process. This should be mapped out in a company manual and if not, add it now.

You need to establish a pattern of behaviour, the steps you too to address it and a detailed note of meetings, conversations, formal complaints that took place with this individual.

Protect yourself and your company against the risk of future litigation.

Start To Remove The Toxicity

In the meantime if they fail to change but have to remain, try to create space between them and the rest of your team. People having to work closely with a toxic team member are more likely to develop negative working habits also, either because of it or as a defensive mechanism against it.

You might need to create physical space or re-allocate them to different projects.

With the current WFH situations, it’s physically easier to create that space and reduce the number of clashes between this individual and team members, minimising the cognitive loss as a result.

Potentially other team members require help and coaching in how they can manage this individual, you certainly don’t want them getting a sense your time is being overly absorbed with managing the negativity.

Don’t Let Them Pull You In

Which leads me to conclude with the simple point that you have to manage yourself and your own time through these situations.

It’s very easy to be drawn into their negative orbit and be distracted from what else matters and your own peace of mind.

I return back to that moment on stage when you spot the individual with folded arms, focus instead on the vast majority of the audience who are wildly applauding and supportive.

Surround yourself with positive people, energy and situations that give you a positive charge – exercise, great food, good sleep. Staying healthy and proactive is crucial for your state of mind and you never know, might inspire that toxic colleague to step up or step out.

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