It&#x27;s not only the applicants who have limited time. The startup founders are also time constrained. You can&#x27;t found a successful startup if you spend 10+ hours a week interviewing potential employees.<p>I suspect much of the initial bias and &quot;hard line&quot; preferences are due to a startup&#x27;s unwillingness to spend inordinate amounts of time interviewing candidates to find that one diamond in the rough.<p>Imagine 4 of every 10 &quot;academic programmer&quot; candidates are a good fit, and 6 of 10 &quot;product programmer&quot; candidates are a good fit. Why waste time interviewing 10 academic programmers, for a max hit rate of 40%, when you could focus solely on product programmers and get a max hit rate of 60%?<p>This data certainly suggests that different founders have their own biases and preferences for what makes a &quot;good programmer.&quot; Most of them probably realize they are pigeonholing and could be wrong, but they&#x27;re willing to risk that for more efficient interviewing and a high hit rate.<p>Stick with what you know if it&#x27;s &quot;good enough.&quot; Optimally, as a founder you can already identify multiple potential early hires just from your own network. If you have the right background and connections, you can hire your first couple employees without doing a single interview.<p>Time is money. Interviews take time and cost money.