Startups: Don’t Hire Frontend or Backend Webdevs
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Startups: Don’t Hire Frontend or Backend Webdevs
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Re: Startups: Don’t Hire Frontend or Backend Webdevs
#2[deleted]
Re: Startups: Don’t Hire Frontend or Backend Webdevs
#3Synthesis: hire hackers, not specialized coders.
I think this advice goes beyond just programmers. Instead of a hard-core programmer, try to find someone that does CSS and Design too and isn't afraid to load up Photoshop. Take that a step further and try to find someone that can also talk to users, and you've got the holy grail of a startup employee.
Re: Startups: Don’t Hire Frontend or Backend Webdevs
#4[deleted]
Re: Startups: Don’t Hire Frontend or Backend Webdevs
#5[deleted]
Re: Startups: Don’t Hire Frontend or Backend Webdevs
#6Yep, absolutely. But in reality there aren't that many brilliant developers who can do both with skill and you are lucky if you can find them AND convince them to join you.
To attract those, you're going to have to have a big offer (both remuneration and the nature of the startup) to attract these folks.
Another school of thought is find back-end devs that can do some ops (although yes, it's ideal to have that as a separate position if possible) and front-end devs who can also do UI design and usability. You will need these two hats too.
Re: Startups: Don’t Hire Frontend or Backend Webdevs
#7The problem with this notion - as mentioned by a few people in the article's comments - is that it is difficult to find developers with a high level of expertise for both sides of the fence. Is it worth the extra expenditure of time in the hiring process to look for two people who are good in both realms? Or is it better to spend less time looking for one front-end expert (with passable server skills) and one server-side expert (with passable client skills)? My experience interviewing/hiring suggests the latter.
I will concede the obvious: if you find someone who is great on both sides, HIRE THEM. If you are lucky enough to hire that person, don't pigeon hole them.
Re: Startups: Don’t Hire Frontend or Backend Webdevs
#8What I've found works well for me, and is gettable, is a designer who can do HTML/CSS/light Javascript. Then I do the rest.
Re: Startups: Don’t Hire Frontend or Backend Webdevs
#9> Most small startups (by which I mean fewer than 20 people) don’t have enough work to justify splitting the team into frontend and backend components
I disagree. Most startups have a ton of work, but they often don't have the money or the structure to support a large engineering team. Those switch hitters that traverse the stack are really important for these situations.
There's an added benefit, too. Since one gets to that level by having done a lot of different jobs in a lot of depth, that "macro" view tends to be extremely valuable in sustaining the technology through growth.
Re: Startups: Don’t Hire Frontend or Backend Webdevs
#10I'm kinda curious if his definition of "frontend" developers is the same as mine. To me, the frontend includes everything up to the purely-computational algorithms and storage of the website. That's the HTML/CSS/JS, but also the webserver/webframework, RPC system, or database API (but not the database itself). Rails is a frontend technology.
I consider backend work to the computationally-intensive part. Data mining, machine learning, information retrieval, any domain-specific algorithms. High performance storage systems. Managing server clusters.
It's very, very difficult to find both skillsets in the same person, because both skillsets have incredible depth, particularly if you also want the breadth that a pivoting startup will require.
I'm wondering if his idea of a startup is the typical web 2.0 startup, where you slap a web framework on top of a database. Those startups are essentially all frontend - in that case, it doesn't really make sense to hire "frontend" or "backend" devs, just pretend that the whole world is frontend. There's nothing wrong with a startup like that - mine was, as are most gaming, social network, or social news sites (many iPhone/Android apps too, where frontend in that case is the mobile SDK). But that space is getting increasingly crowded; I suspect that many more successful startups will start needing people who can do the algorithmic heavy lifting.