Please take this job.
That was how I started the chat with a former Beatport teammate.
I do not want to interview any more people. I also do not have a choice. Reality Check needs an infrastructure engineer, and I do not want to wait to start the work.
The list is specific. I need somebody excellent with Fedora, RPM packaging, Puppet, and Cobbler, plus enough programming to build whatever else it takes to run the place from what I called a control tower.
This person becomes the go-to operator for the infrastructure.
I would like that person to be somebody I trust.
The chat was not a polished recruiting pitch. It was jokes, complaints about interviewing, and a direct request to move to New York. He had worked for me before. I reminded him that it took a long time to find the right people at Beatport.
He said it was probably a bad time to be hiring technical people because everybody seemed to be doing it. I told him I did not have a choice.
I also told him the truth:
Sure I do, but I like hiring people that I like.
The job cannot really be remote. Too much of it is still attached to racks, switches, storage, and the data center itself. He understood that part even if it made the answer harder.
No offer was accepted in this chat. I did not solve the hiring problem.
I did make the pitch exactly as clearly as I could.
Please take this job. I would like to stop interviewing people and start building the control tower.