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If you are a startup and are trying to compete head to head with Google / FB / Amazon / Apple / Microsoft for the same people, you are going to have a really ha

If you are a startup and are trying to compete head to head with Google / FB / Amazon / Apple / Microsoft for the same people, you are going to have a really hard time recruiting. But there are plenty of great engineers that don't want to work at those companies for various reasons. There are plenty of great engineers that want to work remotely and don't have that option at the large companies. There are also plenty of inexperienced engineers with high potential that can't yet get hired at those companies and can be great additions to your startup. Do what you can to find and recruit those people.

znq 10y ago
Very true. For both of our companies [1][2] we pay a fair salary plus a quarterly bonus on top of that based on what we can give (based on the company's quarterly profit results). We also offer remote retreats (so far Cape Town, Thailand, Martinique, Spain and Skiing in the Alps) and the biggest contributor to everyone's satisfaction is that we let everyone work from where ever they want and as much as they want as long as it is planned properly. The result: we've had a couple of employees who received job offers from companies like Apple, Google and Facebook. But after going to the interview process and talking to other employees there they've all (with the exception of one) decided to stay with us, with a significantly lower salary, but a lot more freedom and work-life balance. Not saying that we've a better offer than Google & co, but saying that our offer is different than theirs and there are enough people out there who care more about other things than just money. [1] https://mobilejazz.com https://mobilejazz.com [2] https://bugfender.com https://bugfender.com EDIT: formatting
- charleslmunger 10y ago
  Out of curiosity, what makes your salary "fair", if it results in an offer that's significantly lower than BigCo? How do you decide what's fair?
  - chillydawg 10y ago
    Both sides are happy with it?
    - znq 10y ago
      > Both sides are happy with it? Just wanted to reply exactly that. Obviously fair is very subjective and different to both parties involved. But we try to find a good combination of salary + bonus and also investment in the company itself (be it retreats or taking risks with new products like Bugfender), which then results in temporarily lower bonuses, but an expected bigger payoff and possibilities for everyone in the long turn.
    - jfim 10y ago
      Yep, exactly that. A while ago I took a consulting gig where the company couldn't afford my rates; we just negotiated working 30 hours instead of 40 at a weekly rate that fit within their budget. They got the expertise they wanted, while I got time on the side to work on other stuff. Win-win. If you can't match salaries, then you can move other levers (work/life balance, flexibility, etc.) in order to get an agreement that's suitable for both parties. For example, I don't think Google allows for part-time engineers for the majority of the rank and file. For a startup, if they're more concerned about results than butt-in-chair hours, it might work out depending on the role.
- joelrunyon 10y ago
  Is this Stefan or someone else? :)
- RamshackleJ 10y ago
  I'm always curious about companies who talk about "caring about things other than just money". Maybe I'm missing somethings but if you are a for-profit company by definition you care about money, any claims other wise feel like marketing.
  - znq 10y ago
    Never said we don't care about money. But we care also about other things than just money. And that a lot more than most other for-profit companies out there. There's nothing wrong with making a profit either. The more profit we make the better. But it's important to decide what you do with that profit. And I much rather pay for our employees to join me for a week of skiing in the Alps than buying myself a Ferrari. I don't want to make this look like marketing (as you already mentioned), but if you're really curious I talked a bit about it just recently on this podcast: https://mobilejazz.com/blog/our-ceo-stefan-klumpps-interview-with-happy-melly/ https://mobilejazz.com/blog/our-ceo-stefan-klumpps-interview...
    - 086421357909764 10y ago
      This is the right approach. Build a business you want to work at and your employees want to work at. Focus on maintaining operating costs and expenses, everything else is gravy. The buy in and work output isn't necessarily greater or worse than others, but I would argue the quality of life is through the roof. Kudos on what you're doing.
  - 086421357909764 10y ago
    I think the distinction isn't making money as that's necessary to keep the doors open, it's more about corporate motivations. Some firms want to be a unicorn and some like where I work are more focused on building a business we all want to work at. While both are motivated, there are different buy in strategies with the employees. We have great growth, but we regularly turn down clients because they're not a fit for our team. I realize this isn't as feasible in all areas of expertise. There definitely is a bit of marketing though and too much talk of culture is usually a good red flag.
