I've been helping a few companies recruit founding engineers. After doing a lot of screens I have a rough idea for what to look for. For others that have done a lot of hiring what do you look for specifically besides their technical ability?
Ask HN: What do you look for in your first 10 hires?
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Re: Ask HN: What do you look for in your first 10 hires?
#2Something that is not in the 1M+ people studying for interviews and throwing pieces of paper (CVs, cover letters, degrees) at the job application:
A verifiable track record beyond the CV, that is extremely hard to fake with valuable experience that you did not know you needed.
As I said before at least 2 of the following:
1. Open source contributions to high-profile / major repositories (with code-review in the open with core maintainers). No hello world / demo projects.
2. Production-grade shipped projects / side-projects with paying customers or high-profile companies using it and is bringing in recurring revenue.
3. Given several presentations at conferences discussing anything from your project as a library author, maintainer or at a company showcasing your engineering expertise.
All are extremely difficult to fake and easy to verify and requires a level of effort on the applicant to qualify which filters 90% of noise out there. Years of experience is not a requirement but a bonus.
The rest of the other methods like leetcode, hackerrank, take home projects or quiz trivia, wastes time on both the interviewer and the candidate and both can be cheated easily using AI.
It is that simple.
Re: Ask HN: What do you look for in your first 10 hires?
#3I think this is where you’ll define the company culture. Maybe in the first 10, but certainly in the first 100. If you want to design the corporate culture, this is where it starts.
Re: Ask HN: What do you look for in your first 10 hires?
#4Something that is not in the 1M+ people studying for interviews and throwing pieces of paper (CVs, cover letters, degrees) at the job application: A verifiable track record beyond the CV, that is extremely hard to fake with valuable experience that you did not know you needed. As I said before at least 2 of the following: 1. Open source contributions to high-profile / major repositories (with code-review in the open…
> Given several presentations at conferences discussing anything from your project as a library author, maintainer or at a company showcasing your engineering expertise.
What sort of positive signal is this supposed to be? Why would presenting point towards a productive employee?
Re: Ask HN: What do you look for in your first 10 hires?
#5Something that is not in the 1M+ people studying for interviews and throwing pieces of paper (CVs, cover letters, degrees) at the job application: A verifiable track record beyond the CV, that is extremely hard to fake with valuable experience that you did not know you needed. As I said before at least 2 of the following: 1. Open source contributions to high-profile / major repositories (with code-review in the open…
> Given several presentations at conferences discussing anything from your project as a library author, maintainer or at a company showcasing your engineering expertise. What sort of positive signal is this supposed to be? Why would presenting point towards a productive employee?
I agree.
In my experience, this correlates more with soft skills and “one man band” founder/maker companies that tend to sell training products or (if they do exist in a company environment at all) invariably work in DevRel and aren’t pushing code.
Re: Ask HN: What do you look for in your first 10 hires?
#6Specifically what i used to check, whether candidate also motivated with mission that I have. If its not motivate them then there is a cultural fit problem and might not good fit for early days.
Re: Ask HN: What do you look for in your first 10 hires?
#7People who make (mostly good) decisions and ship stuff as quickly as possible. Ideally while being nice people to work with.
Your first hires need to be people who make the company faster, not slower. A single bad hire can sink the ship. Someone who is great in a large corporation can ruin an early start-up.
Personally, I'm hoping for low-ego high achievers. But that's up to you. This is where you get to define what the company culture will be.
Re: Ask HN: What do you look for in your first 10 hires?
#8[flagged]
Re: Ask HN: What do you look for in your first 10 hires?
#9Low ego, More passion and drive, hustling mindset, Generalists, Good judgement.
Simple thing i would do is Ask lot of "Whys"
Why you did this?, why this way? , why you joined this company?
This gives good understanding of both Personality and Hard skills.
Re: Ask HN: What do you look for in your first 10 hires?
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Given several presentations at conferences discussing anything from your project as a library author, maintainer or at a company showcasing your engineering expertise. What sort of positive signal is this supposed to be? Why would presenting point towards a productive employee?
I agree. In my experience, this correlates more with soft skills and “one man band” founder/maker companies that tend to sell training products or (if they do exist in a company environment at all) invariably work in DevRel and aren’t pushing code.
The whole point is to reinforce the track record of someone applying to said founding engineering role which you can look up what they have presented and see how well they answer questions from the audience which are soft skills applicable in founding engineer / CTO / senior roles which goes beyond AI-generated CVs or cover letters.
This can be found all the time, from many tech talks or conferences large or small and 99% of the time, the person presenting already covers most of the requirements and makes the selection process easier, not harder.
One part I did miss in my post was to require at least 2 out of 3 of them so, I added that in. But I'd rather optimize for hiring candidates who are builders and know what they are talking and what to build even with AI and can easily answer deep technical questions (because they have experience and have done it), than those studying for the interview and need constant hand-holding and are over-reliant on AI.
Remember, this is for recruiting founding engineers and the bar has to be high way above the noise.