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

To where are you local, what are your desiderata, and what does your resume look like?

I can take a look privately if you'd like, or publicly here if you want broader opinions / to serve as a data point for others.

Verifiable evidence of them learning key new skills on their own, building passion projects (ideally somewhat comparable to what your startup needs), taking work to the finish line, etc.

Press (politely) for extra details via follow-up questions. Make it easy for the legitimate doers to share specifics of what they've done and learned, while the posers get vague in a hurry and change the subject.

>These are "I'm thinking out loud" phrases.

Not just that, it's also "I want to know what your opinion and reasoning is on this as well" This has often led to some of the most productive conversations of my career.

I'm not the poster you replied to, but as a recently retired multi-decade serial tech startup founder of the old-school bootstrap type - the addendum I'd add is what I now teach to young entrepreneurs: Assuming you're a first-time founder whose not playing the high-profile "raise more/spend more drag race" then accept you cannot hire "the best" engineers. You simply don't have the capital or reputation to recruit proven, top-notch talent. So, the only way to win is to play the game differently.

* Aside from a random, serendipitous surprise (which you shouldn't count on), early on the only proven "A players" you're going to have are your co-founders - which is why you chose them and gave them a huge chunk of equity. So you're going to have to get good at the art of hand-crafting a team that can win out of B and C level players. Doing this is hard but it's a tangible skill you can develop if you consciously work at it. They key is developing the knack for spotting raw, undeveloped and emerging talent. Of course, experience over time is the best way to get the knack but there are shortcuts. Always ask your circle of experienced advisors to tell you about times when they've seen someone emerge as a star despite starting from average (or below) expectations. Ask what that future star was like before and probe deeply on this. Ultimately, just being aware this is something you need to do and focusing on it can go a long way.

* Since you can't recruit enough star talent to win playing the game you wanted to play or using the strategy you'd planned, you have to adapt. Be willing to change your game, strategy or approach based on the unique talents and abilities the team you can recruit has. This is how great coaches can still win even with 'B-level' random talent.

* Be willing to accept unconventional, incomplete or flawed candidates if they have above average talent in one or more domains that matter to your unique value prop. Maybe you've figured out there's a backdoor way to win by making a product which doesn't have all the checkbox features but is fr faster than any other alternative at a couple critical things - and your hypothesis is that for some set of customers that will be enough to overlook your lack of features. Then you hear about a dev who's "the best goddamn high-perf optimizer I've ever seen" but after finding and talking to him, you learn he's got an uneven, checkered resume, has a felony record and can't work or live within 500 feet of a school - which is probably why he's available to start immediately if you're willing to have a chat with his parole officer.

Okay, maybe it's not that bad but the point is, you don't have the luxury of being inflexible. Back in the 80s I hired a talented engineer who was openly trans - and this was in a fairly small mid-western city. Times were very different then and it caused significant problems with other employees and even our landlord but I managed the downsides and this person delivered some incredible code that helped our launch product shine. Since times are (fortunately) different today, let's update the example. Maybe today's deeply flawed but weirdly-gifted-in-one-useful-way candidate comes to the interview wearing a MAGA hat and inquires if their licensed hidden carry firearm is going to be an issue in the office. Are you a good enough coach to extract winning results from a random team of flawed players with some unique gifts which are only partial, potential or still emerging? Can you craft a winning team by thinking different and digging deeper than anyone else through the bottomless pool of candidates who couldn't pass the first screen at Google or that hyper-funded AngelList-darling startup everyone's buzzing about? Because there are gems buried in that mountain of mediocrity if you can find and polish them.

If you're not talking about compensation, you're leaving money on the floor. I'm no "best engineer", but I've never failed to get meaningful bumps to my starting comp by giving some pushback on a company's initial offer. Most of the time the only leverage you'll have is the innate friction in the hiring process: By the time a company has extended an offer to you, they've committed non-trivial resources convincing people you're the right pick. It's a PITA to throw all that away, so something like "I'm very interested your offer. For $(offer+X) I could sign today" or "I like your company, but you're offering a bit below market rates. (A contractual pay bump after 3/6 months, an additional week PTO, whatever) or an extra $X would make me willing to accept immediately." will likely work. This should be ideally in person, or at lease over the phone or VOIP, so you have the opportunity to smooth things over and retreat with your tail between your legs if they take it very poorly, but I've never seen that happen. Worst I've heard of is a firm "Sorry, that's the offer, take it or leave it", leaving the applicant no worse off than they were before.

Not negotiating compensation just means you're paying a conflict avoidance tax.