  - 10y ago
- thesmallestcat 10y ago
  The problem is there's no way to know how true the promises are. What do "flex hours" mean to them? Is it conditional, if so, on what? How far does their trust really go? Compensation doesn't have this problem. You can't offer me $160k and then pay me $120k six months down the road. I mean, you can, but not with a straight face. The soft benefits you described are one CTO/manager/investor change, or engineer bus accident, away from vanishing and it's not looked at the same way as cutting pay, furloughs, and things of that nature. While I want to take one of these "work to live" jobs, I always end up taking the salary. I have a much easier time carving out a bastion of sanity in a given company that doesn't advertise the benefits, than to take a significant pay cut along with the risk I just described.
  - beambot 10y ago
    So you're saying startups are riskier...? Don't think anyone here will disagree with that. ;)
    - thesmallestcat 10y ago
      The risk I described is separate from startups. A company of any size/age/growth rate can substitute soft benefits for compensation. To be clear, I was not talking about the job stability risk of working at a startup, or startups at all.
      - beambot 10y ago
        Fair enough.
  - wpietri 10y ago
    I think the "not with a straight face" thing depends on what you're willing to get in writing up front and then insist on. As you say, companies can cut pay like they can change any other terms (depending on jurisdiction, natch, but mostly true in the US). The difference is that they know people take that very seriously. So if you want those other things to stay true, you have to be just as serious. Agreements don't enforce themselves.
- bdcravens 10y ago
  Am I the only one that when I hear about retreats wonders how much it costs per employee, and given the same situation would rather have that money in my pocket?
- NicoJuicy 10y ago
  I like the apply for jobs with json ;)
Arizhel 10y ago
>But there are plenty of great engineers that don't want to work at those companies for various reasons. There are plenty of great engineers that want to work remotely and don't have that option at the large companies. They don't have that option at startups either, because the startups all want people who'll be at the office 18 hours a day with "team spirit". I think this article is useless. Startups are only for people who are under ~25 (maybe 30), have no families, are willing to spend all their waking hours pursuing someone else's dream, and think they're going to make bank doing it and are willing to take that gamble. This is not the kind of engineer who goes to work at most large companies; they're two entirely different hiring pools.
- Retric 10y ago
  The odds of getting a six figure payout at a startup is lower than the odds of getting a six figure annual salary at bigco. Which dramatically changes the math. The real startup appeal is you don't need to be great or play the game, you just need to be lucky.
  - kudokatz 10y ago
    > The odds of getting a six figure payout at a startup is lower than the odds of getting a six figure annual salary at bigco. Well-funded, small start-ups that are high growth can still get to 80% of "bigco" salaries--well into six figures. If you are fine on a bit less (which is still a LOT more than many make), then you can also get more freedom and a few lottery tickets thrown in. Some even build a "diversified portfolio" out of those tickets.
- desireco42 10y ago
  I am copying this to Evernote because you pretty much described everything that is wrong with startups. Now, to be fair, there are good things as well, but they are more rare. 37 Signals comes to mind as innovative company that is doing things just right. They never wanted to even be associated with startup world.
  - nradov 10y ago
zerr 10y ago
As well as mid-career engineers who don't have a time nor willingness to prepare for CS-riddle based interviews.
- alexc05 10y ago
  Ugghh... this exactly. I recently turned down a "we will fly you to the west coast" interview with one of the big five because I couldn't be bear the idea of spending weeks preparing for the 4-8 hour day of whiteboard coding (only to not get selected anyways). Spent the time hanging out with my girlfriend instead. Worth every minute.
  - phil21 10y ago
    I think you almost played this right, with one caveat. You should have taken the flight to the west coast and done the interview, with minimal (hour or two) to no prep at all. Why? First, you never know. Maybe they legitimately want your skillset - why fake up some crap you hate for a job you don't need? Second, you'll get practice taking interviews in a very low pressure situation. Worst-case they laugh at you and you fly home. Best-case you get an unexpected job offer you can evaluate. Either way you got some practice and "game time" with the process so if you're ever in a more high pressure situation (e.g. you really need the job) it's a lot easier. Plus, smart people meeting other smart people is never a bad thing.
