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How to Hire Your First Engineer

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#81

Post by poof131 »

brianwawok wrote: post #30
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…

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?

The problem is market rate. You mention market pay and equity as two separate things. But market rate is really total comp: base, bonus, and equity. For a senior engineer in the valley this is hitting $300k+. Saying we are close to market on salary and ignoring the rest of a total compensation package is disingenuous but suits startups (and others). A package with a value of $1.2M over 4 years would take a significant chunk of equity from a seed stage startup, or about 10% of equity on a convertible note round at a 10M cap, right around what the parent suggested. It’s fair to say we can’t give that up, but it’s also fair to say you aren’t matching market rate.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#82

Post by dangrover »

westoncb wrote: post #79
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?

> If you are offering employee #1 market pay, why would you give them 10% equity? So that they care about the company on a similar level to the founders, and feel a real sense of ownership, dedication, and responsibility. I've been in a position several times now where at work I'll have a reputation as a very capable engineer, typically placed on or leading the most critical projects etc. —but, my employers still hav…

This comment resonated with me. I have always felt this way as an engineer, whether it be a startup or a big company. I was always at kids table by virtue of being an engineer.

I solved it by becoming a product manager. I miss engineering, but I no longer have that angst on a daily basis. I have found PMming is a job where sense of ownership + willingness to work to further overall success of the given project is heavily rewarded. And the precision of thought that is a pre-requesite for engineering can equally be applied to PMming (though not all PMs have it!).

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#83

Post by westoncb »

dangrover wrote: post #82
westoncb wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are offering employee #1 market pay, why would you give them 10% equity? So that they care about the company on a similar level to the founders, and feel a real sense of ownership, dedication, and responsibility. I've been in a position several times now where at work I'll have a reputation as a very capable engineer, typically placed on or leading the most critical projects etc. —but, my employers still hav…

This comment resonated with me. I have always felt this way as an engineer, whether it be a startup or a big company. I was always at kids table by virtue of being an engineer. I solved it by becoming a product manager. I miss engineering, but I no longer have that angst on a daily basis. I have found PMming is a job where sense of ownership + willingness to work to further overall success of the given project is hea…

That's a direction I've been thinking about too!

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#84

Post by ryandrake »

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…

As someone who did a long string of failing small companies and finally settled in among the FAANGs, I respect your experience but disagree with everything you said.

Wide breadth of skills? If you’re hired as a code monkey you’re going to monkey code. Nobody ever asked me what I thought about the latest business partnership or synergy strategy. Just code.

Career progression? Another nope. With only a few people in the company, you can’t go up and you can’t build a team under you. Who are you going to manage? There’s nobody under you! My startup coworkers used to jokingly give each other fake “Senior Director” titles which were meaningless of course because there were two managers in the whole company, one was the CEO. Even if you did somehow get a fancy title or a team under you, and got bought by a big company, you’re back to “3rd engineer from the left” in their hierarchy.

Hard problems? I don’t know, not in my experience. Just problems unappealing to the bigger players.

And for all that you risk the company not being able to make payroll or canceling your benefits. Sorry, I can say definitively that working at small companies probably set my career back 10 years.

EDIT: I suppose it’s highly dependent on the company.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#86

Post by scarface74 »

ryandrake wrote: post #80
scarface74 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What risk?

The huge career risk of having a string of no name companies on the resume rather than Google, Microsoft or Apple. I am quite certain I’d be much farther along in my career today had I taken the job at the big name 20 years ago instead of horsing around with a bunch of failing small companies.

Guess what? Most software developers don’t live in Silicon Valley and never work for a FANG company, we seem to be doing okay....

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#87

Post by brianwawok »

localhost3000 wrote: post #78
stemuk wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

lol @ startups with no engineers yet paying “market rate”... they will maybe pay market rate within their stage band i.e. compared to other SV seed-stage startups, but this will still be way below the liquid total comp at a post IPO tech company. At this point in the tech cycle the math is so out of whack in favor of big co that I can’t with a straight face recommend to anyone that they join a seed startup as an earl…

You realize not all startups are in SV?

You realize not all job markets have developer jobs paying 400k?

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#88

Post by brianwawok »

hkmurakami wrote: post #71
stemuk wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is a name for this. It is called a cofounder ( Who is comparatively more junior than the rest of the team ).

A cofounder takes risk, an employee does not. Both are valid, but different, paths.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#89

Post by sidlls »

brianwawok wrote: post #88
hkmurakami wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a name for this. It is called a cofounder ( Who is comparatively more junior than the rest of the team ).

A cofounder takes risk, an employee does not. Both are valid, but different, paths.

Employees take risks. The earlier the startup, the bigger the risk. The risk may be different but it's still a risk.

Re: How to Hire Your First Engineer

#90

Post by sidlls »

scarface74 wrote: post #86
ryandrake wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The huge career risk of having a string of no name companies on the resume rather than Google, Microsoft or Apple. I am quite certain I’d be much farther along in my career today had I taken the job at the big name 20 years ago instead of horsing around with a bunch of failing small companies.

Guess what? Most software developers don’t live in Silicon Valley and never work for a FANG company, we seem to be doing okay....

Most of those developers "doing okay" are doing significantly worse than us SV and FAANG company engineers. I save more every year now than a good number of junior engineers take home in a year, and I'm a crappy average developer not even at FAANG with a much smaller total comp than their staff. There are a tiny, tiny number of SE jobs having more than 50% of my current salary (let alone equity and other benefits and perks) just about anywhere else that isn't also a hot tech/startup market (Austin, NY, Chicago).
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