Why startups in India find it hard to hire devs
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Why startups in India find it hard to hire devs
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Re: Why startups in India find it hard to hire devs
#2Because founder wants to keep all the equity. Very few examples where early developers got share of success.
Re: Why startups in India find it hard to hire devs
#3Because founder wants to keep all the equity. Very few examples where early developers got share of success.
But would they be willing to work for equity anyway? Where I live no developer would work without pay (or for a reduced salary) for a startup if they could (and they could, easily) find offshoring work paid much above average local salaries.
Re: Why startups in India find it hard to hire devs
#4Often tech stacks are in place even before people actually decide what to do
This is a key warning sign IMHO - it means that technical decisions are being made by managers based on fashion rather than engineers based on what's the right tool for the job.
Re: Why startups in India find it hard to hire devs
#5I don't buy these reasons. I know of a startup which hits all the bullet points. If it works, the CTO has enough equity to never work again (unless he wants to). They want a full partner, not a coding body, which is precisely why they are giving away equity. They want the partner to completely own the tech side [1], make all the tech decisions, as well as participate in strategic decisions.
Local talent was completely uninterested. So they recruited an American who worked remotely for a few months, and is now moving to Pune and joining up full time.
[1] No PhP. The stack is Python/Django + Hadoop for analytics, and they have already released an internal utility as open source. More will follow. https://github.com/styloot
Re: Why startups in India find it hard to hire devs
#6I don't buy these reasons. I know of a startup which hits all the bullet points. If it works, the CTO has enough equity to never work again (unless he wants to). They want a full partner, not a coding body, which is precisely why they are giving away equity. They want the partner to completely own the tech side [1], make all the tech decisions, as well as participate in strategic decisions. Local talent was completel…
Sorry - your example is probably one of the exceptions.
I know two startup founders in Bangalore who face these issues - especially reason #1: matching the compensation for good talent.
And reason #3: there are almost no examples of non-founder startup millionaires in Bangalore (/India).
This is how most developers in Bangalore got rich in the last decade: get the highest compensation you can and invest as much as you can in two things: real estate and stocks.
Re: Why startups in India find it hard to hire devs
#7The OP is right on all counts. I live in New Delhi and often work freelance (Python/iOS work). What I've found is:
- Indian companies rarely pay well. I feel lucky if I can convince someone to pay me $12/hr.
- Most have unreasonable qualification criteria. Why do you want a degree when I have references and real world experience?
- A large number of them will treat people who went to "lesser" colleges differently from those who went to one of the IITs.
- I've never received a payment on time. On the other hand, my friends who have done contract work for American firms got paid on time.
This has been my experience. Of course, YMMV.
Re: Why startups in India find it hard to hire devs
#8As usual, Ravi is spot on here.
When I lasted looked into them, most startups in Bangalore were run by MBA-types who seemed to be intent on just copying the latest fad from Silicon valley. Even some of the most successful Indian startups - naukri.com and makemytrip.com are just copying well-established international websites and derive their success from paying attention to the Indian market before the country was on the radar of those players. It'll be interesting to see how these companies do now that they have competition. In any case, as Ravi and many others have pointed out, only the founders got rich out of Naukri and Makemytrip.
The other thing Ravi alluded to, about having credible proven founders is also important. I know a few devs* who, if they offered me a chance to work with them, I'd jump at the opportunity. However, the vast majority of these startups guys were folks I'd want to avoid working with even in GenericBigCorp.
* Unfortunately I don't know Ravi personally but if I did, he'd be near the top of this list.
Re: Why startups in India find it hard to hire devs
#9As usual, Ravi is spot on here. When I lasted looked into them, most startups in Bangalore were run by MBA-types who seemed to be intent on just copying the latest fad from Silicon valley. Even some of the most successful Indian startups - naukri.com and makemytrip.com are just copying well-established international websites and derive their success from paying attention to the Indian market before the country was on…
"copying well-established international websites and derive their success from paying attention to the Indian market before the country "
I'm not sure if this is such a bad thing. Flipkart copied Amazon and its thriving in this country.
Re: Why startups in India find it hard to hire devs
#10As usual, Ravi is spot on here. When I lasted looked into them, most startups in Bangalore were run by MBA-types who seemed to be intent on just copying the latest fad from Silicon valley. Even some of the most successful Indian startups - naukri.com and makemytrip.com are just copying well-established international websites and derive their success from paying attention to the Indian market before the country was on…
"copying well-established international websites and derive their success from paying attention to the Indian market before the country " I'm not sure if this is such a bad thing. Flipkart copied Amazon and its thriving in this country.
I'm not saying it's a bad business goal. Obviously, a lot of companies have succeeded doing this. My point is that such a policy is not very attractive if you're an engineer who "wants to build cool stuff".