

      <p>It will be no surprise to <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fgocardless.com&amp;t=ZjAyOTYyZDk3YmY2MmUzMmQyZTIxYjM0MjJmODYyMzE3NzZjMDMyNSxZeUpLVWt1eQ%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AXgZ3424Wrwxd8Lf0H8QVFw&amp;p=https%3A%2F%2Ftomblomfield.com%2Fpost%2F15456184827%2Fi-hate-meetings&amp;m=1&amp;ts=1743235429" title="GoCardless" target="_blank">those I work with</a> to hear that I’m not a big fan of&nbsp;meetings. I wanted to lay out a few problems we had with meetings, and the ways in which we’re trying to solve them.</p><h4>Startups Operate in Conditions of Extreme Uncertainty</h4><p><a href="http://theleanstartup.com/" title="The Lean Startup">By definition</a>, there’s always uncertainty at a startup. You need to work out what you’re making and whether anyone actually wants it.</p><p>This uncertainty makes most people uncomfortable, which is natural. A tempting solution is to schedule meetings to debate this uncertainty endlessly, as if it can be made certain by the power of thought alone. This is particularly the case for people with backgrounds like mine, who spent time at university and jobs in which we were actively encouraged to theorise without seeking empirical evidence. Instead, work out how you can validate your assumptions as quickly as possible, and make that happen.</p><p>You can sometimes gain empirical evidence on which to make a decision whilst expending a very small amount of time &amp; energy.</p><ul><li><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/22/founder-stories-tripadvisors-kaufer-discusses-the-logic-behind-running-404-tests/" title="404 Tests" target="_blank">The TripAdvisor 404 Test</a>&nbsp;- Put a link to the new feature on your website, but “Before you build the darn thing&nbsp;… see how many people click it. It goes nowhere, it says broken link to the user [but] your log file says how many people [check it out]…It solves umpteen meetings worth of powerful debate and logical arguments.”</li></ul><ul><li><a href="http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/b/262672510" title="Dropbox Marketing" target="_blank">Dropbox’s Demo Video</a>&nbsp;- A 3 minute demo video on Hackernews prompted 12,000 digs, and tens of thousands pre-registrations. This gave Drew Houston the validation he needed to spend another year creating a market-beating file-syncing &amp; backup service.</li></ul><ul><li>An early-stage payments startup (not ours!) wondered whether merchants would use a monthly subscription billing service in addition to regular one-off payments. So they launched the service with a minimal back-end, knowing that if it took off, they’d have 30 days to build the functionality.</li></ul><h4>You wear every hat</h4><p>Working at an early-stage startup, there are a thousand things to do. You’re the recruiter, HR person, accountant, office manager, receptionist, programmer &amp; cleaner - and you have to make all the decisions associated with these roles. But it’s sometimes tempting to devote more time than necessary thinking about (and discussing!) these decisions.</p><p>In reality, the only important question for early-stage startups is almost always&nbsp;"does anyone want what we’re making?“ Most of the other stuff doesn’t need to be decided yet. "What shall we put in our cashflow forecast?”, “Where’s our new office going to be?”, “In 3 years, what do we want our brand position to be?” They are all important questions, but probably not yet.</p><p>If a decision doesn’t have any practical impact on what your team is doing this month, just postpone it (and the associated meetings). If you do eventually have to make the decision, you’ll have more information at your disposal. If you’re not spending the majority of your time trying to solve the one most important problem your business faces, it could be a sign that something’s wrong.</p><h4>Meetings kill productivity</h4><p>A lot of smart people have <a href="http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html" title="A Makers Schedule" target="_blank">written extensively about this subject</a>, and I don’t have much more to add. I reckon it takes me about an hour to really get up to full speed when developing something challenging, and it takes a minimum of 2-3 hours to produce anything meaningful. So a meeting halfway through an afternoon bazookas productivity for at least half a day.</p><h4>Some thoughts</h4><p>After a year of running our startup, we’ve come up with several ways of avoiding unnecessary meetings and keeping necessary meetings as brief as possible</p><ul><li>Ask: Is this discussion going to result in a decision that practically impacts our priorities in the next 2 weeks? If not, postpone it.</li><li>Any discussion that goes over 5 minutes has to move to a meeting room. This isn’t because we like having meetings in meeting rooms; quite the opposite. If the discussion isn’t important enough to warrant disrupting the team, then postpone it.</li><li>Have one meeting every two weeks at which you review any of the longer-term decisions and make sure everyone on the team knows what the company is focussing on</li></ul><p>If you want to find out more about how we work, <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fgocardless.com%2Fjobs&amp;t=ZmIzNjNhNDY2YjQ2ZDZlMmJlMWE5NmZiOTZkYTRiZWY4ZDczOTBkZCxZeUpLVWt1eQ%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AXgZ3424Wrwxd8Lf0H8QVFw&amp;p=https%3A%2F%2Ftomblomfield.com%2Fpost%2F15456184827%2Fi-hate-meetings&amp;m=1&amp;ts=1743235429" title="GoCardless Jobs">come and say hello</a></p>


