u/calvin_Awana

The standard engineering interview process is optimizing for the wrong thing.

Most companies test: Can this person solve a LeetCode problem under pressure?

What they actually need to know: Can this person operate effectively in our specific environment?

These are very different questions.

I've been involved in hundreds of engineering hires across different stages of startups. The candidates who performed best in interviews were not always the ones who performed best on the job. And the ones who struggled most in interviews? Some of them became the strongest engineers on the team.

What actually predicts performance at an early-stage startup:

• How they handle ambiguity. Give them a problem with no clear answer and watch how they think, not what they conclude.
• How they communicate when they're stuck. Do they disappear for 3 days and come back with a solution, or do they flag early and ask for context?
• What they do when something breaks. Not what they say they'd do. What they actually did, in a real situation.

The interview process most startups use was designed for big tech companies hiring at scale. It doesn't translate to a 10-person team where everyone needs to be a generalist who takes ownership.

I'm not saying technical skills don't matter. They do. But if that's all you're testing, you're filtering for the wrong population.

What's been your experience? have you found interview formats that actually predict on the job performance?

Most founders ask me the wrong question when they want to hire in LatAm. They ask: "How much can I save?"

I've spent the last few years helping startups hire developers across Latin America. Something interesting happened that I didn't expect. The founders who got the best results weren't the ones optimizing for cost. They were optimizing for something else entirely: ownership mindset.

Here's what I mean. The developers who thrive in startups, regardless of where they're from, are the ones who think like builders, not employees. They don't wait to be told what to do. They flag problems before they become fires. They care about the product, not just the ticket.

The ones who struggled? Almost always, the issue wasn't technical skill. It was the operating model. They were used to large companies, clear specs, stable environments.

Hiring internationally doesn't fix a broken hiring process. It exposes it.

The best founders I've worked with figured this out early. They stopped interviewing for skills and started interviewing for how people think under pressure.

One question that changed everything for us: "Tell me about the last time something broke in production and you had to fix it alone. Walk me through what you did." The answer to that question tells you more about someone than any technical test.

Curious if other founders have experienced something similar, what's been the most surprising thing about hiring technical talent, wherever they're from?