Ask HN: First hire offered to work part-time – what should I do?

Controversial opinion but learned through experience the hard way here, repeatedly proven, anyone that you feel "like lack of commitment from him could possibly influence our culture in a negative way", just pass (at least until you have product market fit or a repeatable business running). As soon as shit hits the fan, they will either leave or drop performance, and you will have to let them go.

In your case, I think the issue is not about part time, but the commitment itself. If it's your first hire, you need them to be on-board, and contrary to what most people say, have more expectations than people would for a "normal" employee. The truth is, that person is not a normal employee, it's the first hire in a very early stage business. If you treat that hire as a regular employee, you will build expectations and won't be able to live up to it, and it will backfire for both of you 6-8 months down the road. That will hurt your ability to build a core team, and you will have to start from scratch.

Do not give up on that, no matter what the popular opinion tells you. Most people are not founders, and you should trust the guts that you have about building your core team.

Hire for professionalism. You've been working on this for a long time. It means it's intrinsically interesting for you, and you've gained quite a lot of internalized intuitive understanding of the field.

It's very unlikely that you find someone who is intrinsically interested of the same things as you. Or has as deep intuitive understanding of all the business variables. But it does not mean he can't provide great value.

Id's say it's a red flag if you hire for "passion" instead of "professionalism". True professionals want to do a good job and ship on time. You don't need "passion" for that.

This seems to be a lot of assumptions on what the "candidate" might feel like. TBH, We dont have enough information.

Why would the candidate hedge their bets on risky propositions by working part-time on TWO startups? Wouldn't it be more likely they need a side-gig (backup plan)?

I would definitely hire them. I don't see it as a lack of commitment, rather he/she just understands the value of their time. 24 hours of labour is NOT 60% of a full work week, especially for a knowledge worker.

It's a big green flag from my perspective.

It sounds to me like you're uncertain about whether to hire this guy or not. It's my own personal rule to only hire people when I am 100% certain.

Now I could give you all sorts of reasons why this guy will be an excellent hire. My personal gut feeling is that some people deliver more value in 3 days than others deliver in 3 years, so "bum in seat time" can be misleading in terms of the contribution someone will make. Engineers with side projects are often more goal-focused, because they purge their need to over-engineer and try new things outside your core production project. You hire employees for their talent, not their passion. But these are _my_ gut feelings, not _yours_, and you need to pay attention to _your_ gut feelings when you make such a critical hire because it's _your_ startup. Presumably, your gut feelings are pretty good which is how you're in a position to be running a startup in the first place.

Over the next few months, you will inevitably have problems. Things will be harder and take longer than you think. Then you'll be saying "it's because they're not committed enough, I should have listened to my gut feeling when we hired them".

I would express my thoughts fully and transparently to this guy. Perhaps you can explore a middle-ground - here's some ideas:

1. More hours with more pay in the short-term to help you scaffold things, scaling back once you're up and running.

2. Work part-time as an engineer, still be available for operational stuff outside those hours (with pay).

3. Help you hire somebody else ASAP, so you don't need the original guy full time.