Recently I read an article about how Stripe built one of the best engineering teams. I have used their products and I have to admit that it’s just well built. Clean, precise and easy to use. Love their documentation too. When i came across this article I wanted to know how they built their team.

What stood out for me was the section about “The Sunday Test”.

The Sunday Test

While other sections about treating recruiting as marketing, valuing rejection experiences, and leveraging existing engineers for talent sourcing were valuable, The Sunday Test was different.

If this person were alone in the office on a Sunday, would that make you more likely to come in and want to work with them? If the answer is not a clear yes, then don’t make the hire.

This is brilliant!

Reflect on those times you sacrificed weekends or worked late nights to meet deadlines. What memories do they evoke? Are they stories you’d share fondly, or tales of exhaustion? The best work stories revolve around the joy of creation, where time becomes irrelevant. The memories evokes endorphins and that incredible feeling of accomplishment.

The worst ones? Tales of misery endured for the sake of a paycheck.

The Sunday Test just summarized all of that. I’m adding that into my hiring-rulebook!

This seems like the ideal time to share my assessment process. Post technical evaluation, I categorize candidates into specific buckets.

My hiring rubric

This is not something that I came up with. I borrowed this from an acquaintence. You can find other variations of this on the internet. But this is what I have adapted for my hiring process.

Ideally, any candidate I hire fits into at least 2 of these 3 categories:

Hacker

Is the person a hacker?

Is this person a knowledge powerhouse? Do they possess near-encyclopedic understanding of the topic at hand, be it a language, framework, or technology? Are they so skilled that their experience surpasses most?

That is the Hacker!

Hustler

Is the person a hustler?

Is this person driven? Do they overcome knowledge gaps with determination? Will they utilize every resource available to achieve their goals? They refuse to be hindered by limitations.

That is the Huslter!

Artist

Is the person an artist?

Does this person infuse creativity into their work? Do they produce elegant designs, self-documenting code, and clear solutions? They take pride in their craft and readily share it.

That is the Artist!

What you need in a candidate is a comnbination of any two of the above 3 skills.

  • Hacker + Hustler
  • Hustler + Artist
  • Artist + Hacker

Someone with all 3 skills, awesome!

However, someone fulfilling only one skill is undesirable. Why?

Now I layer The Sunday Test on top. If they pass the hacker-artist-hustler rating, then do they pass The Sunday Test?

./J