12 ms·

How to Hire Your First Engineer

219 points by runesoerensen 8y ago

elpakal 8y ago
I remember hearing as a high schooler that The Italian Mob acquired great loyalty through only hiring people whose family they knew or had met before. Maybe a dumb metaphor, but the painpoints, lonely nights, long hours and competing offers you're gonna face with your Engineer #1 are going to require some deeply rooted trust. We're lucky enough to live in a time where our skills are in great demand and compensation can be matched without blinking an eye - my advice to business minds hiring their first engineers is to get to know them, build trust and find the ones who are committed to building cool shit with you for the long haul. Don't just make it about comp and perks. > As I said at the start, hiring your first engineer is incredibly hard unless you’re lucky enough to have a friend you can convince to join
- Ceredron 8y ago
  "Comitted to building cool shit" is not a motivation that will persist through hard times.
  - elpakal 8y ago
    Maybe you didn't make it this far < Don't just make it about comp and perks.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  There's an argument to be made that you want someone incentivized by something rational like compensation. If your critical employees joined the company for romantic and/or emotional reasons, it can be very difficult to retain them should they somehow become disillusioned. You can far more easily acquire funding to increase compensation than you can make someone change their mind about how they feel about something the leadership has done or the direction the company is heading.
toomuchtodo 8y ago
I find it interesting how many startups try to remove all bias from the hiring process, make interviews as objective and metric based as possible, but in the end, personal connections (friendships even) are still most important for your first hires.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  It makes sense to me. Either you validate someone through knowing them or, if you don't know the person, use interviews and other tests.
- sbilstein 8y ago
  There is so much risk in hiring an early employee, it's totally reasonable to try and only hire from a personal network for the first three. Managing great employees can be challenging; managing someone you don't know is great can be 10 times more difficult.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
kache_ 8y ago
before you hire an engineer, make sure you have your onboarding streamlined
- lmilcin 8y ago
  This is the worst advice. You don't want to spend resources on problems that are not yet even problems. Especially extremely early when you don't have any resources to burn. One super power startups have is being frugal with money, why would you want to throw it away?
  - nosseo 8y ago
    No engineer taking a role like this is going to expect an onboarding process. Many of them are specifically drawn by the idea they'll get to sit down and solve a problem on day 1.
    - phamilton 8y ago
      > Many of them are specifically drawn by the idea they'll get to sit down and solve a problem on day 1 I don't see how engineer #1 or engineer #100 changes that. When I onboard a senior engineer, they get a problem on day 1.
      - PeterisP 8y ago
        The difference is that when hiring engineer #1 there's no technical infrastructure to which you'd onboard someone, and nobody who's really qualified to make a decent technical onboarding process - you're hiring a person to create this process (among others) from scratch, make the initial decisions themselves (instead of being told them during onboarding) and onboard others.
        wolco 8y ago
        Onboarding become here are the bathrooms, there is a great place to eat down the street.
mvpu 8y ago
Some traits I look for in engineer #1: a) should obsess about architecture and code organization (they will be laying a foundation so having a bit of OCD helps), b) should make good tradeoffs and optimize for speed (they will be building the wrong things initially), c) mature enough to understand that they will be writing and rewriting a lot (see (b)) and d) last but not least, should have a strong desire to do a startup (knowing all the risks)....
- gregw134 8y ago
  Don't you mean not optimize for speed, since they will be building the wrong things initially?
  - fredophile 8y ago
    I think they meant optimize for speed of writing code not running it.
lmilcin 8y ago
1. Find somebody that is very good and passionate at something. 2. Present your idea the best you can. 3. Only hire if he/she is interested in your idea. 4. Offer stake in your business so it is also his/her business.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Why would I be interested in your idea? More than likely you aren’t trying to feed starving children. I might pretend like I’m interested, but at the end of the day, it’s just a paycheck.
  - lmilcin 8y ago
    Well, this is simple. You want somebody invested and passionate about the project. Have you ever noticed, you can move mountains if you are genuinely interested in something? That it is difficult to focus and too easy to procrastinate if you don't want to do something or find something boring? Corporations are good at solving large problems because they can throw funds and money at the problems. They can absorb the damage caused by people who are barely productive. When you are startup you can't do that. But the advantage you have is that you are looking for one person at this point in time and you can be picky and wait until you find the one. Bad hire at this point in time can frequently spell disaster for your budding enterprise. I don't want to say that it is totally impossible to find somebody who might not be interested about your idea but will still do good job. But it is unlikely and then remember, you are not only looking for your first engineer but also your first manager, possibly CTO, etc. Look at stories of successful startups -- in most cases first hires seem to have been critical and mostly seem to be passionate people who then established themselves close to the top of new organization.
  - repsilat 8y ago
    > 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.
    - 8y ago
lordnacho 8y ago
