The Engineer

The Engineer

The Hiring Leak | Article 8: The Onboarding Vacuum

You’ve hired someone who seemed perfect on paper, interviewed well, and fit the culture—or at least what you thought was culture. And then… nothing happens. That’s the Onboarding Vacuum. Hiring Is Only the Beginning Hiring is the input. Onboarding is the…

The Hiring Leak | Article 7: The Culture Fit Misfire

After we reach for experience, we often reach for comfort. We tell ourselves: It feels safe. It feels easy. But that’s exactly where the Culture Fit Misfire hides. Culture Fit Isn’t Neutral When we hire for culture fit, what we usually mean…

The Hiring Leak | Article 6: The Seniority Illusion

When lone-wolf stories start to worry us, we reach for reassurance. We tell ourselves: Experience feels like a safety net. But experience doesn’t transfer cleanly between systems. That assumption is the Seniority Illusion. Experience Is Context-Bound No one gains experience in…

The Hiring Leak | Article 5: The Lone Wolf Signal

When interviews reward individual performance, a certain pattern starts to look attractive. We notice the people who say: “I took it over myself.”“I rebuilt the system.”“I just went ahead and fixed it.” These stories sound like strength. They feel decisive,…

The Hiring Leak | Article 3: The Resume Proxy

A résumé is supposed to be a summary of experience.In practice, it often becomes a substitute for judgment. When hiring under pressure, we want certainty. And résumés feel concrete. They are neat, comparable, and fast to scan. So we begin…

The Hiring Leak | Article 2: The Logic of the Hiring Leak

I used to think that when teams failed, the problem showed up later. I thought the issues started with poor execution, bad communication, or a lack of motivation. So we added process. We added meetings. We added reviews. And when…

The Hiring Leak | Article 1: The Candidate Market Leak

Hiring isn’t one-sided. While you’re evaluating candidates, they’re evaluating you. Every email, every delay, every vague message sends a signal. Miss the signal, and you lose the candidate—quietly, often without even knowing it. I call this the Candidate Market Leak. The…

The Hiring Leak | Article 0: The Role Spec Leak

I see it all the time: we hire brilliant people, and then… they stall. Not because they aren’t capable, but because the role itself is a fog. Responsibilities are vague. Expectations are assumed. The real problems the team needs solved?…

The Skill Leak | Article 7: The External Data Sync

I used to look at “Code Nights,” “Meetups,” and “Open Source” as optional social perks. I thought that if my engineers were attending conferences or writing technical blogs, they were “taking a break” from real work. I viewed their time…