7 ms·

Types of People Startups Should Hire, but Don’t

48 points by Shanerostad 9y ago

wheresvic1 9y ago
One could apply these recommendations to all companies really. I guess the one interesting point was hiring freelancers but in my experience good freelancers are really expensive amd moreover if someone is not invested with a long term view they usually end up taking a lot of shortcuts which leads to a lot of technical debt. Of course, this is just my experience.
raymondgh 9y ago
Perfect. I'll send this with my cover letter next time :D
jaggederest 9y ago
As someone definitely in the intersection of "weird dude", "freelancer", and "successful alumnus of a startup", I'm on board with this, strangely enough. One of the advantages of freelancers is that you get a little bit more consultative relationship than with employees. For myself at least, I bring strategic perspective not just boots on the ground, and that can make a big difference in heading off pitfalls. I see a lot of startups running from three alarm fire to three alarm fire without the ability to tie things up over the longer term, and that often comes back to bite them. Automate and standardize all the non-core parts of your business or you will pay in distraction.
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  And when they don't fix that bad habit early either in their business or their implementing new tech, they become larger companies with the same problems.
- rb808 9y ago
  > running from three alarm fire to three alarm fire without the ability to tie things up over the longer term No offense but that is incredibly frustrating for employees. It really sucks being in a team that is continually chasing fires with no time to do something strategic -and the a manager will bring some highly paid freelancer who works 9-5 without stress telling you how it should be done. What I'd like is the managers to bring in people to do the shitty work while employees get some downtime to improve things for a change.
  - lolsal 9y ago
    Doing the shitty work is hard and unpredictable. I wouldn't be very likely to want to hire per-hour contractors to fix bugs.
  - jaggederest 9y ago
    Agreed, that's usually why I start a gig - they've hit a wall on technical scaling and need someone to help them dig out of it, so I can take over the firefights and provide the guidance on how to go about it, mentorship on whether a particular path is worth trying, that kind of thing.
rmason 9y ago
I'm not sure about hiring the job hopper. Sure you may get a great talent, but my experience is they will leave you at the worst possible time for your startup.
- taternuts 9y ago
  Me either. I think maybe swap that out for the "Old Heads" of IT and it's a solid list.
  - rmason 9y ago
    I agree, lots of wise "old heads" out there who could make a large contribution. Super smart idea because they're being ignored by everyone else in the talent search.
capkutay 9y ago
I think its more important to consider who startups should NOT hire and give large 'management' roles to. Namely middle managers who come from large bureaucratic, declining public companies. they bring in all the baggage that startups are supposedly supposed to operate without. of course there are exceptions (the individual is creative, very high IQ etc)...but if your sole reason for hiring them is 'oh they were the senior director of x at [fortune 500 company]'...just no.
- deviationblue 9y ago
  Funny thing about "declining companies", some of these will see more money in their bad times than the sexiest startups in their heyday. It's cruel, but true. I wouldn't look down on a manager who comes from such a company; they bring a different set of experience that a startup has not gotten to yet. I also think having access to relatively more money allows these managers to develop different kinds of skills.
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    There's a stage in a startup's growth when that different set of experience is valuable, and at other stages it's often harmful. I.e. the experience of a manager coming from a 500 person organization is valuable when the startup is scaling to 100 people and is building the structures and processes required for those 100 (and later on 200 and more) to work efficiently; there's a lot of organizational know-how and perspective that would be useful to take into account. The same experience/perspective from the same person are not that valuable and potentially wrong/misleading if you're currently scaling from 10 people to 20.
    - cannonedhamster 9y ago
      This assumes that the middle manager knows what they are doing. Sadly in my case I haven't been lucky enough to get someone who understands the job, nevermind the process and politics which has just resulted in a lot of firefighting, inconsistent policies, and then being blamed when we don't know what the policies actually are. No matter where you are having the right people for the actual problems seems to be the correct plan of action.
andrewstuart 9y ago
I'm sorry but if your resume shows you've never spent more than 12 months in a job over the past X years then I pretty much drop it. I don't really care why your career has played like that. At best, you are a an awesome employee who won't stay with them more than your "frequency period". At worst, you get discovered and fired within your frequency period. Especially true for senior roles. Team lead for 5 months? Drop the resume. Not always true, but in general terms if you are a great employee then you tend to hang around. I know these are generalisations but when I am sitting there reading 300 resumes in a row and trying to work out who is going to get through an employers gruelling assessment process then if you hop jobs then it's just not worth the effort to even try to assess you. In software development, there is a co-investment between employer and employee in which time spent in a job tends to result an an increase of value through knowledge of the systems and therefore productivity. Job hoppers don't accumulate such value, and leaving early removes that value from the employers side of the relationship.
- jgh 9y ago
  I see where you're coming from but OTOH the path to increase your pay in the tech industry seems to be switching companies. It's not like you're going to see a 10-20% raise every year staying with the same company. Obviously this usually only works for a finite number of years at the beginning of your career.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - rimliu 9y ago
    Exactly. If it goes both ways then it is also on the company to retain the employee.
- staplers 9y ago
  People like you are exactly why I lie on my resume and always put 1 year, even if I mean 6 months. I got a better offer somewhere else and somehow that makes me less valuable..
kreutz 9y ago
I'm more interested in "Types of People Startups do Hire but shouldn't"
- dsr_ 9y ago
  Friends. People who have no experience operating without the support of a Fortune 500. People who are addicted to trends.
lanius 9y ago
What frequency of changing jobs is considered job hopping?
- chadash 9y ago
  It's subjective and depends on the field. Software engineers tend to move around more frequently than say, petroleum engineers, probably owing to the larger number of companies who they can potentially work for. For me, looking at a software engineering resume, ideally I'd want to see at least a few stints lasting two years or more, but I'll forgive occasional short stints, since even great engineers can be bad fits in some companies. I tend to look at this from a Bayesian perspective. If someone has left a lot of jobs after short stints, then that's a red flag. There's a possibility that they just got very unlucky (e.g. they are an amazing worker, but 5 companies they worked for folded within a few months), but it's also possible that they, for example, don't get along with people or lose interest in things very quickly. The more of a discernible pattern I see, the more likely I am to conclude the latter. I might decide to hire that person anyway, but it's probably something that's going to weigh against them in the hiring decision.
dandigangi 9y ago
I'm quite disappointed to not find something along the lines of "Hiring employees of different races, ethnicities, sex, socio-economic backgrounds, etc."
- lolsal 9y ago
  You probably should just hire the best person for the job and ignore their race, ethnicity, sex, socio-economic background.
  - dandigangi 9y ago
    It's a poor perception to think that those factors wouldn't have any relation to who is the "best" candidate. Especially when you apply context and subjectiveness to what "best" really means at its core.
    - lolsal 9y ago
      You can analyze things to death, but sometimes those factors truly aren't relevant.

