Three dominant themes in the discussion
| # | Theme | Key points & quotes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | “Hunger & agency” as the real hiring signal | • “Hunger shows up in the interview. You can’t fake genuine curiosity about your problems.” – Augusteo • “People that ask the sharpest questions about our technical challenges, not salary or perks, consistently outperform.” – Augusteo • “If you’re just doing it for the paycheck then you’ll get exactly that.” – Godelski |
| 2 | The imperative to hire A‑players (and the A‑B‑C hiring chain) | • “Only hire A players. B players hire C players, and C players sink the ship.” – BabelFish • “The best hires weren’t the obvious ones. One of our strongest engineers came from a completely different industry with no relevant experience on paper.” – Augusteo • “If you can only hire one person from that team, then it is more likely than not that you will hire someone with productivity below the team’s mean.” – Alphazard |
| 3 | Age, experience, and family‑status bias in startup hiring | • “The best startup employee will usually be someone early in their career who doesn’t have as many responsibilities or as much need for consistency.” – Paultopia • “The average age of startup founders is 45… many of the best engineers… are older Millennials and GenX.” – Tristor • “You should not (legally) have an age bias at all… if you were going to apply one, the reverse bias is more rational.” – Tristor |
These three threads—curiosity as a hiring litmus test, the necessity of top‑tier talent, and the ongoing debate over age/experience biases—recur throughout the comments and shape the overall conversation.