thoughts around hiring senior & staff engineers w/ dir of eng, harry wolff

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Anyways, let's get to people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go there. Hello. Good morning, afternoon, evening, wherever you are. My name is Harry Wolf. I am a director of engineering of the Identity and Access Management Teams at MongoDB, working on our MongoDB Atlas product. I'll have been there for eight years in October. But who's crazy? Just my who's counting. In a past life, I did YouTube videos for fun and not for profit because I didn't know that. I made YouTube videos. You do know that. That's awesome. No, I did not know that. I have 26,000 subscribers. Are you serious?

Oh, yeah. I didn't go check that out. Yeah. Deb goes, we miss your YouTube, Harry. There you go. You I miss having more free time. Reach that. Yeah, no. Two things happen to stop YouTube. One, I had two children, which require a lot of love and focus to have them grow. And then two, I became a manager. And my historical YouTube content was all about UI engineering, React, JavaScript, all those things, which I don't do daily, Right. Weekly, monthly or yearly anymore. So I tried making up you manager videos and that was not the original audience. Every time I did, they were like, where's the code?

I was like, the code is you. And they. Oh, I put that on a shirt. Yeah, right. Real transcendental. Mm hmm. Yo, Chris. Chris, good to see you. Yeah. That's where I've been. You're obviously getting the soccer with kids. Yep, I'm living the suburban dream. I love it. We love to see it. We love to see it. My six-year-old starting soccer, and I had been drafted to be the lucky coach of a rad tag team of first graders, which I did a Nerch Knight research experiment to see the best whistle to buy. So I follow, I listen, I literally follow a Premier League referee and he literally goes over all of his whistles and I was fucking fascinated.

So the Fox 40 classical is being delivered today and I am so excited. You should go live just for you to test it as loud as you can on this live. I have to see where it is. I have to trick my Amazon delivery side. It was supposed to become yesterday, but then delays because the suburbs... It's such dad life though, if you think about it. Because we're like, yeah, we're getting a whistle for our kids' soccer. It's just like, how life has changed. What's really depressing is that shipment deliveries have gotten diminishing returns of like endorphin hits. We're like, I'm going to get a pack.

I'm like, grateful like two days. Now it's like 10 minutes. And now you're like sad. I'm, yeah, it's, I mean, the whistle was what? Six dollars. So I'll take that trade for. Yeah, all day. But, yeah, I know I'm very, I'm more excited than I should be. That's where that would be. 100% I feel that, I feel that. All right, so for those of you two, and you're probably like, are we ever gonna get to the actual meat, the actual fish? The fish will, while you work. Exactly, there we go. You are just full of it today. All right, so let's dive in. That's right, so again, got backstage, talked with Harry, like kind of if he's done some hiring.

A lot of my content right now, I want to help everybody as much as I feasibly can. And I told Harry, so I don't think there's really anybody out there bringing on hiring managers like I do, live where you can ask questions. And so Harry and I got to chat about what he's been up to. And he says he's been hiring a lot of senior and staff, global engineers. And so Harry, I want to dive in, man. Obviously, I think there is a nuanced approach, obviously, my hiring experience as well. There's a nuance approach, hiring staff and senior level folks. Typically at that point of your career, everybody knows what they're doing potentially.

Let's just dive in, some initial thoughts. I guess what's your best piece of advice for folks, hiring managers, if they want to embark on hiring senior and staff level engineers? For other hiring managers. Yeah, just to kind of kick off the conversation. get as clear as possible with what you want from the role. I think that should be in general, by the way, but definitely for this. And like clarity on desires and where I'm a big fan of the culture ad not fit. So like how you think you can add to the culture? I like that. But don't let that be static either. Like I think when you start a search, you'll have some idea and then through conversations and iterations you'll have greater clarity on those things.

I'm a big group collaborator where I definitely partner with peers and my team to make sure that we're all aligned with what our expectations and desires are. But having clarity makes everything easier because then you have a baseline upon which you can make plans and then to evaluate candidates coming in and to set expectations for those doing YouTube. Why do you think that's so hard like because again in my high helping folks like you hire go out and find senior staff. I'd say that's one of the biggest issues I've consistently seen throughout my career. What do you look for in a life partner? That's fair.

