We are hiring another engineer or two and I suck at hiring. Or, as I would say to someone in my situation who isn't me, hiring is hard, even people who are world class at hiring say so, and we haven't done much of it yet.
In our attempt to hire, SN conducted what I've called The Trial, taking on five engineers for a month long contract hoping to hire one of them. We could've copied the traditional technical interview process, which is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of the way reputable technology companies have hired for a long time. The Trial attempted to reduce the bloodletting of modern technical hiring.
The Trial ended in February and we didn't hire anyone as a result of it. Trial member (A) had a family emergency and dropped out, (B) had trouble finding time to contribute, and (C) took a job at another bitcoin company before the trial ended. Of the remaining trial members, (D) didn't produce enough to qualify for an offer and (E), after receiving our offer, took a job at another bitcoin company. It cost us ~$20k. All trial members but (A) did real work that lives on the site today, and all motivated improvements to our open source contributor incentives and DX.
The trial intended to produce a hire, but the result is mostly present as an improvement to the trial process itself. Open source contributors to SN, whether looking to get hired or not, no longer need permission to participate and get paid. We've also tried to make it really easy to begin contributing with custom tooling. The trial reminded us to use our unique advantages - incentives games, global money, transparent development - and supplied a repetition of solving the problems created by our shortcomings.
medium-hard
s first. I don't really care too much about someone's CV with respect to hiring. It's nice to learn more about them, but code speaks louder than words.