How to Hire Your First Engineer • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#101

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 3:26 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #96

sidlls wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those developers "doing okay" are doing significantly worse than us SV and FAANG company engineers. I save more every year now than a good number of junior engineers take home in a year, and I'm a crappy average developer not even at FAANG with a much smaller total comp than their staff. There are a tiny, tiny number of SE jobs having more than 50% of my current salary (let alone equity and other benefits and…

The average software developer V in San Francisco makes about $190K according to salary.com. In most other major American cities outside of New York/DC area its about $140K. If you compare the cost of living in any of those cities, it starts looking a lot worse for Silicon Valley. https://qz.com/906086/san-francisco-is-actually-one-of-the-w... If you go the billable consultant route with the right skill set, you can…

Software Emgineer V on Salary.com represents the tippy top outlier of the elite senior engineer totem pole. It’s a stretch to call that an average anything. For a more realistic median salary range, just look at the figures for plain Software Engineer.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#102

Post by lordCarbonFiber » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 3:27 AM UTC

mful wrote: post #60

Anyone else getting a little tired of the immediate reduction of any conversation around early-stage startup job opportunities to "comp vs FAANG"? As someone who spent the last 5 years in early stage startups, before recently accepting a FAANG offer, I'm starting to realize folks who only think about comp probably aren't good fits for startups. Here are a few quick reasons to take less comp at a super early stage sta…

Not to say it can't happen, but I dislike the meme that early engineers for startups are working on "hard problems". From a business and social sense, for sure, having to develop quickly, pivot even more so, and pound dirt to carve out a fit is an experience in itself. But, from a technology side, most startups are positively mindnumbing for engineer one. Think your Ubers, your Instagrams, your Facebooks, your Dropbox, the problems don't get technologically interesting until you start doing them at scale. Until then you've got a bog standard php/phython/whatever web/mobile app. Compare that to the opportunity to work with the cutting edge in machine learning, or deployment at scale, or bleeding edge hardware that you'd get at your Facebooks, your Googles, your Microsoft. To me working at a startup I expect hefty comp to be giving up getting to work on interesting problems for the chance of having more agency and winning the lottery if we get huge. YMMV of course, but for me and I think a lot of tech people I'd rather do interesting work for a soul crushing application than soul crushing work to #changeTheWorld (especially if the former pays upwards of 5x more and the latter only pays out to the founder(s)).

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#103

Post by dasil003 » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 3:39 AM 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?

Well what do you mean by market pay? Because savvy engineers playing the SV game will say 300-400k total comp they get from FANG is "market". However that's assuming A) you can jump through the hoops to get one of those positions and B) you can stomach the politics of whatever team you happen to land on.

Neither of those things are much of an indicator of a good #1 engineer hire—yeah you want an above average engineer, but you don't want someone who is dependent on world-class tooling, world-class colleagues, or is so focused on tech that they can't see the forest for the trees of the business landscape they are in.

You need a solid engineer who is a hustler, willing to dive deep into whatever area is necessary, but doesn't fetishize some aspect of technology or become obsessed with implementing something in-house because it's an interesting technical problem. Current hiring practices are largely cargo-culted off of successful tech giants who face very different problems from what the average startup does.

If you find someone who gets it and has the skills to back it up then they deserve to be brought in with both a real salary and real equity because at this stage every hire is still life and death for the company. The challenge is whether you can recognize this person.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#104

Post by ericd » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:18 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #84

mful wrote: post #60

Anyone else getting a little tired of the immediate reduction of any conversation around early-stage startup job opportunities to "comp vs FAANG"? As someone who spent the last 5 years in early stage startups, before recently accepting a FAANG offer, I'm starting to realize folks who only think about comp probably aren't good fits for startups. Here are a few quick reasons to take less comp at a super early stage sta…

As someone who did a long string of failing small companies and finally settled in among the FAANGs, I respect your experience but disagree with everything you said. Wide breadth of skills? If you’re hired as a code monkey you’re going to monkey code. Nobody ever asked me what I thought about the latest business partnership or synergy strategy. Just code. Career progression? Another nope. With only a few people in th…

These might be not be unrelated to the fact that those small companies failed.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#105

Post by fma » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:28 AM UTC

sidlls wrote: post #89

brianwawok wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cofounder takes risk, an employee does not. Both are valid, but different, paths.

