Hire people you'd hug
A CTO thread argued hiring should prioritize character over pure skills — 'hire only people you'd feel like hugging' — drawing on a costly senior‑hire mistake and stressing team culture over a resume argued. The one‑line captures an approach that trades short‑term feature velocity for long‑term team resilience.
The post came from Dawid Makowski, who lists “CTO, CTOaaS, Founder” with 25 years of coding and 18 years of hands‑on leadership on his personal bio. (dawidmakowski.com) Makowski is co‑founder/CTO of Careera and promotes SharpAPI and CTO‑as‑a‑service offerings on his public profiles. (crunchbase.com) A landmark Leadership IQ study of more than 20,000 new hires found 46% of hires fail within 18 months and attributed 89% of those failures to attitude or fit rather than technical skill. (leadershipiq.com) Surveys and HR estimates place the dollar impact of a bad hire in the low‑to‑mid five figures on average (CareerBuilder reported roughly $17,000) and government/SHRM guidance pegs the cost at about 30% of a first‑year salary, rising significantly for senior roles. (careerbuilder.com) Comparable leadership heuristics exist at large companies—Mark Zuckerberg has publicly said he won’t hire someone below him unless he could see himself working for that person—showing this people‑fit emphasis isn’t unique to startup CTOs. (bigthink.com) Hiring‑for‑character advocates face documented criticisms around subjectivity and bias: HR commentators warn attitude is hard to measure reliably and can exacerbate homogeneity if teams mistake “vibe” for predictive signal. (icehrm.com) Makowski’s past writing shows he pairs people‑fit instincts with practical screens—he regularly publishes that he reviews candidate code and past work as part of his hiring process. (dawidmakowski.com)