    - gtaylor 10y ago
      > You should have taken the flight to the west coast and done the interview, with minimal (hour or two) to no prep at all. Having done this when I was younger and more foolish, I would not recommend it at all. I felt like I did pretty well overall, but ultimately flubbed a couple of [simple] questions that torpedoed my chances. While things worked out for the best (that company's future looks grim and I'm very happy where I am now), it was a blow to my confidence at the time. I probably wouldn't have had to have prepared for a month or two to get that offer. A week of glancing at my notes for 30 minutes to an hour a day to refresh would have been sufficient. I think you owe it to yourself and the company who is paying to fly you out to at least brush up a _little_ bit (within reason) beforehand. It's almost like basic hygiene.
seanmcdirmid 10y ago
I've heard that Google often has A class talent doing B or C class work; e.g. an expert in PL will often be working on ads. Sure the pay is great, but it can feel soul sucking. A startup can be appealing to some talented people if the work is interesting, even if the pay isn't as good.
- mathgenius 10y ago
  Indeed, until today I had not understood the great attraction to working at a megolith such as google: big money.
- drewg123 10y ago
  I knew several people in roles like this when I was there. They had somebody who had done a PhD in OS research working on startup scripts.
  - Bahamut 10y ago
    I have a former colleague from academia with a PhD in math (his focus was algebraic number theory) who works at Google...writing a lot of JavaScript - the kicker is he enjoys it a lot more than his time in academia (I feel the same way as a PhD dropout myself - I primarily write JS/manage engineers now).
    - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
      I definitely believe that there must be people who enjoy this, in fact they are probably in the majority. It's just that some of us don't, and these are who startups should be pursuing.
- ashark 10y ago
  Their attention span for products and tendency to half-ass things that aren't highly visible (Android SDK and documentation comes to mind) supports this notion. It's exactly what I'd expect from a company hiring 100% A players but needing 95% B-C work—avoid and shirk until you can land on a greenfield project, work on that until it's boring, then jump ship to another company or a more interesting project, because god knows you didn't go to MIT and then cram algos/structures for 6 months to update developer docs 8 hours a day.
ninv 10y ago
Great, please add equity and learning opportunities in your list or reasons.
thr0waway1239 10y ago
Also, almost certainly, you don't want to hire engineers after they end up working at one of the tech giants, and the more experienced they are the worse. Having had the unfortunate experience of working along side some of the 'veterans' of one of these tech giants, it was a little disconcerting how easily they would form cliques based on perceived 'proven vs unproven' folks - if you hadn't worked at one of the tech giants, naturally you were unproven. There were also tangible side effects. You couldn't generally expect them to work on what they perceived to be work which is low profile but actually important for some unquantifiable metric such as morale of the customer support team. You couldn't generally expect them to play by the same rules when it came to check in policies, documentation standards etc. But best of all, the actual code they wrote would uniformly fall on either end of the astronaut architecture spectrum - either completely ignoring maintainability and turning the entire team into Schlemiel the painter, or being so convoluted that they themselves couldn't make quick progress a few years down the line on the code that they wrote.
- mavelikara 10y ago
  The cliques are not the fault of the engineers from Big Co - it is the fault of your management who perceives them as "proven" and you as "unproven". This is a self-perpetuating thing too, when most of the promotions go to people from the "proven" cliques, and those who got promoted, promote more of their "proven" brethren.
- mathgenius 10y ago
  > naturally you were unproven. Escape from the cult of google.
- mixmastamyk 10y ago
  Sounds like anecdata, I've worked in and out of big co's and met only one weirdo like you describe.
- user5994461 10y ago
  I have the exact opposite experience from you.
- 10y ago
allsystemsgo 10y ago
Yes to remote. I was at SXSW. All the startups I talked to bemoaned their hiring problem, yet none of them wanted to even consider remote workers. Sorry, I'm not sympathetic to that.
Bahamut 10y ago
