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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"

#121

Post by heeton »

I've considered "great engineer" a hiring anti-pattern for a decade. (Specifically in the space of product-focussed pre-pmf startups, through into early scale-ups).

I'll take "great communicator", "great co-ordinator", "great collaborator" and "great technical designer" over engineering prowess any day of the week. That's where the 10x gains come from in a team.

Though, on that last point, I think most great engineers I've met are that way because they are great technical designers. It's not something that usually gets filtered for in hiring in my experience.

We have a career framework that I've refined across 4 teams now. 6 areas, and only one of those is "Coding and testing".

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

#122

Post by dragonwriter »

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?

> Why ever hire mediocre talent?

Even if we had perfect filters to accurately identify the best talent, there's not enough of the top few percent to fill all the spaces in the industry, so someone is going to be hiring mediocre talent or forgoing having a business.

In the real world, though, we don't have perfect filters, and churn has a cost, too, so in practice most places are going to derive value if they can make effective use of mediocre talent rather than just letting it increase their churn.

(Moreover, one of the effects frequently claimed from great talent, employed effectively, as noted upthread, is not just their own direct output, but increasing the yield from lesser talent; if you don't hire any lesser talent in the first place, you can't benefit from that.)

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

#123

Post by cmrdporcupine »

Keyframe wrote: post #78
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.

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? Once you hit a few million in the bank, have a house, priorities kind of shift. Not for everyone, but for those that would work elsewhere for reasons not money.

The problem you'll find (I've found) in this case is that management in many of these "startups" expect a certain kind of ... ahem... motivational/authoritarian structure ... that lacks effectiveness or sense with someone who has paid off their mortgage and is mainly there in order to ship things and enjoy crafting software.

Put it another way, there are people in every company whose reasons being there can conflict with the motivations of an engineer with the priorities you describe. Often those people end up being your manager.

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

#124

Post by cmrdporcupine »

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.

I worked at one in the 2010/2011 time frame where I did not, ironically one where I made no effort at all on negotiation on options and assumed the options would be worth zero. A year later Google bought us.

I didn't get "I'm retiring now" money, not even close. But consider I expected nothing, was only a senior-level IC there for a year, and remained an IC after, it made appreciable change in my life and got me a good paying job at Google after.

But I think in that case it had more to do with the parties involved (our management were great people, and Google was motivated to treat us well).

I'd love to replicate this experience, but it ain't gonna happen.

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

#125

Post by OhMeadhbh »

senko wrote: post #55
OhMeadhbh wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because FANG companies do not attract "top talent." They attract "very good talent," but typically talent that requires infrastructure that doesn't exist at startups. Daryl Havens is the exception that proves this rule, and you are not Daryl (unless you are Daryl and in which case, "Hey Daryl! Let's meet up sometime and chat about VAXen.")

Neither do scrappy startups, because they don't have the money. Top talent that accept below-insanely-great pay start their own startups.

Yup. It's somewhat rare to find "top talent" at a startup, but more because many modern startups are stupid, existing only to suck from the VC teat. In my day... Be was a "startup" and Dominic and Andy were "top" talent. (and wasn't Dianne Hackborn at Be back then?) NeXT was a startup once and Avi Tevanian (despite my many, many technical disagreements) was an EXCELLENT engineer. RSADSI was a startup an Steve Dusse and Bob Baldwin were TOP talent.

I think after the dot-com run-up, "startup" often implied "unprofitable idiot idea that looks plausible long enough to convince VCs to use your company as a demonstration of the greater fool theory." But I said "often," not "always." The critical and vexxing part of this is it's so hard to figure out which idiot ideas are profitable before the VCs shower a small cadre of Stanford GSB grads with cash.

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

#127

Post by gxs »

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.

Ah, spoken like someone who’s actually built a team

In sports, you call them role players and it’s no different when building dev teams

I can’t imagine managing a team full of “best engineers”, sounds like a nightmare

Sometimes you just want solid, competent engineers who can agree to disagree and build what you ask them, in the way you ask them to

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

#128

Post by rachofsunshine »

binary132 wrote: post #81
throwway120385 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

unpopular opinion with engineers but unfortunately true startups are generally moreso a business endeavor than an engineering one, although the engineering must correctly support the business the engineering begins to take the driver’s seat as the tech debt and cost of scaling catch up to successful companies and begin to create excess drag but for many years, such companies can typically still afford to throw away m…

Depends on the business.

Some startups (like mine) are delivering a service, and the technology used to deliver that service is instrumental. Our back-end is an Airtable I configured myself, and it's been sufficient so far; better tech is not make or break for what we do. Other startups, like Flexport some years ago, fundamentally depend on technical function because that's the core of what they do.

One of the common mistakes founders make, in my expetience, is not asking which camp they're in. It's not a hard question to answer (usually), but it's an easy one not to ask.

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

#129

Post by siliconc0w »

The general goal of hiring for startups is, essentially money-ball or finding value. You could pay market-rate for a tenured senior engineer from a top tech company or you could pay a lot less from someone out of a state school that might fly under the normal resume screen but is otherwise highly motivated and high agency.

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

#130

Post by rachofsunshine »

guywithahat wrote: post #103
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.

This is a good addendum. Do you mind if I add it to the post (credited, of course)?
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