The Need For Speed
Hiring really hasn’t stopped for our crypto clients this year, however the beauty of scaling is not just skin deep.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-24/crypto-firms-fight-for-top-talent-with-hundreds-of-job-openings
These firms are breeding grounds for rapid innovation, not only in terms of technology but also in terms of hiring processes. To scale quickly, without compromising talent, clients are tailoring their interviews to “real-world” problem solving.
“Real-world” in the sense that you might talk about how to connect to a new exchange, optimise a pricing model live with another developer or discuss how you’d implement a trading algo for maximum reliability.
Why? Because a “legacy system” in Crypto may well only be 3 years old at the very most and thanks to modern approaches in system design, firms are now re-writing some components in languages like #GoLang, #Julia and #Rust for improved performance, without needing a complete system upgrade.
The hiring pool for people that have used the technologies listed above typically tends to be pretty small (at least in trading technology), so the solution is to hire based on how well they solve problems that they are likely to encounter on a daily basis. If clients aren’t flexible on this front, they will be losing candidates to firms who are.
#Speed is also king in any hiring process, subject of course to a candidate’s availability. We are now regularly seeing engineers move from interview to offer in under 5 working days, with said offer being approved and sent within 12 hours of the final interview.
For a real-world example of how this can affect how quickly you scale a company:
- Candidate X interviews with Client 1 and begins a live interview process consisting of 3 stages. This is completed in a week and the client is flexible with regards to the language expertise of an engineer, focusing on their potential. The offer is sent the same day, the candidate is up and running 3 months later (depending on notice period).
- Candidate Y interviews with Client 2 and begins an interview process that consists of 3 technical rounds and 3 rounds of “soft skills” evaluations, taking roughly 6 weeks. From final to offer, the approval takes 2 weeks and background checks through a third party may even take another 2. Candidate Y accepts the offers and resigns, however is now 8-10 weeks behind Candidate X in terms of start date, assuming a standard notice period of 3 months for Trading Technologists.
- If we also factor in Client 1 being flexible with regards to industry background, such as ad-tech, med-tech or gaming, and interviewing an engineer with expertise that includes low-latency work, optimisation or cloud engineering, the average notice period would drop to 1 month. This turns what is already an 8-10 week start date difference to 16-18 weeks!
Naturally, there will be many variations between these two examples and it is also not my place to say which is right or which is wrong. You can however see two very clear differences in terms of how Client 1 has secured Candidate X before Client 2 has even managed to get Candidate Y through the tech stages.
Client 2 may also be completely entitled to their opinion that Client 1’s process also equates to heresy. What they might lack entitlement to though, is their surprise that the best in the market are being taken off the market before their interview process has concluded.
If you’re a candidate or client looking to understand more about how to navigate through the turbulent waters of careers in crypto, please drop me an email to warwick@durlstonpartners.com .