Just to add, it is rare for most companies to be able to compete with the Googles or Facebooks of the world in pure compensation. You have to win these people on other grounds such as increased autonomy, more work flexibility (working from wherever - I have had co-workers who got to spend time working remote from eastern Europe and Nepal at my small company for example), promotions (smaller companies are more able to offer title promotions than big companies for new hires), or other perks such as fantastic environments for employees. These are especially important for retention and hiring better employees than the norm.
phd514 10y ago
Since when does remote mean a lower salary? I work remotely in the US and I expect (and receive) a market rate salary that's not based on my location. Offering me a lower salary because I've chosen to live in a lower cost-of-living city will ensure that I don't consider working for you. It's not always an employee's market, but while it is, I intend to take full advantage of it.
- psyc 10y ago
  There's no reason it ought to mean a lower salary. However, I would very happily work at half-price for a fully remote job I actually want. But even with that concession, the vast majority of companies I'd like to work for still don't offer the option.
- sshrinivasan 10y ago
  I don't think you understood what he said. He was saying that one of the attractions of a startup, which couldn't pay the $350k salary like Google, was that remote work would be possible, and some developers would like that flexibility. He wasn't claiming that startups pay remote workers less than in house ones. In my experience that is an incorrect argument to begin with: many large tech companies seem to have more flexible work hours and remote working capabilities just like startups. I would rather focus on work-life balance, working on products that matter, having equity in the company, being able to experiment with technologies and be part of the decision making process rather than a cog in the machinery as reasons to prefer a start-up.
- etergri 10y ago
  I wish I lived in a country which allowed that logic at all..
- bradleyjg 10y ago
  Of course it means a lower salary. There are some number of jobs out there and most of them don't want remote workers. Job applicants that are willing to take jobs that forbid remote work can also apply to those that permit remote work, while workers that will only look at jobs that allow remote work can only apply to the small subset that allow it. It's straightforward micro-economic exercise to see that the when you hold all other things equal the market clearing rate for a particular employee is higher if he is willing to take on-site work than if he is not. It'd be the same thing if an employee was only willing to work at companies whose names started with a-m.
elastic_church 10y ago
> But there are plenty of great engineers that don't want to work at those companies for various reasons. There's something in the water at the big companies, many employees there think they have passed a rite of passage and that EVERYONE NOT WORKING THERE simply didn't pass. I wish I wasn't exposed to evidence of this, but unfortunately I have. Many people don't consider the idea that others just don't want to work there. In one example of this, I was brought in to interview at one of the big ones, referral, special project. I liked the idea of not necessarily being just some pawn in the never-ending recruitment draft, but someone on a special project. And here I am, talking with the project manager and how other organizations sometimes do custom integrations into their enterprise product. Regarding those other organizations, and I quote "Now this is some 100 million dollar company in Canada, so you know their engineers don't know anything" and I'm like YOU KNOW I WORK FOR 100 MILLION DOLLAR COMPANIES... RIGHT? I work in Series A and Series B startups primarily, after their 12 million funding rounds close they its often at a 50 - 100 million paper valuation. The hubris.... Other examples are what I've heard from bus drivers talking about their riders, other engineers that disagree with the hubris, and just the general society that also puts Googlers and other big tech company employees on a pedestal because of the enviable compensation and perks.
- user5994461 10y ago
  There is a massive difference between million dollars companies (startups) and big established companies (billion dollars in revenues). Anyway, I only work for trillion dollars companies (by some metrics). Bigger is often better.
  - elastic_church 10y ago
    The person that had asked to interviewing me at one of those companies liked my competence and experience in certain areas, seemingly missing that I worked for the same scale of companies that he decided to rail against
    - user5994461 10y ago
      I guess that made the decision easier for you.
lkrubner 10y ago
There are also a lot of startups that simply need to focus on some of the basics of management, such as "be reasonable" or at least "don't be completely psycho". One example that was discussed on Hacker News previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10662128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10662128
kyriakos 10y ago
There's also a lot of candidates abroad who are willing to work as contractors for your startup for usually lower salaries than you'd pay a local employee.