So yeah, I mean, the easy parallel to hiring is dating and finding your significant other. It's so true. I got to people all the time to interview and, and, and dating is like this. It's speed dating, but worse because you have to juggle while you talk, which is like showing that you can do the job. Correct. Yeah, you don't really like that. It's just hard because sometimes, you know, like, there's many ways when a tar one is that putting, making explicit an idea is a hard process. Like, you know, I'll know it when I see it. Isn't enough to tell your story. Correct. But I feel like that's really excellent.

Every higher man's like, I'll know when I see it and then like we're cruising over here slaving away, sending 50 resumes. We're like, boss, we're tired. Right. We think harder. Like, you know, when is the, what was the metaphor, but, but yeah, you have to have clarity around what you're looking for for everyone. And it's fair to not know how to put into words at the start, but you can't be there because, yeah, to your point, it makes everyone's lies harder, more confusing. It causes thrash and churn. And you know, it's just having a movable target does no one any favors. I want to get to Roberts.

Yeah, 30 different tools. So my take on this is traditionally HR has to write job descriptions. And so they don't really know anything or recruiters like myself. I don't know anything and they just do a bunch because they do this robber because they want to get in many hits on the internet like to open up right and that's again like it's it's incredibly frustrating. Frustrating there too is like historically at people to not believe everything you read in the job description. I would believe 25% yeah I mean it's hard because that's not consistent across companies like they're a company that's very explicit and very, you know, to the line of what they want.

Like you. Hopefully, yes, hopefully you may, but like if they say like five plus years, they want five plus years, not like three in a wink. But like if someone's like, we require 12 plus years of react experience when it's only existing for less than that, it's like that's not, you know, ignore it. Like, correct. Yeah. The point is sometimes to your, to your betterment. Yeah, typically what I say is, is, I think the general that I say is, do you think is kind of super high level? So like I would look at seniority roles. Like if you're junior, don't be going to apply for an architect staff level role.

If you're going from like junior to mid-sure, also to look at general skill sets and see if there's kind of a consistent theme. In terms of is it more of a back and heavy roles at more front and heavy? But that's just kind of my thoughts there. So let me end in depth. That's funny to you. I don't know what shit about that. Not many people do, let's just be honest. I'm just wondering. Is there a specific formula that you've developed, like kind of your own formula, I guess you could say when it comes to writing job descriptions or coming up with what you need for a senior staff level role at this point?

Yeah. I think there's a, I mean, I look at all roles and two lenses. One is the technical requirements for the role and the one is the non- requirements for which other people call soft skills, which is a soft statement, which is why I don't call it soft skills. But it's trying to provide the outline of the expectations for the role, things that are hard requirements and things that are strongly desired. So, I was going to say, digital wife needs you. I like it, hit the ping. No, we're just talking about school fixtures. I love it. We're ordering digital images instead of. There you go.

I love it. I love it. Just say yes, just we're all them. I don't care. Do whatever you want. Is that so you? Yes, we have a code now where like if I don't reply is because I am busy. It's not for nature. Yeah. Love or any words that you know, life takes you different areas. All right. So, so, so say all that for a more. So just like a criteria rubric something you put it. Yeah. I mean, you look at like MongoDB job listings. We have a template we mostly follow. we look at for role responsibilities and job expectations, I think or something like that.

But what is the role doing? What is the things you have to actually be doing in that role? So if like who you are and what you'll do, I think it's the division there. And it's a very hard balance of not being overly prescriptive without being clear because having every nuance to find from a hiring manager's perspective, reduces our opportunity of who to actually reach out to because we're like, you know, we want you to have, you know, first name has that delivered each in it, which is like not gonna help anybody, but you wanna make sure that you're not having somebody that you're hiring for a backend role and someone with a front-to-net skill set, a pledge that you wanna actually, you're clear on those, make sure you just have, you know, some fun-ling to get things to success.

But, forgot the question. No, I just was saying like a root like do you have your own secret sauce you were talking about two buckets before that the pain started to go off Like you know every role has technical requirements and not technical requirements So like yes, the requirement is like having react experience for five plus years understanding distributed back as systems for five plus years And you have the non-technical which is like an independent curious thinker able to ideate designs and write architecture documents independently and successfully collaborate across team pairs. Like both those things make up the desired candidate to hire, but they're both equally important in just different parts of like what you do on a data-to-data basis.

