Hiring on Morgan Bye

The Leadership Failure of Low-Ball Offers

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 18:00:00 -0500

Interviewing is a Muscle

Interviewing is a skill - and skills, like muscles, atrophy if they go unused. You never want to find yourself in a position where you need to perform, only to realize your edge has blunted.

I advise all my mentees to interview a few times a year. It keeps your tactical skills sharp, but more importantly, it calibrates your internal compass. It’s easy to let minor office grievances feel like deal-breakers until a fresh interview shows you what a real red flag looks like.

In praise of juniors

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 14:45:00 -0400

Everyone on LinkedIn is convinced a senior dev with a ChatGPT license is the future of software engineering. Meanwhile?
Brilliant juniors are sitting at home sending out hundreds of applications into the void.

This is wild to me.

We’re living through the best junior talent market in a decade - hungry, undervalued, and wildly overlooked. Yet most companies behave like the only valid engineer is someone who’s already done the job five times before.

How to hire well: what actually matters (beyond skills & stacks)

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 17:10:00 -0400

Last time, we talked about my “baby CTO” and the three simple rubrics I use to decide whether we should hire someone at all:

The Three Questions – Can they do the job? Do they want the job? Can I work with them?
Hell Yeah or No – If it’s not a full body yes, it’s a no.
No Sevens – Rate them 1–10, but you can’t use 7. Force an opinion.

Those tools help you avoid obvious mistakes.

Hire like a CTO: three simple rubrics to save you from 'maybes'

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 12:45:00 -0400

Little did I know going in that I was about to give my TED talk.

It all started innocently enough - a reference check for one of my mentees who’s been in my orbit for four years or more. I connected to the Google Meet thinking that a full 30 minutes would leave a lot of dead air after “if I were starting my own thing, I’d be taking them with me.”