znq 10y ago

Very true. For both of our companies [1][2] we pay a fair salary plus a quarterly bonus on top of that based on what we can give (based on the company's quarterly profit results). We also offer remote retreats (so far Cape Town, Thailand, Martinique, Spain and Skiing in the Alps) and the biggest contributor to everyone's satisfaction is that we let everyone work from where ever they want and as much as they want as long as it is planned properly. The result: we've had a couple of employees who received job offers from companies like Apple, Google and Facebook. But after going to the interview process and talking to other employees there they've all (with the exception of one) decided to stay with us, with a significantly lower salary, but a lot more freedom and work-life balance. Not saying that we've a better offer than Google & co, but saying that our offer is different than theirs and there are enough people out there who care more about other things than just money. [1] https://mobilejazz.com https://mobilejazz.com [2] https://bugfender.com https://bugfender.com EDIT: formatting

charleslmunger 10y ago
Out of curiosity, what makes your salary "fair", if it results in an offer that's significantly lower than BigCo? How do you decide what's fair?
- chillydawg 10y ago
  Both sides are happy with it?
  - znq 10y ago
    > Both sides are happy with it? Just wanted to reply exactly that. Obviously fair is very subjective and different to both parties involved. But we try to find a good combination of salary + bonus and also investment in the company itself (be it retreats or taking risks with new products like Bugfender), which then results in temporarily lower bonuses, but an expected bigger payoff and possibilities for everyone in the long turn.
  - jfim 10y ago
    Yep, exactly that. A while ago I took a consulting gig where the company couldn't afford my rates; we just negotiated working 30 hours instead of 40 at a weekly rate that fit within their budget. They got the expertise they wanted, while I got time on the side to work on other stuff. Win-win. If you can't match salaries, then you can move other levers (work/life balance, flexibility, etc.) in order to get an agreement that's suitable for both parties. For example, I don't think Google allows for part-time engineers for the majority of the rank and file. For a startup, if they're more concerned about results than butt-in-chair hours, it might work out depending on the role.
joelrunyon 10y ago
Is this Stefan or someone else? :)
RamshackleJ 10y ago
I'm always curious about companies who talk about "caring about things other than just money". Maybe I'm missing somethings but if you are a for-profit company by definition you care about money, any claims other wise feel like marketing.
- znq 10y ago
  Never said we don't care about money. But we care also about other things than just money. And that a lot more than most other for-profit companies out there. There's nothing wrong with making a profit either. The more profit we make the better. But it's important to decide what you do with that profit. And I much rather pay for our employees to join me for a week of skiing in the Alps than buying myself a Ferrari. I don't want to make this look like marketing (as you already mentioned), but if you're really curious I talked a bit about it just recently on this podcast: https://mobilejazz.com/blog/our-ceo-stefan-klumpps-interview-with-happy-melly/ https://mobilejazz.com/blog/our-ceo-stefan-klumpps-interview...
  - 086421357909764 10y ago
    This is the right approach. Build a business you want to work at and your employees want to work at. Focus on maintaining operating costs and expenses, everything else is gravy. The buy in and work output isn't necessarily greater or worse than others, but I would argue the quality of life is through the roof. Kudos on what you're doing.
- 086421357909764 10y ago
  I think the distinction isn't making money as that's necessary to keep the doors open, it's more about corporate motivations. Some firms want to be a unicorn and some like where I work are more focused on building a business we all want to work at. While both are motivated, there are different buy in strategies with the employees. We have great growth, but we regularly turn down clients because they're not a fit for our team. I realize this isn't as feasible in all areas of expertise. There definitely is a bit of marketing though and too much talk of culture is usually a good red flag.
- 10y ago
thesmallestcat 10y ago
The problem is there's no way to know how true the promises are. What do "flex hours" mean to them? Is it conditional, if so, on what? How far does their trust really go? Compensation doesn't have this problem. You can't offer me $160k and then pay me $120k six months down the road. I mean, you can, but not with a straight face. The soft benefits you described are one CTO/manager/investor change, or engineer bus accident, away from vanishing and it's not looked at the same way as cutting pay, furloughs, and things of that nature. While I want to take one of these "work to live" jobs, I always end up taking the salary. I have a much easier time carving out a bastion of sanity in a given company that doesn't advertise the benefits, than to take a significant pay cut along with the risk I just described.
- beambot 10y ago
  So you're saying startups are riskier...? Don't think anyone here will disagree with that. ;)
  - thesmallestcat 10y ago
    The risk I described is separate from startups. A company of any size/age/growth rate can substitute soft benefits for compensation. To be clear, I was not talking about the job stability risk of working at a startup, or startups at all.
    - beambot 10y ago
      Fair enough.
- wpietri 10y ago
  I think the "not with a straight face" thing depends on what you're willing to get in writing up front and then insist on. As you say, companies can cut pay like they can change any other terms (depending on jurisdiction, natch, but mostly true in the US). The difference is that they know people take that very seriously. So if you want those other things to stay true, you have to be just as serious. Agreements don't enforce themselves.
bdcravens 10y ago
Am I the only one that when I hear about retreats wonders how much it costs per employee, and given the same situation would rather have that money in my pocket?
NicoJuicy 10y ago
I like the apply for jobs with json ;)