Employees take risks. The earlier the startup, the bigger the risk. The risk may be different but it's still a risk.

Yep...if I'm going to be offered $x as employee #3 with little to no equity, and the same $x at a stable company...I don't see why I should risk joining when there's little reward.

Risks can be: Stress due to working more (wearing more hats, not enough employees) Not having a stable paycheck because company needs to pay venders otherwise they go bankrupt. Recession or downturn, loss of job immediately while big company can weather.

Etc...all the things not at a big company.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#106

Post by Retra » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:30 AM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #67

zorpner wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on pay, right? If you are offering employee #1 market pay, why would you give them 10% equity? Because this is how you get good people. If you want to offer them what they could get by working someplace else, they may as well work someplace else (likely without the hours, stress, or potential instability of a startup).

Maybe, maybe not. Startups offer a lot of non-financial benefits over working at the big established companies. 1) Looser culture. Less likely to have a dress code or an attendance policy. 2) Less meetings, more coding. For someone that wants to get stuff done, way more to do in a startup. 3) Sense of purpose. A huge part of life satisfaction is doing something that actually matters. WAY easier to do this when you ar…

Pssh, I get all that at my entry level corporate job.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#107

Post by fma » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:41 AM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #67

zorpner wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on pay, right? If you are offering employee #1 market pay, why would you give them 10% equity? Because this is how you get good people. If you want to offer them what they could get by working someplace else, they may as well work someplace else (likely without the hours, stress, or potential instability of a startup).

Maybe, maybe not. Startups offer a lot of non-financial benefits over working at the big established companies. 1) Looser culture. Less likely to have a dress code or an attendance policy. 2) Less meetings, more coding. For someone that wants to get stuff done, way more to do in a startup. 3) Sense of purpose. A huge part of life satisfaction is doing something that actually matters. WAY easier to do this when you ar…

Right. That's why I have side projects, to satisfy 1,2,3.

My bank doesn't accept "sense of purpose" as payment. My real job is for my mortgage and retirement.

An extra $10k+ per year counts a lot when compounded. $10k a year for 30 years, 7% average long term stock market return gets you $1 million.

That could a better life style, retire many years earlier...all without the risk of a Scrappy startup hoping for a unicorn buyout.

Play with the numbers...but that's what you are giving up because you want to wear a graphic t-shirt to work.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#108

Post by fma » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:45 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #84

mful wrote: post #60

Anyone else getting a little tired of the immediate reduction of any conversation around early-stage startup job opportunities to "comp vs FAANG"? As someone who spent the last 5 years in early stage startups, before recently accepting a FAANG offer, I'm starting to realize folks who only think about comp probably aren't good fits for startups. Here are a few quick reasons to take less comp at a super early stage sta…

As someone who did a long string of failing small companies and finally settled in among the FAANGs, I respect your experience but disagree with everything you said. Wide breadth of skills? If you’re hired as a code monkey you’re going to monkey code. Nobody ever asked me what I thought about the latest business partnership or synergy strategy. Just code. Career progression? Another nope. With only a few people in th…

Career progression IMHO is best at mid size companies. Small enough to get the progression, large enough to actually get experience.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#109

Post by fma » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:52 AM 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.

When I started college in 2001 I knew I was going to be an engineer but was undecided between computer, mechanical, aerospace and chemical. I loved tinkering. If I recall, at that time the salary for undergrads wasn't a huge difference where salary would have driven your decision.

I ended up in computer engineering because it came natural (and now, software engineering as that's where the jobs are). If humanities salary was swapped I'd be a history major while tinkering on the side :)

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#110

Post by suyash » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 5:07 AM UTC

fermienrico wrote: post #50

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.

The article offered no new insights, it was more like an infomercial for the author’s company.