Align your team to avoid expensive hiring mistakes.
A practical, expert-reviewed Guide to growing software engineering teams effectively, written by and for hiring managers, recruiters, interviewers, and candidates.
- 440-page online book
- 837+links and references
- Digital access to this title in the Holloway Reader
- Downloadable PDF for personal offline use
Everyone should have access to expert knowledge.
Hiring software engineering talent is a struggle for most companies. The ever-growing demand for software in almost every business leads to extensive searches for the right candidates. Hiring is rated as one of the biggest obstacles to growth by most CEOs. Hiring managers, recruiters, and interviewers all wrestle with how to source candidates, interview fairly and effectively, and ultimately motivate the right candidates to accept offers. The whole process is often costly and frustrating for companies, and all too often stressful or unfair to candidates navigating this high-stakes process.
Anyone who cares about building effective software teams should benefit from the experiences and knowledge of those who have tackled similar challenges, and avoid repeating common and costly mistakes. In this Guide, weโve assembled know-how from some of the most insightful and experienced leaders and practitionersโsenior engineers, recruiters, entrepreneurs, and hiring managersโwhoโve built teams from early-stage startups to thousand-person engineering organizations. The lead author of this Guide, Ozzie Osman, previously led product engineering at Quora and teams at Google, and built (and sold) his own startup. Additional contributors include Aditya Agarwal, former CTO of Dropbox; Jennifer Kim, former head of diversity at Lever; veteran recruiters and startup founders Jose Guardado and Aline Lerner; and over a dozen others.
We believe recruiting and hiring can be done well, in a way that has a positive impact on companies, employees, and every candidate. With the right foundations and practice, teams and candidates can approach a stressful and difficult process with knowledge and confidence.
What People Are Saying
Table of Contents
Researched, written, and edited by experts.
Written by practitioners. Edited by professionals.
Read with Holloway
We believe in a reading experience that goes beyond paper or e-books. Reading on Holloway means a distraction-free, interactive format to help you find what you need, when you need it, in your browser. Digital access means access to additional digital resources, future updates, curated commentary from experts and readers, and features like search and bookmarks.
Definitions of Key Terms
โDefinitionโ A job requisition (or job requisition form) is an internal company document a manager uses to formally request permission to fill a role or position. These documents are particularly useful for coordination and wider alignment at larger companies. For instance, the requisition might require approval (often from finance, HR, and upper management) to ensure sufficient space and funding are available for a new hire. Once the requisition receives the necessary approvals, it can serve as the starting point for a discussion between the hiring manager and their designated recruiter (for instance, at a role intake meeting).
Powerful Search Features
Pitfalls and Confusions Explained
โdangerโ๏ธ๏ธ Wording in your job description can have unintended consequences in determining who applies. Attempts to make your roles sound more enticing can actually discourage people from applying. Researchers have found evidence that using gendered language contributes to an imbalanced pipeline of candidates; certain language can also discourage older candidates or candidates from marginalized communities from applying.
โconfusionโPeople often confuse percentiles and percents, with serious consequences. When someone recommends compensating at the 75th percentile, they are talking about percentile rank, or paying at a rate that is greater than what 75% of companies pay for a role (in a given market, stage, et cetera). This is very different from paying 75% of what a fair market salary would be.
โcontroversyโThe โbestโ interview format for coding questions is a notoriously controversial topic. While many companies rely primarily on onsite, face-to-face coding interviews, a significant fraction of engineers consider โwhiteboard codingโ to be intimidating, stressful, and not predictive of job performance. On the other hand, alternatives like take-home tasks have drawbacks as well.
Visual Presentations
Why pay for an online book?
At Holloway, we imagine a place on the web where depth, quality, and high-value writing are the norm. A place where expertsโ ideas are accessible to anyone. Where thoughtful, inclusive, and well-written resources win over quick takes, self-promoting blog posts, and content marketing.
We believe you, the reader, know the difference. Itโs the 2020s. You recognize sites riddled with ads and clickbait headlines. Deep and comprehensive resources take expertise, time, and money to build. By buying access to this title, youโre supporting a place online that makes longform reading a pleasureโand allowing us to pay authors, contributors, engineers, and editors who build and improve them. Holloway is a new and powerful way to publish. We hope youโll join us on the journey.
Does this sound like you?
- Weโve been looking to fill certain roles for ages and canโt find the right engineers, or lose them to other more prominent companies.
- Iโm a new manager and wish I had more support or guidance on building the team.
- Iโm an engineer, not a manager, but Iโve seen bad hiring decisions and care a lot about how hiring is done on my team.
- How can I and my team level up as interviewers?
- How can we hire a more diverse team?
- I canโt connect with the people I most want to hire.
Frequently Asked Questions
What exactly am I buying?
By purchasing a title on Holloway.com, you get full digital access to the book and all other resources that come with it, for unlimited use by you. That means you get lifetime access online for that title on the web, using the Holloway Reader. In contrast with Kindle and other ebooks, this also includes future updates from the author or editors. Finally, depending on the title, you get additional digital resources like PDF downloads, documents, spreadsheets, or audio clips! If you purchase a bundle, you get all additional resources for each title in the bundle.
What is the Holloway Reader?
The Holloway Reader lets you read and engage with books bought on Holloway. Many of our readers call it the best reading experience for books on the webโyou use it right in your browser, on desktop or mobile. In contrast to ebooks and paper books, online content in the Holloway Reader is always up to date, including updates when changes to the content are made, like responses to reader questions, new data, or new developments. It also lets us experiment with what the future of the book should look like, offering features you wonโt find in Kindle or Apple Books.* It includes expert commentary in the margins and offers bookmarks and highlights, instant definitions of technical terms from a glossary, instant previews of links and footnotes, and a powerful search capability only available on Holloway titlesโand we have a lot more on the way.
Are there any discounts?
We do offer discounts if you select a bundle or more than one title during checkout. We also offer student discounts to individuals with a valid .edu email address.* Before a book is released, it is available for pre-order at a discount. By pre-ordering a title, youโre supporting us and our authors in their work and you may get a note from the author, early access, or other perks.
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I have more questions!
Donโt we all. Check the full FAQ. And weโd love to hear from you at hello@holloway.com.