August 2018

RED FLAGS W hen you’re hiring a software engineer, avoid someone who writes sloppy code, and remember that it doesn’t really matter where your new hire went to school. Other factors to consider when looking at a job candidate: • Poor communicators will struggle with bridging the gap between the abstract and the concrete. • College graduates without experience can be a drain on resources, particularly if you’re forced to train them. • Candidates who expect a lot of guidance won’t fit in well with a startup culture. Jeremy Jacobs, chairman of Enlighten, a cannabis-centric digital technology company in Bowling Green, Kentucky, avoids anyone who is not well organized with their code. “If I can’t pass this off to someone else and it’s easy to take on, then we have no time for that at all,” he said. “We do not like sloppy code.” For example, disorganized code would lack spacing and clearly defined sections. A person who can’t communicate won’t make it very far with him, either. As a software engineer, your job is to be able to apply real-world ideas to an abstract environment to create a result, Jacobs said. “If you’re bad at communication, then you’re completely dis- qualified,” he added. “We have zero tolerance for that.” Ben Curren, CEO of Green Bits, a point-of-sale software company in San Jose, California, doesn’t have the infrastructure to train a college graduate. “We have to get experienced people,” he said. He also avoids applicants who aren’t proactive. A candidate who brings up problems but doesn’t offer solutions won’t go far in the interview process. “We’re a startup,” he said. “There’s problems all over the place. We don’t need someone identifying problems. We need someone creating solutions.” Rick Matsumoto, chief operating officer for Denver-based Simplifya, a software platform that helps marijuana businesses with compliance issues, won’t hire someone who is looking for a lot of internal structure and governance. He echoed Curren. His company is a startup and won’t be able to provide a probation period or an exact career path. “Somebody who’s looking for that is going to be disappointed and therefore not a good hire,” he added. – Bart Schaneman HOW TO TRAIN Simplifya uses software-manage- ment tools such as Confluence to train new engineers. “We don’t have a formal training program other than we have stand- ard project-management tools,” Matsumoto said. Those tools contain the information for the software engineer to become familiar with what has occurred in the system to date. Confluence can be used to docu- ment how management came to certain decisions and overcame challenges. It enables the new hire to understand where the company has the biggest needs and then apply his or her skills to the problem. “That speaks to someone with strong self-learning skills,” according to Matsumoto. The training period doesn’t usually take more than a couple of weeks. Green Bits has an in-house, one-week employee onboarding program. New hires learn about the cannabis industry, visit stores using Green Bits and take sales and support calls. Then Curren communicates the company’s goals for the next three to five years and how it plans to achieve them. At Enlighten, Jacobs tries not to hire people who need to be trained. Ben Curren is CEO of point-of-sale software company Green Bits. 106 • Marijuana Business Magazine • August 2018