48 points by Shanerostad 9y ago

One could apply these recommendations to all companies really. I guess the one interesting point was hiring freelancers but in my experience good freelancers are really expensive amd moreover if someone is not invested with a long term view they usually end up taking a lot of shortcuts which leads to a lot of technical debt. Of course, this is just my experience.

raymondgh 9y ago

Perfect. I'll send this with my cover letter next time :D

jaggederest 9y ago

As someone definitely in the intersection of "weird dude", "freelancer", and "successful alumnus of a startup", I'm on board with this, strangely enough. One of the advantages of freelancers is that you get a little bit more consultative relationship than with employees. For myself at least, I bring strategic perspective not just boots on the ground, and that can make a big difference in heading off pitfalls. I see a lot of startups running from three alarm fire to three alarm fire without the ability to tie things up over the longer term, and that often comes back to bite them. Automate and standardize all the non-core parts of your business or you will pay in distraction.

52-6F-62 9y ago
And when they don't fix that bad habit early either in their business or their implementing new tech, they become larger companies with the same problems.
rb808 9y ago
> running from three alarm fire to three alarm fire without the ability to tie things up over the longer term No offense but that is incredibly frustrating for employees. It really sucks being in a team that is continually chasing fires with no time to do something strategic -and the a manager will bring some highly paid freelancer who works 9-5 without stress telling you how it should be done. What I'd like is the managers to bring in people to do the shitty work while employees get some downtime to improve things for a change.
- lolsal 9y ago
  Doing the shitty work is hard and unpredictable. I wouldn't be very likely to want to hire per-hour contractors to fix bugs.
- jaggederest 9y ago
  Agreed, that's usually why I start a gig - they've hit a wall on technical scaling and need someone to help them dig out of it, so I can take over the firefights and provide the guidance on how to go about it, mentorship on whether a particular path is worth trying, that kind of thing.

rmason 9y ago

I'm not sure about hiring the job hopper. Sure you may get a great talent, but my experience is they will leave you at the worst possible time for your startup.

taternuts 9y ago
Me either. I think maybe swap that out for the "Old Heads" of IT and it's a solid list.
- rmason 9y ago
  I agree, lots of wise "old heads" out there who could make a large contribution. Super smart idea because they're being ignored by everyone else in the talent search.