Arizhel 10y ago

>But there are plenty of great engineers that don't want to work at those companies for various reasons. There are plenty of great engineers that want to work remotely and don't have that option at the large companies. They don't have that option at startups either, because the startups all want people who'll be at the office 18 hours a day with "team spirit". I think this article is useless. Startups are only for people who are under ~25 (maybe 30), have no families, are willing to spend all their waking hours pursuing someone else's dream, and think they're going to make bank doing it and are willing to take that gamble. This is not the kind of engineer who goes to work at most large companies; they're two entirely different hiring pools.

Retric 10y ago
The odds of getting a six figure payout at a startup is lower than the odds of getting a six figure annual salary at bigco. Which dramatically changes the math. The real startup appeal is you don't need to be great or play the game, you just need to be lucky.
- kudokatz 10y ago
  > The odds of getting a six figure payout at a startup is lower than the odds of getting a six figure annual salary at bigco. Well-funded, small start-ups that are high growth can still get to 80% of "bigco" salaries--well into six figures. If you are fine on a bit less (which is still a LOT more than many make), then you can also get more freedom and a few lottery tickets thrown in. Some even build a "diversified portfolio" out of those tickets.
desireco42 10y ago
I am copying this to Evernote because you pretty much described everything that is wrong with startups. Now, to be fair, there are good things as well, but they are more rare. 37 Signals comes to mind as innovative company that is doing things just right. They never wanted to even be associated with startup world.
- nradov 10y ago

zerr 10y ago

As well as mid-career engineers who don't have a time nor willingness to prepare for CS-riddle based interviews.

alexc05 10y ago
Ugghh... this exactly. I recently turned down a "we will fly you to the west coast" interview with one of the big five because I couldn't be bear the idea of spending weeks preparing for the 4-8 hour day of whiteboard coding (only to not get selected anyways). Spent the time hanging out with my girlfriend instead. Worth every minute.
- phil21 10y ago
  I think you almost played this right, with one caveat. You should have taken the flight to the west coast and done the interview, with minimal (hour or two) to no prep at all. Why? First, you never know. Maybe they legitimately want your skillset - why fake up some crap you hate for a job you don't need? Second, you'll get practice taking interviews in a very low pressure situation. Worst-case they laugh at you and you fly home. Best-case you get an unexpected job offer you can evaluate. Either way you got some practice and "game time" with the process so if you're ever in a more high pressure situation (e.g. you really need the job) it's a lot easier. Plus, smart people meeting other smart people is never a bad thing.
  - gtaylor 10y ago
    > You should have taken the flight to the west coast and done the interview, with minimal (hour or two) to no prep at all. Having done this when I was younger and more foolish, I would not recommend it at all. I felt like I did pretty well overall, but ultimately flubbed a couple of [simple] questions that torpedoed my chances. While things worked out for the best (that company's future looks grim and I'm very happy where I am now), it was a blow to my confidence at the time. I probably wouldn't have had to have prepared for a month or two to get that offer. A week of glancing at my notes for 30 minutes to an hour a day to refresh would have been sufficient. I think you owe it to yourself and the company who is paying to fly you out to at least brush up a _little_ bit (within reason) beforehand. It's almost like basic hygiene.

