mast year: A mast year for oak trees is a periodic event, typically occurring every 2-5 years, when the trees produce an exceptionally large crop of acorns.
I have just completed a rather intense hiring cycle in my role as an Engineering Manager here at 1Password; hiring 2 Staff Engineers and 2 Senior Engineers in a 4 month period. As I was wrapping up the final Senior Engineer process and was waiting for final confirmation of a signed offer letter, I continued some already scheduled interviews and an event that I dreaded happened. I interviewed another great candidate and I couldn’t hire them. I do not regret any of the previous hires, but I knew that this person had the possibility of also being great for our team.
The worst part of hiring is knowing that you have to tell great candidates “no” not because they aren’t a great fit, but because you just don’t need them for your team.
Our hiring plan includes adding 2 Intermediate Engineers to our team as well and that process had not started. My initial reaction to having another great Senior candidate was to see if I could re-jigger one of those Intermediate roles to be a Senior. But I realized upon thinking that that was a mistake, that our original plan was good and I needed to stick with it.
My mindset for hiring was set from a different time at different companies. I have been hiring engineers throughout my career and generally for smaller, less well known companies than 1Password. It was always a struggle to find enough good candidates to fill the roles we had. So, if we had been looking for 1 great engineer and 2 walked in the door, we would have been stupid to not hire both of them if it was at all possible.
Hiring at 1Password and in today’s employment climate is totally different. There are an abundance of great candidates. When we advertise an open role, within a week we have in excess of 500 applicants. 50% are apam, but even so, in these 4 roles I have hired, we have found amazing hires without even making it through the whole pool of people. The combination of the tight hiring market and 1Password’s name recognition results in us having our pick of great people. This has confounded my instincts.
I am having to shift my thinking to realize that I am not hiring during a time of scarcity. It pains me knowing that I am turning away great people but I can’t hire them all. The dark side I must avoid is to not value the team that I already have less knowing that there are more acorns out there.