Let's make this hit LinkedIn somehow, along with the "why we hate recruiters" submission :p

There is no universal "best" anything. It's all subjective situational evaluation.

reminds me of the obnoxious Ramp ad about how they only hire the best engineers with a very low hire rate

I wonder if they considered that they simply hired people who are just really good at interviewing, and not necessarily actually the best engineers?

I mean, you don’t hire the best engineers by just blasting off a LinkedIn ad. Or by cold-emailing them. You hire them by already being their friend and offering a massive chunk of cash and equity to work on an interesting project, plus a variety of other concessions, as needed.

The best companies don’t generally do this, because it doesn’t scale. You can scale “find strong talent that hasn’t had its big moment yet, and teach them the trade” a little bit farther.

The whole tech recruiting and hiring process is bonkers. But in terms of "finding a candidate":

1) there's no way to know if somebody is skilled, since the industry don't require degrees, titles are absolute bullshit, and "years of experience" is frequently "spent 3 yrs maintaining other people's code and manually running deploys". the interview and take-homes are a bad pantomime. it's mostly vibes.

2) nobody asks the candidates what they want ahead of the interview. I'll gladly tell you what my ideal job would be, ideal culture, day to day requirements, etc. If 90% of those seem to match a trend... maybe change your company to match the trend? Then you get 90% of the hires.

3) on compensation, know what you're offering and go after people looking for that. A) terrible job, amazing pay, B) decent pay, decent job, C) terrible pay, amazing job. A) is golden handcuffs. B) people bail on you whenever a better gig shows up (or retain terrible/lazy ppl). C) is you've got a hire for life. which do you wanna be?

You don't want to hire the worst engineers either.

This guy will have trouble hiring best engineers

To quibble on a point the “best” egineers don’t have a lifestyle that most people would consider work life balance right? For them engineering is life. (Mild exaggeration)

Another aspect of this that bothers me is starting off the employer/employee relationship with a bald-faced lie.

I'm not a stickler for rigorous honesty in what is essentially marketing materials -- sure, present your strengths, not your weaknesses; fine, be aspirational. But to start right off with something you know isn't anywhere close to the truth sets a pretty bad direction.

Probably the best case is that people -- some of whom will become your employees -- realize it's BS and learn not to take what you say at face value in the future.

I haven't read an article this on-point in a long time. As someone comfortably working remotely at BIGTECH it's actually really frustrating.

OK you have a 60% pay cut and forced relocation back to the Bay Area. Let's jump right into the conversation about how you're going to make up for that to attract talent. Don't tell me it's a virtue because I'm not stupid and you're not stupid.