01 · STAND-UP

“Before you build, you must understand the problem.”

• Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux

Every engineer I’ve ever worked with knows this instinctively.

You don’t write code before you understand the system.

You don’t ship before you define what done looks like.

But when it’s time to hire, most engineering teams skip the design doc entirely.

And then wonder why the search falls apart.

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02 · SPRINT

Engineers don’t ship without a design doc.

Why do we hire without one?

Every engineering team I’ve worked with has a process for building product.

Define the problem.

Set the constraints.

Align on success criteria.

Then — and only then — start building.

But when it’s time to hire?

Most EMs get handed a job description written by someone else, a recruiter they’ve never met, and a 30-minute slot in their calendar.

No definition of the problem.

No constraints.

No shared picture of what success looks like.

And then everyone wonders why the search takes six months.

Here’s what I’ve started doing with every EM before a search opens.

I ask them to write a candidate design doc.

Not a job description. A design doc.

Who is this person?

What problem do they solve for the team?

What does success look like at 30, 60, 90 days?

What are the hard constraints — the non-negotiables?

What kind of person fails in this environment, and why?

It takes one afternoon.

It saves weeks of misaligned interviewing.

The job description tells candidates what you want.

The candidate design doc tells your team what you’re building.

Those are very different documents.

Most companies only write one of them.

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03 · RETROSPECTIVE

✅ What went well

In most cases, great engineering teams notice the the lack of alignment in the first batch of candidates they interview. It is then, and only then, when the pain of hiring begins to feel real. Not during a resume review, but when a group of candidates are on your calendar for 30 minute conversations.

🔧 What could be improved

The candidate design doc is still a foreign concept to most hiring teams. The job description is deeply embedded in the workflow — it’s the default. Getting EMs to replace it with something unfamiliar requires more than a framework. It requires a shift in how they think about hiring altogether.

⚡ One action item before next week

If you’re an EM opening a role right now — try answering these five questions right now, without a meeting:
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Who is this person? What problem do they solve?
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What does success look like at 30, 60, 90 days?
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What are the non-negotiables?
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Hit reply and tell me where you got stuck. I read every response.