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How to Hire Your First Engineer

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#61

Post by repsilat »

scarface74 wrote: post #54
repsilat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s just a paycheck This is probably part of why it's hard to find a good first engineering hire -- for better or worse, most engineers aren't a good fit for that stage of a company's growth.

Doesn’t the founder have the same motivation? To make money?

Founders do not treat their company as "just a paycheck". They're not just turning up to punch the clock. Early on, the company is their life -- their efforts determine its success, and their company's success is their own success. The same goes, to a lesser extent, for early employees.

Maybe that's not widely agreed, though. I saw an ad on the "Who's Hiring?" post this month looking for a first engineer with a broad and deep skill set and big responsibilities offering 0.2% equity... Essentially no motivation to move heaven and earth to make the company succeed. Shrugs.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#62

Post by austhrow743 »

mful wrote: post #60

Anyone else getting a little tired of the immediate reduction of any conversation around early-stage startup job opportunities to "comp vs FAANG"? As someone who spent the last 5 years in early stage startups, before recently accepting a FAANG offer, I'm starting to realize folks who only think about comp probably aren't good fits for startups. Here are a few quick reasons to take less comp at a super early stage sta…

Its ~35% of your awake hours during work weeks. At FAANG comp rates there's no reason that has to be anywhere near ~35% of your life.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#63

Post by scarface74 »

repsilat wrote: post #61
scarface74 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t the founder have the same motivation? To make money?

Founders do not treat their company as "just a paycheck". They're not just turning up to punch the clock. Early on, the company is their life -- their efforts determine its success, and their company's success is their own success. The same goes, to a lesser extent, for early employees. Maybe that's not widely agreed, though. I saw an ad on the "Who's Hiring?" post this month looking for a first engineer with a broad…

Founders do not treat their company as "just a paycheck". They're not just turning up to punch the clock. Early on, the company is their life -- their efforts determine its success, and their company's success is their own success

Yes because they have a hope for a larger reward later.....

The same goes, to a lesser extent, for early employees.

Them not so much.

For instance Marco Arment was the first engineer at Tumblr. The exit was for $1 billion. He is rumored to have received less than $6 million.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#64

Post by throwawax911911 »

Almost all the early employees I have met in successful startups have been towering contributors to say the least. Many of them enjoyed very very comfortable jobs in FANG (or equivalent money companies) before taking this up OR moved into one afterwards.

Unless the startup founders themselves are technically up to the bar required, I would think this is going to require huge motivation to make folks like that join. That can be either in the way of convincing them with your software potential enough for them to make the switch OR a ton of money/equity (And not FANG level money, even better). I would go with the latter in 90+% of cases, probably both.

IOW - I don't think we have a proper market place today that serves these high tier developers who will single handedly make or break it for you. I don't think the normal recruiting methods apply to excellent established candidates. You might luck into one, but it is going to be real hard unless you draw from known sources.

FWIW, I am very curious if there is one such premium marketplace as well. (Sorry if this sounds gentrifying, but there are a bunch of engineers I know whose gross comp is close to 1MM/yr or more and I don't think you are going to find them prowling LinkedIn or responding to regular methods anytime soon. Anecdotally I do believe many of them have the capacity to do magic technically though).

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#65

Post by thrownaway1337 »

mful wrote: post #60

Anyone else getting a little tired of the immediate reduction of any conversation around early-stage startup job opportunities to "comp vs FAANG"? As someone who spent the last 5 years in early stage startups, before recently accepting a FAANG offer, I'm starting to realize folks who only think about comp probably aren't good fits for startups. Here are a few quick reasons to take less comp at a super early stage sta…

But, as "First Engineer", you get maybe 1/25th or 1/50th the equity of a founder, and you might join 3 months after the company's "founding" pre-product / pre-product market fit. The company might pivot substantially 5 times before finding fit, or might not find fit at all, or it might take 10 years to see any benefit in the 1% of cases where the company does make it.