I Hate Meetings



      <p>Over the last year, we’ve done dozens of interviews that involve some kind of technical element. &nbsp;We’ve hired some great programmers, and we're&nbsp;<a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fgocardless.com%2Fjobs&amp;t=YWYxZTFkMzA2MDBmNjdmMGU4NWRjZGQ5YzYwYWEyNTAyYTgwYTUyNyxDMnRXcGdDUQ%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AXgZ3424Wrwxd8Lf0H8QVFw&amp;p=https%3A%2F%2Ftomblomfield.com%2Fpost%2F15459124407%2Ftechnical-interviews&amp;m=1&amp;ts=1743235421" title="GoCardless Jobs" target="_blank">looking for more</a></p><p>We’ve spent a some time thinking about how we run these technical interviews (<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3428984" title="Hacker News">as have others</a>), so I wanted to touch on the kind of things we look for, and what the interview process&nbsp;at&nbsp;<a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fgocardless.com&amp;t=Mzc0ZTZjYTk1MmE0MjdkYjM3YWVjNDMzYTY1MTc1M2ZjZDJkZjc2MSxDMnRXcGdDUQ%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AXgZ3424Wrwxd8Lf0H8QVFw&amp;p=https%3A%2F%2Ftomblomfield.com%2Fpost%2F15459124407%2Ftechnical-interviews&amp;m=1&amp;ts=1743235421" title="GoCardless">GoCardless</a>&nbsp;looks like.</p><h4>CV &amp; Github</h4><p>We ask everyone to provide a (brief) CV and links to their github account or other examples of code they’ve written.  One page is usually sufficient - we want know about;</p><ul><li>Education</li><li>Previous jobs &amp; specific responsibilities</li><li>Passion for development outside work. This is the area where people can really shine. Tell us about a <a href="http://www.mealmogul.com" title="MealMogul" target="_blank">hack-weekend project,</a> <a href="https://github.com/hmarr/mongoengine" title="Mongo Engine" target="_blank">open-source project</a> or technical conference presentation that you’ve given.&nbsp;</li></ul><h4>Product &amp; Business Case Studies</h4><p>Even when interviewing for technical roles, we spend a fair amount of time talking about business &amp; product issues. We think we can build a <a href="http://framethink.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/four-early-paypal-entrepreneurial-culture-norms/" title="Early PayPal Entrepreneurial Norms" target="_blank">better company by working with people who are self-sufficient, take initiative and get stuff done</a>.</p><p>This doesn’t mean you need a degree in business microeconomics, but you should have thought about questions like “what impact might feature x have on sales conversion, customer churn or revenue-per-user?”</p><p>Another favourite is “We have problem Y that is costing us £z per user. What are the&nbsp;technical&nbsp;solutions to this problem? And what are the business solutions? Which would you implement first, and why?”</p><h4>Technical Interviews</h4><p>This has been <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3428984" title="Hacker News">discussed at great length</a>, but I wanted to throw in our two cents;</p><p>We use a couple of simple programming exercises - usually involving some kind of choice between&nbsp;recursion&nbsp;or looping, with a discussion of which might be more useful &amp; why.</p><p>I personally think <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3430057" title="Pascal's Triangle" target="_blank">exercises like implementing Pascals triangle</a>&nbsp;(where the candidate is given a definition of Pascal’s triangle, a choice of language and access to API documentation for that language) are really great negative filters that reveal whether a person can actually code.</p><p>We’re looking for something like</p><pre><code>
  def pascal_loop(n)
    triangle = [[1]]
    (0..(n-2)).each do |i|
      this_row = [1]
      (1...triangle[i].size).each do |j|
        this_row &lt;&lt; triangle[i][j-1..j].inject(:+)
      end
      triangle &lt;&lt; (this_row &lt;&lt; 1)
    end
    return triangle[n-1]
  end


</code></pre><p>We also talk through various theory questions, focussing on concepts behind web programming (transfer protocols, request-response cycles, persisting data, caching), database &amp; systems design. We also touch on algorithms, but I’m not sure how useful this is, particularly for someone without a formal CS degree.&nbsp;</p><p>How do you run technical interviews? Comments welcome.</p><p>If you’re looking for a developer position in London, <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fgocardless.com%2Fjobs&amp;t=YWYxZTFkMzA2MDBmNjdmMGU4NWRjZGQ5YzYwYWEyNTAyYTgwYTUyNyxDMnRXcGdDUQ%3D%3D&amp;b=t%3AXgZ3424Wrwxd8Lf0H8QVFw&amp;p=https%3A%2F%2Ftomblomfield.com%2Fpost%2F15459124407%2Ftechnical-interviews&amp;m=1&amp;ts=1743235421" title="GoCardless Jobs" target="_blank">apply now!</a></p><p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3437831" title="Hacker News">Discuss this post at Hacker News</a></p>


Tom Blomfield

I Hate Meetings

Technical Interviews