I've been thinking lately about some of the unusually good people I've hired over the last ten or fifteen years, and about why they were so good. With some, it took me days or weeks to realize how good they were. Others made good impressions from the start. I was thinking this evening about an older guy we hired from another division of Apple several years ago when I was managing the AppleWorks engineering team. He'd been with Apple a long time, and had become a pretty senior engineer responsible for a critical but not-too-exciting part of the Mac operating system, and wanted to work on something fresh and interesting again. We wanted someone really smart and experienced and productive, but we were initially reluctant even to interview this guy because his experience was a little too narrowly focused, and to be honest, we didn't think someone in his position would be very teachable. But he made such a good impression from the start. He said he wanted to become a newbie again -- just to work hard and learn and take direction. We hired him, and it turned out to be a very good decision. I hope I can follow his example the next time I'm thrown into the job market.
