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.
Between my years in corporate management and running my own business I have interviewed many hundreds of people. Hiring is hard enough in a non technical arena, I can only imagine the difficulty of it in a highly technical role.
I commend you for trying things. Sorry it didn't work out but better to find out those 5 were not fits than finding out 6 months from now after they have produced poor work or been a bad culture fit.
You have to wear many hats (unfortunately not just cowboy hats) when you steward the ship and hiring the correct deckhands is a huge part of that. Don't be discouraged by this failed attempt.
I had a managerial role at a previous academic stop and had to do a lot of student worker hiring, as well some non-students.
I agree that it's largely a crap shoot and when it goes wrong it's not often for reasons you could have inferred from the hiring process.
reply
50 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 30 Mar
Thanks for the encouragement! I'm disappointed my first idea wasn't fruitful but I'm not discouraged. It's just another obstacle on the obstacle course.
reply
Indeed and maybe it leads to a better path with open source contributions.
Sadly, I think most of us who have a lot of time on our hands are technically inept and cannot help SN in that way but maybe as the site and business grows we will be able to assist in other ways in the future.
reply