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You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

otherbranch.com

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Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#61

Post by Lyngbakr »

andy99 wrote: post #25

> Would you rather spend four months in stasis waiting This is a false dichotomy. Hiring slowly doesn't mean doing nothing. It's really more like "do you (CTO) want to slow down on building and become a manager now?" Waiting and finding someone who doesn't need managing can be way less distracting than going for someone imperfect because you've convinced yourself you need to hire now.

The author's point, though, is that folks tend to wait four months and then hire "someone imperfect", which they could've done now.

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#62

Post by fullshark »

Hiring committees want people who can execute their vision no matter how poorly or well conceived it is, that’s it. Everything else is noise and you shouldn’t take it too seriously. There is a ton of bullshit floating around the industry, calling it out is an endless and ultimately fruitless exercise. Get paid and get out with your sanity/health in tact and you win.

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#63

Post by adw »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #44
tomatohs wrote: post #17

It's not 2010 anymore. Most startups can't even attract "the best engineers" much less hire them. This is the late game, why would an engineer work for a fraction of a percent of equity and a below market salary when they can take a job at FANG? You've got to be offering something really, really valuable like remote work, an interesting problem, and/or a new experience. Otherwise the math doesn't math.

It's always been the case that FAANG or whatever are not always the "best" home for the "best" engineers. Many do not/did not feel comfortable there, especially as they became more and more corporate and slow. But unfortunately the answer now is that "best engineers" can't work there either because the layoff / employment-squeeze is in full swing. You're right that the equity packages offered by startups to engineers…

In my experience startups have as much bullshit as FAANG companies, it’s just different bullshit.

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#64

Post by 6r17 »

ngl - the worst times I ever spent was in companies that did not care about tech or what they were doing. The thing is, *i'm* a tech profile ; I like doing deep tech - going to the heart of the tissue. I learned with difficulty that it's sometimes better to not be open-minded, to not go for companies that "just get shit done" etc... - because the realities is that, most of the time, people do what they like, and it just happens that they can latch on something that make them earn money. And we forget that's it's actually a multiple body problem, and that we therefor need to have a strong focus in order to be competitive. But I don't want to be competitive doing php, or staying on the same Django framework since 2012 ; or sticking do doing the same job for the next 2 years until the HR is done with me because they got that smart idea. The truth is ; everybody has to cross the market somehow to be competitive. So you better find a way to be part of the best engineers - and I don't want to be in a company where this is undervalued - because *I know* that in 6 month to 2 years - my skills will not have increased, my competivity on the market would have decreased ; my profile won't sound as strong - and the economics just don't math out.

Let's compare the salary of a back-end engineer with a distributed engineer - it's literally 3x to 4x as much in Europe. If you have no job ; it's literally an opportunity to multiply your salary, improve, know the stack better, etc... - The end-goal is not to be part of a company that stagnates both in technology and ideas for many years - that's already a waste of time and money.

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#66

Post by mathiaspoint »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #44
tomatohs wrote: post #17

It's not 2010 anymore. Most startups can't even attract "the best engineers" much less hire them. This is the late game, why would an engineer work for a fraction of a percent of equity and a below market salary when they can take a job at FANG? You've got to be offering something really, really valuable like remote work, an interesting problem, and/or a new experience. Otherwise the math doesn't math.

It's always been the case that FAANG or whatever are not always the "best" home for the "best" engineers. Many do not/did not feel comfortable there, especially as they became more and more corporate and slow. But unfortunately the answer now is that "best engineers" can't work there either because the layoff / employment-squeeze is in full swing. You're right that the equity packages offered by startups to engineers…

Large corporations are probably the worst place actually. You get slotted into some random project treadmill (which will be completely different from whatever position you interviewed for) where most of the decisions are made by middle managers at least one or two levels above you. Going out of your way to solve problems will be ignored at best and my even result in a reprehend.

These places are for people who hate thinking but are good at pretending otherwise.

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#67

Post by arandr0x »

chaboud wrote: post #56

I was prepared to straight up fight with this author until I actually read what they were saying: 1. Don't hold infeasibly high standards when you're starting up. Time is more precious than than anything (you can't spell "scrappy" without "crappy"). 2. Be more intentional than a lottery-ticket financial plan when it comes to evaluating what traits matter and at what priority order. If everything is a priority, nothin…

I think the post is getting at the idea that pedigree is not a reliable predictor of talent, but because it's a convenient and standard one, everyone uses it (which in turns reduces its usefulness). It's harder for a recruiter to fully experience the perils of hiring mediocre people, but they're definitely at ground zero for "what's on a resume is mostly not representative of actual talent".

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#68

Post by threatofrain »

chaboud wrote: post #56

I was prepared to straight up fight with this author until I actually read what they were saying: 1. Don't hold infeasibly high standards when you're starting up. Time is more precious than than anything (you can't spell "scrappy" without "crappy"). 2. Be more intentional than a lottery-ticket financial plan when it comes to evaluating what traits matter and at what priority order. If everything is a priority, nothin…

Great talent knows how to scale mediocre talent, but you should do so after building that initial core team.

Re: You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

#69

Post by throwway120385 »

zuppy wrote: post #50
fitzn wrote: post #13

> The best engineers make more than your entire payroll. They have opinions on tech debt and timelines. They have remote jobs, if they want them. They don’t go “oh, well, this is your third company, so I guess I’ll defer to you on all product decisions”. They care about comp, a trait you consider disqualifying. They can care about work-life balance, because they’re not desperate enough to feel the need not to. And ho…

it's more like short term gain vs long term gain. experienced engineers can design an architecture that will allow you to scale cheaper and faster in the future, at the high initial cost. it will be cheaper to maintain, better for security. depends at what point your business is at the moment of hiring and what you plan to do with the product. do you need volume or quality (both variants are right)?

If your business is going to cease to exist in 4 months, who cares about scalability? Pay the interest when it comes due and when you can afford it. If someone is serious about building a company they will be okay with that.
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