How to Hire Your First Engineer • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#41

Post by thatjsguy » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 10:54 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #30

jazzychad wrote: post #25

These are good points for finding your first engineer, but here is a tip for helping close your dream hire: offer more equity. Your first eng hire will shoulder nearly all of the technical burden soon after as the founders transition into more of the non-technical roles (sales, outreach, recruiting, fundraising, business strategy). The amount of blood, sweat, and tears poured in by the first eng hire is somewhat less…

Depends on pay, right? If you are offering employee #1 market pay, why would you give them 10% equity? That is potentially millions of dollars for not taking a risk. I have been on both sides of this, and have thoughts. What do you think is fair for employee #1 making at or near market rate?

> ...why would you give them 10% equity?

Because they’re taking on a gigantic risk too?

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#42

Post by dsajames » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 10:57 PM UTC

stemuk wrote: post #34

brianwawok wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on pay, right? If you are offering employee #1 market pay, why would you give them 10% equity? That is potentially millions of dollars for not taking a risk. I have been on both sides of this, and have thoughts. What do you think is fair for employee #1 making at or near market rate?

Even if you pay your #1 employee at market rate he is taking huge risks and should be compensated accordingly. Working at an early stage company often comes with huge job insecurity, loss of medical benefits more mature companies might be able to offer (better insurance etc.) and a possible kink in your CV (3 years at Microsoft look much better than spending 3 years at an unsuccessful company that eventually shut dow…

What risk? Market pay, many startups have decent health insurance, and even if it blows up, it actually looks good, not bad on the resume.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#43

Post by opportune » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 10:58 PM UTC

Fede_V wrote: post #29

An interesting exercise: assume the first engineering hire you want has to be at least the senior engineer bar at a top tech firm. In order for the engineer's median compensation to match the median compensation he would make working at FANG, how much stock would you have to give them making reasonable assumption about valuations (ie, assume your start up will have a trajectory in the top 30% percentile, but not in t…

I think FANG is not the right group to look at when it comes to “top” tech firms unless you also mean other companies like FANG wrt how competitive they are, such as MS, unicorns, hedge funds, etc.

Depending on what you’re making you also might be doing yourself a disservice by only wanting to hire from “the best” - if you’re making a simple website or CRUD app as part of a larger business strategy such as online ordering, you don’t need to hire an expert in big data

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#44

Post by scarface74 » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 10:58 PM UTC

stemuk wrote: post #34

brianwawok wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on pay, right? If you are offering employee #1 market pay, why would you give them 10% equity? That is potentially millions of dollars for not taking a risk. I have been on both sides of this, and have thoughts. What do you think is fair for employee #1 making at or near market rate?

Even if you pay your #1 employee at market rate he is taking huge risks and should be compensated accordingly. Working at an early stage company often comes with huge job insecurity, loss of medical benefits more mature companies might be able to offer (better insurance etc.) and a possible kink in your CV (3 years at Microsoft look much better than spending 3 years at an unsuccessful company that eventually shut dow…

If your first engineer is any good, “job insecurity” is the last thing he’s worried about. In today’s environment, even a slightly above engineer can get a job within a month.

Loss of medical benefits is just another number to add to thier salary. Statistically, equity especially for an unproven idea is meaningless. It’s likely not to be worth anything.

Three years as the lead engineer at even a failed startup looks a lot better on your resume than just being a low level drone at Microsoft. You will probably also have your hands in a lot more pots making you even more valuable.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#45

Post by scarface74 » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 10:59 PM UTC

thatjsguy wrote: post #41

brianwawok wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on pay, right? If you are offering employee #1 market pay, why would you give them 10% equity? That is potentially millions of dollars for not taking a risk. I have been on both sides of this, and have thoughts. What do you think is fair for employee #1 making at or near market rate?

> ...why would you give them 10% equity? Because they’re taking on a gigantic risk too?

What risk?

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#46

Post by scarface74 » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 11:01 PM UTC

Moodles wrote: post #21

I wonder what proportion of HN would have different careers if software engineering paid, say, as much as humanities while humanities paid like software engineering. It seems like everyone here (myself included) isn't really in it for the money, but who knows what would happen.

That’s Silicon Valley thinking. Most software engineers are no more “passionate” than any other endeavor.

I go to work every day just for the money. I keep on top of tech trends for optionality.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#47

Post by scarface74 » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 11:03 PM UTC

lmilcin wrote: post #11

1. Find somebody that is very good and passionate at something. 2. Present your idea the best you can. 3. Only hire if he/she is interested in your idea. 4. Offer stake in your business so it is also his/her business.

Why would I be interested in your idea? More than likely you aren’t trying to feed starving children. I might pretend like I’m interested, but at the end of the day, it’s just a paycheck.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#48

Post by wolco » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 11:08 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #36

phamilton wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many of them are specifically drawn by the idea they'll get to sit down and solve a problem on day 1 I don't see how engineer #1 or engineer #100 changes that. When I onboard a senior engineer, they get a problem on day 1.

The difference is that when hiring engineer #1 there's no technical infrastructure to which you'd onboard someone, and nobody who's really qualified to make a decent technical onboarding process - you're hiring a person to create this process (among others) from scratch, make the initial decisions themselves (instead of being told them during onboarding) and onboard others.

Onboarding become here are the bathrooms, there is a great place to eat down the street.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#49

Post by opportune » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 11:11 PM UTC

Moodles wrote: post #21

I wonder what proportion of HN would have different careers if software engineering paid, say, as much as humanities while humanities paid like software engineering. It seems like everyone here (myself included) isn't really in it for the money, but who knows what would happen.

Weird, I think it’s almost the opposite. I wouldn’t be in software if it didn’t at least allow for an upper-middle class lifestyle - I would probably have tried to either become a scientist, a brewer, or a banker. As a scientist I would maximize my mental interest and engagement in the work, as a brewer I would have the best lifestyle, and as a banker I would have the most money. Software right now is great because it does pretty well in all three categories, but if it paid just as well or a little more as being a scientist, I would have little reason to stick around in software.

Age is probably somewhat of a factor here since people who went into software before it was so highly paid likely didn’t have money as a huge motivator, compared to people who went into software more recently

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#50

Post by fermienrico » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 11:19 PM UTC

danbrooks wrote: post #26

Nice article. On TripleByte - they should make it clearer that the platform is only for the Bay Area and Software Engineering.

I am being cynical but this article feels like a reason to promote/plug TripleByte complete with a $15,000 offer at the end.