I'm not disagreeing with your comment, but if the reason you join is to work on hard problems with passionate people then there ought to be a strong reason why it makes sense to be engineer #1 and not yourself a founder.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#66

Post by brianwawok »

stemuk wrote: post #34
brianwawok wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on pay, right? If you are offering employee #1 market pay, why would you give them 10% equity? That is potentially millions of dollars for not taking a risk. I have been on both sides of this, and have thoughts. What do you think is fair for employee #1 making at or near market rate?

Even if you pay your #1 employee at market rate he is taking huge risks and should be compensated accordingly. Working at an early stage company often comes with huge job insecurity, loss of medical benefits more mature companies might be able to offer (better insurance etc.) and a possible kink in your CV (3 years at Microsoft look much better than spending 3 years at an unsuccessful company that eventually shut dow…

> Even if you pay your #1 employee at market rate he is taking huge risks and should be compensated accordingly. Working at an early stage company often comes with huge job insecurity, loss of medical benefits more mature companies might be able to offer (better insurance etc.)

Sorry, but no. Jobs are very easy for a good dev. You are taking no zero risk as engineer #1 at a startup if your pay is market rate.

> and a possible kink in your CV (3 years at Microsoft look much better than spending 3 years at an unsuccessful company that eventually shut down).

To who? I would hire the 3 failed startup guy any day over the 14 years at Microsoft guy.

> To sum it up, I would expect a #1 engineers equity to be at least half of a founders equity AND payed at near-market rate.

Haha. I mean I guess it's fair to expect that. Maybe someone would give it to you. To me, it sees like a very inflated value of self worth if you are wanting to take little to no risk but then reap MOST of the benefits of being a founder.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#67

Post by brianwawok »

zorpner wrote: post #53
brianwawok wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on pay, right? If you are offering employee #1 market pay, why would you give them 10% equity? That is potentially millions of dollars for not taking a risk. I have been on both sides of this, and have thoughts. What do you think is fair for employee #1 making at or near market rate?

Depends on pay, right? If you are offering employee #1 market pay, why would you give them 10% equity? Because this is how you get good people. If you want to offer them what they could get by working someplace else, they may as well work someplace else (likely without the hours, stress, or potential instability of a startup).

Maybe, maybe not.

Startups offer a lot of non-financial benefits over working at the big established companies.

1) Looser culture. Less likely to have a dress code or an attendance policy.

2) Less meetings, more coding. For someone that wants to get stuff done, way more to do in a startup.

3) Sense of purpose. A huge part of life satisfaction is doing something that actually matters. WAY easier to do this when you are shipping a product to actual customers vs sitting between 6 layers of management at google writing code to improve ad conversion by 0.1%

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#68

Post by a13n »

stemuk wrote: post #34
brianwawok wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on pay, right? If you are offering employee #1 market pay, why would you give them 10% equity? That is potentially millions of dollars for not taking a risk. I have been on both sides of this, and have thoughts. What do you think is fair for employee #1 making at or near market rate?

Even if you pay your #1 employee at market rate he is taking huge risks and should be compensated accordingly. Working at an early stage company often comes with huge job insecurity, loss of medical benefits more mature companies might be able to offer (better insurance etc.) and a possible kink in your CV (3 years at Microsoft look much better than spending 3 years at an unsuccessful company that eventually shut dow…

Why assume #1 engineer is a he?

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#69

Post by benatkin »

jazzychad wrote: post #25

These are good points for finding your first engineer, but here is a tip for helping close your dream hire: offer more equity. Your first eng hire will shoulder nearly all of the technical burden soon after as the founders transition into more of the non-technical roles (sales, outreach, recruiting, fundraising, business strategy). The amount of blood, sweat, and tears poured in by the first eng hire is somewhat less…

This isn't generally a good idea because you run the risk of giving equity to someone who doesn't care about it, which is foolish for the company for the same reason that it's foolish for the prospective employee to not try to get more equity.
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