Episode 485: I'm terrible at hiring decisions and my coworker spams us with AI-generated memes

Soft Skills Engineering

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. What signals do you look for when interviewing candidates? I’ve helped interview many people at this point and almost all of the engineers that I marked as “hire” that we brought on board ended up being low performers and were eventually managed out. I wasn’t the only one who approved them either, so not all the blame falls on me, but I’m really doubting my ability to assess talent.

   Is hiring inherently just this difficult? Is there anything I can do to improve my judgement or screening approach?

2. Hi Dave and Jamison,

   A coworker on my team won’t stop creating AI generated memes.

   We’re a remote team and every meeting he shares memes in the chat whilst we’re trying to have productive conversations. He does this in any type of meeting, including all-hands meetings with C-level execs. On smaller calls he often hijacks it to share his screen and show us a meme he just created about something that was just said.

   It started off funny at first. But it’s now a constant distraction.

   I find it frustrating because I don’t see how he can be paying attention and contributing to discussions when he’s busy making memes. And, I also don’t appreciate seeing AI versions of my own face being shared into public Slack channels.

   How can I address this without sounding like I am anti-fun?

   Love the show, been listening for many years, keep up the good work!