That makes sense. When it comes to actually interviewing folks, like how do you guys, how are your interviews set up at Mongo? You don't have to give me everything, but like how many rounds, How do you guys have things grouped? You guys have a rubric that you guys use to test things out, talking about that. Yeah, great question. So we have a interview panel that we put together for each candidate just kind of outlines the entire sequencing of interviewing from beginning to end, trying to write in word the expectations for every interviewer, every interviewer what they're supposed to do. having also the questions that were being asked, I try to delegate those out because it is impossible for me to get every nuance there from my day to day job.

Like if we're trying to find some job specific question, having the interviewers that are owning that question then go off and do that and then we'll come and review it together. But like, so also a big thing with our interviews is we try to be pragmatic with the questions we ask or they don't want you to figure out how to, make a distributed, like some lead code question that you're not gonna use on the day to day, like we are very much not because that's not the, it's evaluating memorization, not really application of things. So like, you like doing questions that more lean into what you do day to day, doing exercises, like, you know, pair programming with us to have us, you know, talk through your mental process of solving the problem, how you think, how you collaborate, how you talk, because that's what you do, day to day.

Yeah, yeah, continuously. Yeah, a typical format is we have a whole in-house recruiting team that does a whole screen. And then they're collaborating with me to see if what their notes are and the resume, natural we're looking for, that is the most lossy of all stages because there's the least amount of known there. But also, I do want to try to accelerate that process is try to give some seed questions to the recruiter to ask, things that are common to myself, that I would ask no matter what. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm a big believer in pragmatic questions by far. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

So recruiter, sorry, I'm gonna start, recruiter you, and you're also trying to get that feedback even better with some questions. Yeah, come here, Dan. It's a good rule, right? So yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just, I'm just gonna. Hello. So yeah, so the top of the funnel recruiters, the most glossy in terms of like, yeah, yeah, I already have match. And I clap it with a recruiter there, taking those calls. If we pass the muster there, it goes on to a phone screen. We've actually like iterated on figure out the best format for that we've gone from like, like three different like parts of the interview, to then focusing on just one part figure out which, you know, that's the best signal.

Yeah, please don't. It's like what is happening YMCA. And train of thoughts are great. So the film screen, a constant desire internally is always to have them be longer than an hour, which isn't the thing that's fair if anybody is, we never do that, but it's always a struggle of just getting more signal to figure out who has the most success before being brought to an on site. So let me ask you this, with your phone interview, do you guys, I'm a big believer right now that I think you should be selling the opportunity right now to the candidate, you know, doing talking about the position.

I know that's not always feasible. How do you guys structure an hour of phone interview? So I tell my team, this is an internal thing I'll say out loud, to just be rude and blame the clock because an hour is such an hour is short amount of time. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. It is. I think we've had a few iterations with a phone screen from kind of having a mini representation of the onsite where it's like a technical question, a system design question, and maybe like a pair of programming question.

That worked, I think, for like the SE software and like a non-senior role and sometimes for a second. They worked for senior and non-senior, for staff that became very much apparent that was not the right thing to do. So we had a rear from there and then we always leave time at the end for questions for us at least 10 minutes, no less than that frankly. To be clear, whenever I ask do you have questions for me, I write down the questions that you asked me because that is part of the interview and seeing the curiosity and interest that you have, whether real or fake, hopefully real, is a facet.

It's not the pre to try something the dominant factor in terms of like, right? Oh, but it's definitely a factor in terms of like looking at the person postively. 100% 100%. John, what's your question here in a second after we because Harry and I can't finish our train of thoughts worth anything. So phone screen. And then what? We are now on like was This is going to be an on-site panel, which I think is between... So we have one technical programming slot just to make sure you can do programming, whether whatever language it is, whatever we... Okay, so it's like live here for a programming type situation.

We have a prompt that's hopefully pragmatic. Okay. Yeah. So it's not like, do this leak code question number two. It's like... Yeah. Okay. You're selling a shopping card experience. Like how do you make the most silver? Like how do you run a code like the credit card? Yeah. So like how would you code that? So just having the smallest size to just see anything through. Like if you were given a Jira ticket to this work, just do it together with us. It's like the idea. Makes sense. Yeah, yeah. So that's one hour. We have another hour of like systems design Whereas like, how, like, this is not the example we use to horrible example to even use that as an example, but like, how would you design like one part of Stripe?

As like, might go to an example just to not have you. So it's like, how would you implement, yeah, I don't know, like credit card processing is such a horrible example. I mean, I own identity and access management. It's like walk us through a login process. Like how would you design that, whether things need to understand. There's more details on that. Every interview is intended to be interactive. Like we're not trying to kind of hand you a formula that you have to independently implement. It's, you know, you're at the data ticket. Like let's work together. Cause I think I'm the big believer that that interactivity is a part of the interview because if you were to join the team, we'd be working together.

