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July 23rd, 2024

Things I said as a manager part 2: Hiring is emotional

A Figma manager faced emotional challenges in hiring, recognizing a candidate's potential but ultimately not extending an offer due to qualification gaps, highlighting the complexities and pressures of recruitment.

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Things I said as a manager part 2: Hiring is emotional

The emotional complexities of hiring are highlighted through the experience of a manager at Figma, who faced a challenging decision regarding a candidate after months of interaction. Despite recognizing the candidate's potential, the manager ultimately decided not to extend an offer due to perceived gaps in their qualifications. This decision was particularly difficult as it contrasted sharply with the iterative and reversible nature of software development. The manager reflected on the emotional toll of the hiring process, which involves building authentic connections while simultaneously assessing a candidate's skills. The tension between forming relationships and making judgment calls is a core aspect of being a hiring manager. The process is characterized by intense highs and lows, with the outcome being binary—either a candidate is hired or not. This lack of feedback on alternative choices adds to the pressure, as hiring managers cannot test different candidates in the same way they might test software. The experience underscores the importance of trust and understanding in the hiring process, as candidates are entrusting their careers to the decision-makers. Ultimately, while the search for the right candidate can be draining and fraught with uncertainty, the satisfaction of finding a suitable match can make the effort worthwhile. The key takeaways emphasize the dual role of hiring managers in building connections and evaluating talent, the high-stakes nature of recruitment, and the emotional roller coaster that accompanies the hiring journey.

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Link Icon 32 comments
By @bastawhiz - 6 months
> I had been talking to the candidate for months and they had completed our entire interview panel. We’d had great conversations where I’d learned about their background and developed a sense for how they would fit in this role. Unfortunately, I had to tell them we would not be moving forward with an offer.

"Hiring" isn't the emotional thing here. The emotional thing was knowing you were shitty to someone. You were shitty because you took months to build a relationship with this person and didn't have a compelling reason to say yes or no, and decided to say no. If you saw gaps, you should have said no sooner. If it takes you months of talking to someone and building a relationship to decide they're not right for the team, it's not hiring that's the problem, it's that you're bad at hiring that's the problem.

There's exactly no reason to lead a candidate on for months. If you ever get to the point where scheduling a 1:1 zoom conversation is implied to be a job offer, you've fucked up. Interviewing isn't personal, it's business—until you've spent long hours making it personal.

> Hiring is a roller coaster. It involves more ups and downs than normal engineering work.

It might be a roller coaster, but the longest roller coaster by duration in the world is four minutes. Keep that in mind.

By @euvin - 6 months
> They were close and had potential, but we also saw some gaps.

I would be really interested to hear more about the specific "gaps".

> After lots of discussion with my management chain, we decided not to extend the offer.

I wonder exactly what was said, given that this candidate was led on for months by this point and I presume the management knew about everything along the way. Also, was someone else hired, or did they just cancel the entire opening?

I understand some emotional pain about passing up a really nice candidate for an objectively unbeatable one (that's competition for you), but I only get the sense that it was a single person in the interview loop (who was then cancelled on): they were apparently hiring for just one extra manager position?

By @bell-cot - 6 months
> I had been talking to the candidate for months and they had completed our entire interview panel. We’d had great conversations where I’d learned about their background and developed a sense for how they would fit in this role. Unfortunately, I had to tell them we would not be moving forward with an offer.

> It was hard because I wasn’t confident in the decision. They were close and had potential, but we also saw some gaps. After lots of discussion with my management chain, ...

WAY too long a time period, and WAY too much time invested. And hopefully you'll never, never, ever need this candidate's good word or goodwill for anything - 'cause you'll have precious little chance of getting either.

By @no-such-address - 6 months
It sounds as if the hiring managers got cold feet and made an emotional or impulsive decision. It's not surprising they could feel bad for treating a candidate that way, for indescribable reasons. It's not as if the justification offered was, "We lost our budget and couldn't go through with our offer" or "We have another much more highly qualified candidate and the organization needs that person." Managers that interact with candidates should be decent enough to anticipate the possibility of not going through with an offer and create sufficient emotional buffering to leave people with their self-respect, or give the candidate more useful clues about how they're really doing. There are many ways hiring managers can increase their skill at this difficult work. I will never forget, I made someone cry in an interview once. You can ask hard questions but we all have to decide if this is the kind of human being we want to be.
By @burningChrome - 6 months
I remember not too long ago when you'd do a quick phone screen, then sit for maybe a technical interview and maybe come into the office for a panel to talk to other devs. Most of the time, hiring managers would say, "If you're close with your technical skills, we can teach you, but we're more interested if you fit in with our culture "

Months of interaction? Why did just a few years ago, managers could spot a phony a mile away and could see potential in people? Why is it I feel like I'm dating you just to try and get a job?

This story just confirms how broken and dysfunctional the process has become to make a simple hire.

By @lkramer - 6 months
This reads like a parody of a LinkedIn post, poor candidate.
By @vaidhy - 6 months
This is one of the key reasons you let the recruiting/HR do this. The other red flag is the amount of time you have engaged with the person before the decision which also sounds bad. You might have inadvertently let them have false hope.

One of my starting points for companies looking to grow from small founding team to a more larger structure is to define the hiring and firing process way up front. It is not worth playing around with people's emotion and putting everyone in a difficult position.

By @rcurry - 6 months
Yikes! If any of my previous CEOs caught me spending “months” making a hiring decision I’d be toast.
By @gregors - 6 months
Figma? I'm curious if this type of behavior is a reflection on the organization's culture in the larger sense. If so, it would explain why the 20 billion dollar acquisition to Adobe fell through.
By @drewcoo - 6 months
All human decisions involve emotions. We're human.

