Hiring for taste, not just skill
Skill tells you what someone can do. Taste tells you what they will choose to do when no one is watching.
By Priya Raman
Skill is measurable and teachable. You can look at what someone has built and reasonably predict what they can build next. Taste is harder, and it matters just as much.
Taste is the judgment that decides which problems are worth solving and which details are worth sweating. Two people with identical skill can produce wildly different work depending on what they choose to care about.
We look for it in the questions people ask more than the answers they give. Someone who probes why a feature exists before asking how to build it is showing you something a coding exercise never will.
You cannot fully interview for taste, but you can create the conditions where it grows: clear standards, honest feedback, and the freedom to make small decisions and live with them.