So how do we work together? Do we work together? and actually be giving you signal as well if you enjoy the interactions. Yeah, absolutely. And then final rounds. Then after that, sometimes we have a third technical, like pairing programming interview as well. Go ahead. I forget where we are with that right there. But after that, then it goes to the high manager interview. And that's me. Yeah. Which I'm hyper focused on your interpersonal skills. How are you as a teammate? how are you in collaboration with other partners? And it's really the goal is like, let's just understand each other best as possible. Like how give me an example of a time you worked across team.

Like what were the hardships, what the success is? Like how did you work through the problems? Like how did you create a relationship out of thin air? Like how did you do it? And a big part of this is like, maybe your method works for you. Maybe that's the method I want for, isn't fit for our company, that's fine. To your point, there needs to be a matchmaking process like speed dating. We wanna make sure that each side is happy with that results. So then I have my hour interview and then sometimes not always we have a skip exec interview, which is my boss, just kind of just say hello, hi, how you doing?

We're human, you're human, great human. And then we kind of go from there. And we kind of have a very cool. So two month interview process? Sorry? Eight week interview process, would you say? How long does the whole thing happen? Yeah. Less than a week. You get through all those steps in a week? Yeah. No way. So the recruiters, and that's a thing that I think is an advantage to MongoDB. I get to shout out to the recruiting team. Yeah, so like from the time of the recruiting team. I am. A week? A week? Maybe two weeks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's, yeah. Yeah, you call my bluff here.

I'm just trying to make this look real good. I mean. I mean, I think the whole week is, a week definitely happens. I don't know if it's the time. If you don't have a job and you're actively looking, you should be, yeah, your availability should be, I can do an auto if I need to. And also, we prioritize internally as well to make that happen because we're just asking you guys, well, we have things to do. We need people to do. I know. So like, I'm pretty sure when I did that Mongo 80 years ago from start to finish was a week. And my favorite part was like I got refered.

I was working at a company with a friend. They left and then they were a tonne to recruit Mango. Like you know anybody, he's like this Harry guy, but he just started there. I don't know if he wants to leave. I was, was like a good fit for me there to reach out. And then like then it'll be just like about a thing about a boom. And yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if this has been asked yet. What's the best way to get a job at Mango DB? I'm gonna spin this a little bit here. How do you like to best be approached from a networking perspective to get their name in the door to MongoDB?

Because I think that's what John's trying to ask. I think that's what John's trying to ask. Like realistically John's like, hey, I'm trying to holler at you so you can get me in the back door. How does that happen? Yeah, I'm pretty tight laced with that. I'll be honest. I don't know. You just got to send a recruiting. Yeah, I'm not really gonna link to it. I am very fortunate that I don't have to do outreach here. So we have an entire... Well, it's because you come on my show. I do get all the pants on my show. You're a multiplier effect here. But the recruiting team is very proactive, reaching out on John applications.

So like, you know, Cole, Cole Call me is not the right way because I just don't reply at all. I just, that is not part of my job expectations, frankly. So if you have referrals, like a friend of a friend of a friend, I'll take that. Like if there is a a Nicholas what is it? What's his name? Nicholas Cage? No, no, the other one. I was going to say Nicholas Cage was not the bacon. Yeah, there's some kind of bacon indirect connection to me. I will take that as like an indirect like, you know, there's the case of each hop in the network, but that also I'll take some credence to, but as far as cold, regional to me, that's just just applied to the job is the best approach for.

That makes sense. That makes sense. Brian, it's good to see you, man. Really, really good to see you. All right. So as you wrap up here, I have a 10 o'clock. I have to get to 10 central. Harry, we need to do this again. This was a blast. I want to, honestly, there's a bunch of questions we didn't even get to. So all that being said, let me kind of ask you some rapid fire questions. This is a question I just recently added. What did you want to be in grade school for your job when you grew up? And do you think you'd be good at it now?

Man, I had no ideas about it when I was a kid. I started programming when I was 13 for fun. I made a website for my middle school that this was in the 90s. And they were like, ah, scary website. And then maybe take it down. And everybody talking to you about the principal. They were like, you can't know what's going on. I just wanted to be a nerd from the gig though. I was a nerd from the gig. So I don't know if I ever, especially wanted to be a programmer. Like I just, what happened is like I had a lot of sports, I did a lot of video games, I did a lot of coding on the computer.