This piece is a bit over the top, though, verging on "seek counseling immediately" emotional. I hope you're not a bull, author, because I don't want to make you even more emotional when I tell you this is full of red flags.

By @deodar - 6 months
Unconscionable. You're picking an employee, not a life partner.

Hiring should not be a months long emotional roller coaster like you describe. It should be quick and professional.

By @reactiverobot - 6 months
Hey everyone, it's the author here! Many of you have made an inaccurate assumption about something that I should have clarified in the article.

As a hiring manager you do cold out reach and meet people well before they are ready to look for a new job. You build a relationship over time so that when they are ready for a new job they reach out to you. That's what happened in this case.

I appreciate the feedback that I was not clear about that. I agree with you all that spending months actually interviewing is horrendous and unfair.

Let me know if you have more questions or thoughts!

By @jrochkind1 - 6 months
I think your hiring process should ideally not last months for this reason.
By @rowanG077 - 6 months
MONTHS??? of interaction? Holy moly I would have ran far and ran fast.
By @gregors - 6 months
MONTHS??? Do even elite athletes making millions and millions subject themselves to such foolishness?
By @fenomas - 6 months
Nearly every comment so far is reacting to this line:

> I had been talking to the candidate for months..

and how appalling that is. But TFA says nothing about why the process took months, because that's not what the article is about. Maybe the author had been talking to the candidate for some time before the hiring process started? Maybe the process took unusually long for reasons on the candidate's side? We have no idea, so why even take issue with it?

By @eduction - 6 months
I think many people would prefer bad news like this in an email. I know this was a long (!) hiring process and the willingness to tell someone to their face is noble, but I imagine it might be both unexpected in a Zoom call and hard to process with someone looking at you.

If the intent is to give a verbal explanation, I’d send an email with the news and then offer to connect on Zoom for that.

(But I’d also avoid a process anywhere close to this long.)

By @renewiltord - 6 months
LOL this can't be real. Who the fuck would sit through a multi-month process if it isn't FAANG. And for FAANG they just have a process, you're in or out and once they do the interviews they're fast to tell you, they're just slow to schedule.
By @higeorge13 - 6 months
I keep reading comments that this could have been acceptable if it was some c-suite position. This is so funny, because we keep seeing ceos destroying the businesses or doing some funny incidents to always get rewarded with bonuses or into new ceo adventures.

Let’s admit businesses are picky in people they don’t know. If it’s some friend or twitter/ceo persona, he gets hired with 0 interviews. I have seen this so many times with heads, vps and c-suite hired out of the blue. While i have to struggle to get my feet into any position and bypass the ai filtering of ats.

By @arminiusreturns - 6 months
"Figma's growth team" - All I needed to know, ROFLMAO! (I've dealt with them and the people that use them, and this abusive interview process fits that. No thank you!)

[1] Penpot is a great open-source alternative for people who value freedom.

1. https://penpot.app/

By @jt2190 - 6 months
The candidate was being considered for a management position, with a lot of responsibilities including creating a good workplace for their reports. This is something you absolutely don’t want to get wrong, it can’t be a “I dunno… seems ok to me” hire because it will literally set the tone for that department for years.
By @lazyant - 6 months
I haven't met anyone I couldn't tell in less than a month if they were good (enough) or not (about two weeks if you push me and two work conversations if you push me even more). I don't understand doubts after a couple months or the typical 3-month period.
By @kxrm - 6 months
Echoing what others are saying. This is just too much. I have been on both sides of this process. As a candidate, show you respect my time by being direct about the process (how long will it take? What fundamentals are you looking for? Who will I meet?). If you can't describe that in a 5 minute conversation your hiring practices are vague and could potentially give your company a bad reputation.

I know it's practically a meme in tech at this point how bad hiring is, but I honestly think we have too many people in the hiring chain who have no proper experience with evaluating people. This leads to this mentality of infantilism and perfection that will constantly lead to unhappiness from both sides of the decision. Can we somehow take cues from the past and improve hiring process efficiency while recognizing that hiring will always carry inherent risks for both parties?

By @RandomThoughts3 - 6 months
This is the most puzzling thing I have read in a long time.

In my current job, I manage offshore teams. I have hired a lot in the past couple years because we have grown a lot and turnover tends to be high for entry level positions.

I don’t find hiring particularly emotional. You are basically looking for a skillset and a mindset compatible with the work environment. I agree that you are indeed trying to build a relationship but that’s a professional one. The essence of it is evaluating the candidate ability to do the job. There is no tension here. You are not looking for a friend.

I mean if you find it hard to politely tell someone you are not going to offer them a position when you don’t believe them to be a good fit, you are probably doing something wrong.

By @d13 - 6 months
This is an extremely disconnected and vaguely written article and likely a work of fiction or SEO generated content.
By @chairs - 6 months
Appalling. You were lucky the candidate was available for months of interaction. You deliberated too much and you lost out on what sounded like an excellent fit. No one is going to be perfect. No one is going to be at their best during interviews. Yet not understanding that when someone shows strength and promise that you bring them in to the role where there's a probationary period to do further evaluation shows a complete lack of competence in hiring.

Yikes.

By @markus_zhang - 6 months
Thank you, now I can cross one company off from my list.
By @HotGarbage - 6 months
lmfao toxic af
By @racional - 6 months
I had been talking to the candidate for months

This is in itself a huge red flag about not just Figma's hiring process, but its entire decision culture internally.

There's absolutely no reason for a "process" to drag on this long, unless it's for a C-level position with a corresponding equity stake.

The high of finding the right person makes it all worth it.

Not if the best people stop applying or referring their friends to you, once word gets out as to what's in store for them.