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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"

#51

Post by mlinhares »

onesandofgrain wrote: post #8

Companies that say they only want the "the best engineers" or "we only hire A-students" and "top of the cake-engineers" I've usually found to be a breeding-ground for a somewhat toxic work-environment.

I wish there was a way to figure out if someone is proactive, willing and capable of learning and having little patience for bullshit.

These have been the most important traits i've seen on great engineers, people that just plow through the work day after day and jump over hurdles to get stuff done. It feels like everything else is secondary to just wanting to put in the work.

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

#53

Post by phoronixrly »

mrbluecoat wrote: post #24

You're right, don't hire the best engineers - let them create a startup instead with more VC funding than you've ever dreamed of, then watch as they erode your market share through aggressive marketing, better features, and faster release cycles as they slowly displace you by siphoning off your second-best engineers and eventually get bought out by your biggest competitor. /s

I am also getting a 'these are not the droids you're looking for' vibe from this

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

#55

Post by senko »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #42
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.

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.

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

#56

Post by chaboud »

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, nothing is a priority.

3. Recognize market dynamics. If you pay shit for shit hours to do shit work, you'll get shit unless you just get lucky.

4. Hire great people now, rather than waiting for the "best" (read: naively idealized) people.

To this, I'd probably want to see the author add another essay on the perils of hiring mediocre people (Jobs: bozo explosion, Rumsfeld: "A's hire A's, B's hire C's..."), because that's the very common company-killing pit that people are trying to avoid.

Mediocrity drives away talent, and a small team of talented people will absolutely smoke a large team of mediocre people. And therein lies the conundrum of startup hiring: what's the right balance?

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

#57

Post by arandr0x »

ospehlivano wrote: post #54

The irony: while you're waiting 4 months for the perfect engineer, your competitor shipped with a good-enough one who's now senior-level from the experience.

That's definitely a valuable take, but it's worth noting that not everyone will make better decisions just by sitting through enough fires, and it's also possible that your good enough person will fail to notice some larger risk or market shift that the person you could've waited for would have, because they'd have seen it before.

Hiring decisions tend to be a hindsight is 20/20 proposition.

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

#58

Post by thinkingtoilet »

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.

I was working for a large company with great pay and incredible benefits. I was fucking miserable. I took a 35% pay cut to go to a small company with basically no benefits. I'm so much happier now. I live in a rural area and work remote. I live reasonably. I don't need all the money I can possibly get.
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