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

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

#101

Post by efavdb »

threatofrain wrote: post #68
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.

Why ever hire mediocre talent?

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

#102

Post by rvz »

The whole truth:

When the average pre-revenue startup says:

> "We need the best engineers"

What they really mean is this:

"We really need ex-FAANG engineers from Ivy League, Stanford, MIT and Oxbridge for close to below market rates."

*6 months later:*

"We have a skills shortage of the best engineers"

What they really mean is this:

"No one wants to accept our below market price offers, even with 0.01% equity which may be worth something one day."

If the startup cannot offer a competitive compensation to FAANG or the big AI companies, just walk away. Likely dodged a bullet anyway.

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

#103

Post by guywithahat »

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…

The only addendum to this I'd add is the best engineers rarely have to go through the hiring process in a meaningful way, it's usually someone recognizes them from a previous job and vouches heavily for them.

I say this because if you're going through the hiring process like a chump, I'd leave the ego at the door and not talk about compensation or try to demand remote work on a desirable position.

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

#105

Post by gedy »

throwway120385 wrote: post #69
zuppy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure but then incentivize engineers to hack it out knowing they'll have to deal with the shit show if you become successful. Sorry but most "startup engineers" aren't , and it's basically bad for their careers to implement "the vision" in a throw-away manner.

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

#107

Post by GCA10 »

arandr0x wrote: post #67
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".

Hire people on the way up.

Hire people who are going to do their best work ever, for you, after having partially but not fully mastered everything you want, via their previous jobs. It's easy to evaluate a resume. It's harder -- but not impossible -- to assess potential. Working inside a big tech company for six years, I saw that PM hires were done almost entirely on pedigree: find me another Stanford grad. These tended to produce a lot of fast exits as well as some comically bad and totally predictable fails.

Engineering hires were done on hunger, drive, scrappiness (and networks). They fared better.

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

#108

Post by indoordin0saur »

jcalvinowens wrote: post #82
indoordin0saur wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers don't really care about equity anymore because they've been burned so many times. The big payouts from a successful company are not necessarily guaranteed the way they were pre-2015 or so. It has become too common for there to be behind-closed-doors dlilutions and investor-only exit opportunities. It has become very unwise to trust anything beyond real cash wired to your bank account.

Every single solitary person I've personally known who worked at a successful startup got screwed out of their equity somehow. Literally every single one.

Yup. The stories of old, where an engineer would grind for a decade then have a nice seven-figure payout to buy a home seem a remote memory. I'm not sure what happened because successful start-ups still exist and it seems like somebody is profiting off of acquisitions and IPOs.

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

#109

Post by y-curious »

pjdesno wrote: post #72

I worked for 5 startups before I went back to grad school and then entered academia; it was over a quarter century ago but I think some of the lessons remain valid. The best startup I was at was one where four engineers who knew each other had dropped out of a big company and started with a consulting project, developing the first version of the product for an early customer (a national lab) using FPGAs. Then they go…

Yeah there's a reason that "ideas guys" are memed to death online. It's very easy to have a great idea, the skill is in selling that idea to VCs, customers, friends and family etc.

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

#110

Post by bilekas »

efavdb wrote: post #101
threatofrain wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why ever hire mediocre talent?

Can be financially the only viable option, also they present an amazing opportunity to train up to fit better into your ideal.
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