Like I enjoyed all those things. I went to college and they were like, what do you want to do? Like I never had like a idea of what I wanted to be. And then they were like, what do you want to do? And I was like, I guess I can program. I hear it pays okay. And I just went that way. And then what's funny is that before a job, I didn't really enjoy school, I'll be honest, like 8 a.m. to go be talked at long, quiet for an hour, was not my idea of fun. Then I got my first job and I was like, I'll look up at 7 a.m.

This is amazing, you're paying me, like best day of my life. And then I am a competitive person within a confined, so I just always improve myself. That's kind of driven me forward to where I am today. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I really never had like, I wanna be a firefighter, whatever, I just was just living life. I love it. I love it. Any cool text trends, things, frameworks that you're tinkering with on the side that you're pretty stoked about, or even maybe your team internally? I recently taught myself Go, which has been a long time. Nice. And I used a cult pilot to help me learn Go.

Yeah, okay. I'm not a huge person in AI, I'll be honest, like I think it's overshaded, overblown, and I might just be, I feel like a commotion with it because I think people are really hyped on it and I'm just kind of like, I don't get it yet, but also like how I approach crypto and I feel vindicated. So like, you know, a little bit of a slow adopter there as far as like hype goes, but using it as a on-demand tutor was incredible where I was wondering how do I know if this is a file or a directory and then I asked, I have a new BS code and it looked at my code and I said, Yeah, I can be a developer now with CoPilot.

It was, but like, you know, CoPilot is a V8 engine where you might have been asked before. But you still have to know how to steer. Sure. Yeah, I don't know how to steer. But like, you have to know how to steer and like, you know how to steer that you can kind of be used. Like, nobody goes out into like the fields with like a hoe to like get the, you know, crop harvested they use like a big John Deere machine, right? That's the thing that I see with AI here. It's like it is a tool to accelerate the job, but it can make sense.

Yes, 100%. So like using it to do language was like amazing because it was a contextualized on demand, fast tutor to help me understand grow. And that was a very fun experience. I love that. I love that. Dan, it's good to see you. Dan's coming on. He and I work together at Beiko. He's coming on Wednesday to the show. Talking about the state of the market right now. It's gonna be a lot of fun. It's gonna see it, buddy. Last question. The show's called Guidance Councilor 2.0 for a reason. at Guidance Councils of Middle School High School and called my goal is basically to be the new Guidance Council for people.

What would you say if you went back in time to nerd Harry early in his career and won't be your biggest piece of career advice to him? Oh, that's a great question. Oh, man. I think my biggest piece of advice that they made my life easier was to get an internship when I was in college. because yeah, you're muted. Yeah, because I did not know that was a thing. That was not a thing that my family did. Yeah, yeah. And then I see we have a whole very robust new grant program, like interns to new grads that take from colleges and we, you know, it's an offer to, you know, great collaborators there to become employees, new grads at the company.

And you know, it just seems such an awesome opportunity to spend your summer rather than just trying to not. get killed like a curfew or something. 100%. Yes. Yeah. Internship, I think more. Internship and things like it, having like more disciplined coding, collaboration opportunities, especially when if you can work for free. I think I don't think we do a paid internship, I think here, which is awesome. But yeah, anything that you have more direct mentorship with somebody to kind of have that craft be owned because I always find it funny when you have some Zoom call with somebody and like you do something right in your terminal, they're like, what?

And it's like, yeah, just because like you just see this one thing, the master craftsman's hands can just show you years of experience that might otherwise have been hidden if you hadn't just worked together. Exactly, I love that, I love that. Well, y'all thank you again for hanging out with us today. I appreciate it, Harry, I appreciate it. You stay on real quick, so I can about you backstage. For those of you, Tin Man Network, shoot to shoot Harry DM. It will not help you get into MongoDB, but please obviously shoot him at DM and network with him. We'll try to get you on the show here very, very soon.

Y'all have a good one. Tomorrow I am off, no guys, it's got your 2.0 tomorrow, but we are back Wednesday and Thursday and then back off on Friday. So y'all have a good one. Harry, come back to YouTube. We love y'all, y'all have a good one. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode and I am very grateful, because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes. And I myself rarely finished an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the App Store. I want this to be discoverable to others.

And the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it, please, like right now, unless you're driving, then don't do it. So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me at Tdastin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.