seanmcdirmid 10y ago

I've heard that Google often has A class talent doing B or C class work; e.g. an expert in PL will often be working on ads. Sure the pay is great, but it can feel soul sucking. A startup can be appealing to some talented people if the work is interesting, even if the pay isn't as good.

mathgenius 10y ago
Indeed, until today I had not understood the great attraction to working at a megolith such as google: big money.
drewg123 10y ago
I knew several people in roles like this when I was there. They had somebody who had done a PhD in OS research working on startup scripts.
- Bahamut 10y ago
  I have a former colleague from academia with a PhD in math (his focus was algebraic number theory) who works at Google...writing a lot of JavaScript - the kicker is he enjoys it a lot more than his time in academia (I feel the same way as a PhD dropout myself - I primarily write JS/manage engineers now).
  - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    I definitely believe that there must be people who enjoy this, in fact they are probably in the majority. It's just that some of us don't, and these are who startups should be pursuing.
ashark 10y ago
Their attention span for products and tendency to half-ass things that aren't highly visible (Android SDK and documentation comes to mind) supports this notion. It's exactly what I'd expect from a company hiring 100% A players but needing 95% B-C work—avoid and shirk until you can land on a greenfield project, work on that until it's boring, then jump ship to another company or a more interesting project, because god knows you didn't go to MIT and then cram algos/structures for 6 months to update developer docs 8 hours a day.

ninv 10y ago

Great, please add equity and learning opportunities in your list or reasons.

thr0waway1239 10y ago

Also, almost certainly, you don't want to hire engineers after they end up working at one of the tech giants, and the more experienced they are the worse. Having had the unfortunate experience of working along side some of the 'veterans' of one of these tech giants, it was a little disconcerting how easily they would form cliques based on perceived 'proven vs unproven' folks - if you hadn't worked at one of the tech giants, naturally you were unproven. There were also tangible side effects. You couldn't generally expect them to work on what they perceived to be work which is low profile but actually important for some unquantifiable metric such as morale of the customer support team. You couldn't generally expect them to play by the same rules when it came to check in policies, documentation standards etc. But best of all, the actual code they wrote would uniformly fall on either end of the astronaut architecture spectrum - either completely ignoring maintainability and turning the entire team into Schlemiel the painter, or being so convoluted that they themselves couldn't make quick progress a few years down the line on the code that they wrote.

mavelikara 10y ago
The cliques are not the fault of the engineers from Big Co - it is the fault of your management who perceives them as "proven" and you as "unproven". This is a self-perpetuating thing too, when most of the promotions go to people from the "proven" cliques, and those who got promoted, promote more of their "proven" brethren.
mathgenius 10y ago
> naturally you were unproven. Escape from the cult of google.
mixmastamyk 10y ago
Sounds like anecdata, I've worked in and out of big co's and met only one weirdo like you describe.
user5994461 10y ago
I have the exact opposite experience from you.
10y ago

allsystemsgo 10y ago

Yes to remote. I was at SXSW. All the startups I talked to bemoaned their hiring problem, yet none of them wanted to even consider remote workers. Sorry, I'm not sympathetic to that.