capkutay 9y ago

I think its more important to consider who startups should NOT hire and give large 'management' roles to. Namely middle managers who come from large bureaucratic, declining public companies. they bring in all the baggage that startups are supposedly supposed to operate without. of course there are exceptions (the individual is creative, very high IQ etc)...but if your sole reason for hiring them is 'oh they were the senior director of x at [fortune 500 company]'...just no.

deviationblue 9y ago
Funny thing about "declining companies", some of these will see more money in their bad times than the sexiest startups in their heyday. It's cruel, but true. I wouldn't look down on a manager who comes from such a company; they bring a different set of experience that a startup has not gotten to yet. I also think having access to relatively more money allows these managers to develop different kinds of skills.
- PeterisP 9y ago
  There's a stage in a startup's growth when that different set of experience is valuable, and at other stages it's often harmful. I.e. the experience of a manager coming from a 500 person organization is valuable when the startup is scaling to 100 people and is building the structures and processes required for those 100 (and later on 200 and more) to work efficiently; there's a lot of organizational know-how and perspective that would be useful to take into account. The same experience/perspective from the same person are not that valuable and potentially wrong/misleading if you're currently scaling from 10 people to 20.
  - cannonedhamster 9y ago
    This assumes that the middle manager knows what they are doing. Sadly in my case I haven't been lucky enough to get someone who understands the job, nevermind the process and politics which has just resulted in a lot of firefighting, inconsistent policies, and then being blamed when we don't know what the policies actually are. No matter where you are having the right people for the actual problems seems to be the correct plan of action.

andrewstuart 9y ago

I'm sorry but if your resume shows you've never spent more than 12 months in a job over the past X years then I pretty much drop it. I don't really care why your career has played like that. At best, you are a an awesome employee who won't stay with them more than your "frequency period". At worst, you get discovered and fired within your frequency period. Especially true for senior roles. Team lead for 5 months? Drop the resume. Not always true, but in general terms if you are a great employee then you tend to hang around. I know these are generalisations but when I am sitting there reading 300 resumes in a row and trying to work out who is going to get through an employers gruelling assessment process then if you hop jobs then it's just not worth the effort to even try to assess you. In software development, there is a co-investment between employer and employee in which time spent in a job tends to result an an increase of value through knowledge of the systems and therefore productivity. Job hoppers don't accumulate such value, and leaving early removes that value from the employers side of the relationship.

jgh 9y ago
I see where you're coming from but OTOH the path to increase your pay in the tech industry seems to be switching companies. It's not like you're going to see a 10-20% raise every year staying with the same company. Obviously this usually only works for a finite number of years at the beginning of your career.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- rimliu 9y ago
  Exactly. If it goes both ways then it is also on the company to retain the employee.
staplers 9y ago
People like you are exactly why I lie on my resume and always put 1 year, even if I mean 6 months. I got a better offer somewhere else and somehow that makes me less valuable..

kreutz 9y ago

I'm more interested in "Types of People Startups do Hire but shouldn't"

dsr_ 9y ago
Friends. People who have no experience operating without the support of a Fortune 500. People who are addicted to trends.

lanius 9y ago

What frequency of changing jobs is considered job hopping?

chadash 9y ago
It's subjective and depends on the field. Software engineers tend to move around more frequently than say, petroleum engineers, probably owing to the larger number of companies who they can potentially work for. For me, looking at a software engineering resume, ideally I'd want to see at least a few stints lasting two years or more, but I'll forgive occasional short stints, since even great engineers can be bad fits in some companies. I tend to look at this from a Bayesian perspective. If someone has left a lot of jobs after short stints, then that's a red flag. There's a possibility that they just got very unlucky (e.g. they are an amazing worker, but 5 companies they worked for folded within a few months), but it's also possible that they, for example, don't get along with people or lose interest in things very quickly. The more of a discernible pattern I see, the more likely I am to conclude the latter. I might decide to hire that person anyway, but it's probably something that's going to weigh against them in the hiring decision.

dandigangi 9y ago

I'm quite disappointed to not find something along the lines of "Hiring employees of different races, ethnicities, sex, socio-economic backgrounds, etc."

lolsal 9y ago
You probably should just hire the best person for the job and ignore their race, ethnicity, sex, socio-economic background.
- dandigangi 9y ago
  It's a poor perception to think that those factors wouldn't have any relation to who is the "best" candidate. Especially when you apply context and subjectiveness to what "best" really means at its core.
  - lolsal 9y ago
    You can analyze things to death, but sometimes those factors truly aren't relevant.