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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"

#171

Post by CobrastanJorji »

Centigonal wrote: post #37

There is no such thing as "the best engineers." Some engineers are definitely better than others, but once you pass the bar of "really smart, great work ethic," the tech tree diverges pretty dramatically. Some engineers (like Notch) are amazing at quickly putting out vast quantities of mediocre code, prototyping ideas, maintaining a clear product vision, and bringing something into reality quickly. Other engineers (l…

You're missing the most important kind of great engineer: the guy who's got adequate technical skills but fantastic executive functioning skills. A lot of bright engineers target the "fun" problem or will otherwise get distracted, leaving a lot of simpler tasks ignored. Every team needs the dev who opens up Jira, opens a sorted list of tickets, and just knocks them down one by one, all day every day. Without them, the product will crumble slowly around an increasingly amazing and elegant core.

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

#172

Post by terminalshort »

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.

Only at very small companies or at very high levels at larger companies. Typically everybody is going to have to go through the full loop. In 99% of cases knowing someone gets you to the interview and nothing more. If you mean the "best engineers" like people whose names are known or the type op AI people that Zuckerberg is personally making offers to, then yes that's different, but those people are such outliers that statements like "going through the hiring process like a chump" don't really make sense because 99.99% of engineers are "chumps."

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

#173

Post by BrandonM »

indoordin0saur wrote: post #108
jcalvinowens wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just to add a counterpoint, I was hired as employee #3 in 2011. In 2020, I was able to sell 5.8% of my stake for $200K (as part of Series C). In 2021, I sold another 4.4% for $500K (Series D on terms too good to refuse). I still hold equity or options in nearly 0.5% of the company (which is still private).

My wife and I used about half the proceeds of those sales to buy a house (cash offer) in late 2021.

I don’t know what proportion of early employees get screwed, but people who do well are usually smart to avoid posting publicly about it (and I am apparently an idiot).

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

#175

Post by declan_roberts »

I haven't read an article this on-point in a long time. As someone comfortably working remotely at BIGTECH it's actually really frustrating.

OK you have a 60% pay cut and forced relocation back to the Bay Area. Let's jump right into the conversation about how you're going to make up for that to attract talent. Don't tell me it's a virtue because I'm not stupid and you're not stupid.

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

#176

Post by [deleted] »

llm_nerd wrote: post #6

I mean...you should probably hire good enough engineers that a website can withstand a pretty small amount of HN attention... ...I kid! But seriously, though, how is it possible in 2025 that websites can still collapse from the relatively minuscule traffic that an HN front page sends? Are people upvoting this submission without having actually seen it? EDIT: For the "works for me" people, the site's host, framer.app,…

[deleted]

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

#177

Post by OkayPhysicist »

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?

Because you have a mediocre job to do. If you hire excellent talent, you have to pay excellent prices. If you only have mediocre ROI tasks for said talent, then you're reducing the ROI of the task by overpaying for better talent.

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

#178

Post by trevorLane »

Centigonal wrote: post #37

There is no such thing as "the best engineers." Some engineers are definitely better than others, but once you pass the bar of "really smart, great work ethic," the tech tree diverges pretty dramatically. Some engineers (like Notch) are amazing at quickly putting out vast quantities of mediocre code, prototyping ideas, maintaining a clear product vision, and bringing something into reality quickly. Other engineers (l…

this. high performance is idiosyncratic, based on context and many other factors in dynamic environments.

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

#179

Post by guywithahat »

bityard wrote: post #118
guywithahat wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes. The more experienced you are, the more your network does all of your job searching for you in the background. (Of course, this assumes you are actively building and maintaining your network.)

I'm not sure it's just a network thing. Certainly you need experience to be a great engineer, but I've known plenty of engineers with 30 years experience who find themselves competing with everyone else when they lose their job.

The best engineer I've ever known spent most of his career doing drivers at Qualcomm. When he left his job they offered him significant raises to stay, offered months of paid leave, and then said he could always come back. Later, an OSS project he worked with heard he was free, and they changed their remote work policies to hire him. He's under 30, and despite working remotely at an OSS project makes significantly more than me.

I like to think I'm a good engineer, but when I work with customers they aren't setting linkedin alerts on my name for if I leave my job. To qualify for what this article is getting at, you really need to be the best engineer out of 100's, not the best engineer in your team of 5.

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

#180

Post by j45 »

bilekas wrote: post #110
efavdb wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depending on the work, a smaller team that performs better together can often get more done than a larger team.
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