Bahamut 10y ago

Just to add, it is rare for most companies to be able to compete with the Googles or Facebooks of the world in pure compensation. You have to win these people on other grounds such as increased autonomy, more work flexibility (working from wherever - I have had co-workers who got to spend time working remote from eastern Europe and Nepal at my small company for example), promotions (smaller companies are more able to offer title promotions than big companies for new hires), or other perks such as fantastic environments for employees. These are especially important for retention and hiring better employees than the norm.

phd514 10y ago

Since when does remote mean a lower salary? I work remotely in the US and I expect (and receive) a market rate salary that's not based on my location. Offering me a lower salary because I've chosen to live in a lower cost-of-living city will ensure that I don't consider working for you. It's not always an employee's market, but while it is, I intend to take full advantage of it.

psyc 10y ago
There's no reason it ought to mean a lower salary. However, I would very happily work at half-price for a fully remote job I actually want. But even with that concession, the vast majority of companies I'd like to work for still don't offer the option.
sshrinivasan 10y ago
I don't think you understood what he said. He was saying that one of the attractions of a startup, which couldn't pay the $350k salary like Google, was that remote work would be possible, and some developers would like that flexibility. He wasn't claiming that startups pay remote workers less than in house ones. In my experience that is an incorrect argument to begin with: many large tech companies seem to have more flexible work hours and remote working capabilities just like startups. I would rather focus on work-life balance, working on products that matter, having equity in the company, being able to experiment with technologies and be part of the decision making process rather than a cog in the machinery as reasons to prefer a start-up.
etergri 10y ago
I wish I lived in a country which allowed that logic at all..
bradleyjg 10y ago
Of course it means a lower salary. There are some number of jobs out there and most of them don't want remote workers. Job applicants that are willing to take jobs that forbid remote work can also apply to those that permit remote work, while workers that will only look at jobs that allow remote work can only apply to the small subset that allow it. It's straightforward micro-economic exercise to see that the when you hold all other things equal the market clearing rate for a particular employee is higher if he is willing to take on-site work than if he is not. It'd be the same thing if an employee was only willing to work at companies whose names started with a-m.

elastic_church 10y ago

> But there are plenty of great engineers that don't want to work at those companies for various reasons. There's something in the water at the big companies, many employees there think they have passed a rite of passage and that EVERYONE NOT WORKING THERE simply didn't pass. I wish I wasn't exposed to evidence of this, but unfortunately I have. Many people don't consider the idea that others just don't want to work there. In one example of this, I was brought in to interview at one of the big ones, referral, special project. I liked the idea of not necessarily being just some pawn in the never-ending recruitment draft, but someone on a special project. And here I am, talking with the project manager and how other organizations sometimes do custom integrations into their enterprise product. Regarding those other organizations, and I quote "Now this is some 100 million dollar company in Canada, so you know their engineers don't know anything" and I'm like YOU KNOW I WORK FOR 100 MILLION DOLLAR COMPANIES... RIGHT? I work in Series A and Series B startups primarily, after their 12 million funding rounds close they its often at a 50 - 100 million paper valuation. The hubris.... Other examples are what I've heard from bus drivers talking about their riders, other engineers that disagree with the hubris, and just the general society that also puts Googlers and other big tech company employees on a pedestal because of the enviable compensation and perks.

user5994461 10y ago
There is a massive difference between million dollars companies (startups) and big established companies (billion dollars in revenues). Anyway, I only work for trillion dollars companies (by some metrics). Bigger is often better.
- elastic_church 10y ago
  The person that had asked to interviewing me at one of those companies liked my competence and experience in certain areas, seemingly missing that I worked for the same scale of companies that he decided to rail against
  - user5994461 10y ago
    I guess that made the decision easier for you.

lkrubner 10y ago

There are also a lot of startups that simply need to focus on some of the basics of management, such as "be reasonable" or at least "don't be completely psycho". One example that was discussed on Hacker News previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10662128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10662128

kyriakos 10y ago

There's also a lot of candidates abroad who are willing to work as contractors for your startup for usually lower salaries than you'd pay a local employee.