> I’ve just been fortunate enough to work in situations where people were there for the mission and there for the people.
How is "being there for the mission and for the people" better than "being there for money and for tech stack"? The latter also has to do with people and missions, only the missions and the people are important and related to the candidate directly, and not through company owners' or hiring managers' goals (most likely motivated by prospects of monetary rewards too).
> How is "being there for the mission and for the people" better than "being there for money and for tech stack"
Tech stacks change; human stacks stay the same. Intellectual honesty isn't going to obsoleted by some shinier virtue in 5 years—and if a company needs to pivot, it's still going to be a right tool for the job.
Typically tech stacks don't change for good reasons, just subjective reasons.
Why should I value the subjective decision of some new engineering manager that decided the tech stack should change so they can pad their resume?
Even if I'm there for the mission, this would give me pause.
If I was there for the tech stack alone, I'd quickly be looking for a new job.
The central point you seem to be making is "hiring for people there for the mission means employees friendlier to company changes/pivots". This feels valid, however the tech stack could affect execution of the mission. Or a given person could just hold the opinion that tech stack affects execution of the mission.
I guess my counter-argument to that then is it's not such a straight-forward win.
However my views are that tech stacks and programming languages matter a lot more than most give them credit for. See:
So it's easy for me to recoil to hearing "right tool for the job" cargo-culted without real arguments justifying the comment.
Circling back to the central point, I do think I would bias towards hiring people that seem "there for the mission". I believe many people would probably be just pretending though, so it's not that great of a postive signal imo.
However we may differ in that I don't think I'd heavily avoid hiring people "there for the tech stack" any more than I'd try (and fail) to avoid hiring people "there for the money".
I think where we're ending up here is that—while all these points ("tool for the job", "here for the mission") may be true—they are often cited by people who are full of shit, so seeing them in job postings, interviews, etc doesn't really send any useful signal.
How is "being there for the mission and for the people" better than "being there for money and for tech stack"? The latter also has to do with people and missions, only the missions and the people are important and related to the candidate directly, and not through company owners' or hiring managers' goals (most likely motivated by prospects of monetary rewards too).