Great Programmers Or Great People?
Tom Evslin has some great points to make about great programmers vs. good programmers, and in my experience, he is spot on. However, he restricts his discussion to programmers, and the reality is that his description of "good" vs. "great" applies to every employee in your company.Hire a merely good secretary (personal / executive assistant), and they'll do a good job of answering the phone. Hire a great one, and everyone who walks near your office will have a cup of coffee (or water), your meetings will be arranged in order of significance, your kids will be picked up and dropped off when you get over run with meetings, and the list goes on.
Hire a merely good marketer and you're probably in trouble. A lot of trouble. They'll do some quick ad-copy, get your approval, post it on a few sites, and blow through your money. If you had hired great marketer instead, you'd have in-depth ad-copy, you'll have a quick study group (ideally with some existing customers), you'll have a measurable advertising / marketing campaign, and within hours the marketer will be back at work optimizing the advertisements.
There are a lot of companies / individuals out there who claim they only hire the top 5%, or the 99th percentile. I can't claim to have done that. I probably can't claim to have always hired the top 5% of the people who applied for the job. However, I can say, that if you aren't a top performer, and I find out that you're not a top performer or not great at your job, you won't be working for me, or any of my clients, very long.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home