I believe the point of the question was to see if I had heard of him, not necessarily if I agree or read his blog.
The question asked said "#startups" so I assumed it was referring to hiring founders or founding employees (your first employees). Founding employees should have similar qualities as the founders. They could very well have started their own company if they didn't come join your startup.
Gah, seems I missed one of the most load bearing words in the title!
That being said, I’ve worked with, and hired folks who had startups that fizzled out and they didn’t seem to feel that they were at a disadvantage. As a hiring manager now, I’d certainly view any founder experience positively (although I’m admittedly biased).
I don't think this poll is targeted at those cases at all. Being a founder is a vastly different situation and risk-profile than even hired Engineer #1
I was however confused by "I also needed a recruiter who was smart enough not to poach a founder".
Was he saying this just because founders in SV are not a good fit to Meebo? Or are they bad employees? Or that it is considered bad to poach to hire a founder?
Personally yes, same for my co-founder. However, the employee under discussion had only just started.
(and a quick reminder here that we're not discussing the employee's passion for the startup--which everyone would agree was low--not his "goodness" as a human being or as a developer.)
I don't think that was the point of the article. I read it rather as pointing out that posing as a founder when actually just buying equity is not ok. The key difference is personal engagement ('I asked two questions. The first was “is he going to be full time with the company” and the other was “do you want him as a third full time partner.” The answer was no and no.'.)
I'd like to pick on the point that Founders and Engineers are as guilty as Recruiters in terms of sending boiler plate messages.Recruiter: 53%, Founder: 49%, Engineer: 47%.
A recruiter's _only_ job is to recruit talented people. A founder/engineer has other things to do. Yes they should be spending a significant portion of their time recruiting. How realistic is that expectation though?
Also, how do the %s above add to 100 unless there is a significant overlap between Engineers and Founders?
Note that recruiters, founders, and hiring managers can have similar biases though.
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