Hiring is a difficult task that I'm currently in the middle of attempting, so Harj's article is something I recognize. I'm not after a first dev, but I am part of a team that is after a dozen or so devs and I've now been day 1 on three different ventures. The problem is that the main piece of advice is correct but unuseful. Indeed, you should look at people you've worked with. In some sense they've all interviewed with you already, so you know what it's like to work with them, you know how good they are at communicating, and you know their limitations. Unfortunately, most people haven't worked with enough people to have more than one or two likely candidates for whatever they're thinking of doing. Your homies are either not right for the role, unwilling to move from a position of comfort, or not willing to put your friendship on the line. The same is also the reason why your company cannot grow via connections of employees past some point, the r < 1 on that series and it will converge on some low number. Where my problem is a bit different to the article is that before you have any devs, you have a really big problem identifying good devs. Heck even hiring for devs outside your specialty is hard. If you can't do X, how are you going to find a good X? You will end up falling back on recommendations and reputation, and you'll pay up for a branded individual if one is around. Not in itself terrible, but every penny counts early in a startup. I was talking to a shop who were after their first programmer a few months back, and they did the sensible sounding thing of bringing in a trusted friend from a FAANG to interview people. Main issue with that is that person is thinking about how a megacorp hires people. Mainly avoid guys who can't reverse a linked list, and stick the new guys into a process that already exists. But it's not quite the same things you care about as a day 1 startup. Day 1 guys need energy. Sad to say it, but this probably tilts against people who have kids. In my first day 1 jobs, I didn't have kids, I could wake up at 6 and code to 11 at night. Or you do like my current firm, where I was also day 1, but let people work from home. Then you suddenly have a very big carrot for experienced hires. The guys in the previous paragraph did the same. Day 1 guys also need a high degree of autonomy. When you've got nothing, as in not even a chat about what stack you're using, day 1 guy needs to put down those foundations. This is a lot harder than you think. Not only do you need to consider budget, you need to think about what a small team can do, you need to think about what imaginary future employees will want to work with, and you need a way to get from little team to big team where your hands aren't tied by your day 1 decisions. And you gotta balance current technical debt against future payments on that account. You also need to be broadly read. You can be highly specialized, but you need to have some idea of what's going on in the software world in general. Chances are you will end up picking the most standard choice of everything that isn't your specialty, like Django for a web framework or SciKit for a bit of ML. But you need to have an idea about a huge variety of things to know what the landscape roughly looks like. So how do you find a person like that? Well actually none of the methods other than "network" will actually check for these qualities. Most people are specialists with a label that enables them to move to other jobs with similar titles (Low Latency c++ dev), and recruiters are on the lookout for the label. Inbound and Outreach are also not going to tell you how broad someone is, because everyone writes stuff on their CV to look specialised, with a bit of breadth to catch a few interviews. Meetups, maybe, depends on how good you are at directing the conversation. A skill in itself.
philfreo 8y ago
I've been hired as Engineer #1 at two startups (both doing well). I wrote some thoughts recently about how I was recruited into that role: https://twitter.com/philfreo/status/1012171080834969601 https://twitter.com/philfreo/status/1012171080834969601 On the hiring side, I also incorporated some hard lessons learned about growing our Eng team from 2 to 14 here: http://philfreo.com/blog/when-who-how-to-hire-an-engineering-team-including-hiring-remotely/ http://philfreo.com/blog/when-who-how-to-hire-an-engineering...
- mark-r 8y ago
  I've done the #1 employee thing too. The founder was someone I had worked for previously. He was technical enough that I didn't have to worry about growing the team from there, he handled it all.
- orsenthil 8y ago
  I see you mentioned something like. Make sure you’re still excited after 30 days (or fire fast). That's a big NO-NO for me. 30 days is way too small for any company to make a decision on a hire. It just means your process for hiring is not good. We must start with firing people who were responsible for the that bad hire first.
- alexpetralia 8y ago
  Fantastic blog post on hiring. Thanks!
Moodles 8y ago
I wonder what proportion of HN would have different careers if software engineering paid, say, as much as humanities while humanities paid like software engineering. It seems like everyone here (myself included) isn't really in it for the money, but who knows what would happen.
- Kenji 8y ago
  I would have gone for the humanities in your scenario. What do you think, I'm stupid and go for breadless jobs? I love doing good work and what that good work is doesn't matter that much. If gardening paid as well I'd be gardening.
- astura 8y ago
  I'm only in it for the money. I'm good at my job and I enjoy it for the most part, but I'm only doing it because I get paid well.
- ravenstine 8y ago
  I like software engineering and have always had a personal interest in it. In fact, I'd say that I'm more passionate about it than 90% of the programmers I've worked with and spoken to. Having said that, software engineering as a profession is shitty in some respects. I don't think I would do it if it paid as little as the humanities. I'd continue doing it on my own time, but the drudgery of dealing with other people's bad code, corporate practices, clueless bosses, clients who undervalue and lowball you, etc. wouldn't be worth dealing with. It's not so much that I wouldn't be able to make a living, because I think I'd be content living on relatively little(as I am currently experiencing), but life is just too short to deal with professional software engineering when I'd get so little out of it. Alternatively, I'd just go into woodworking. Income becomes relative to the quality of work produced (I've never worked anywhere that actually cared about or rewarded quality code) and I could say or do whatever I want without someone else reaping most of the benefits and judging my actions by outdated 1950s office standards.
- Swizec 8y ago
  I love engineering. But you know what, when rent is $3000+ per month, there's only so far my rational mind will let me go. I loved art and drawing too. But I wisely chose not to master in art when going to college.
projectramo 8y ago
How do you tell a good engineer from an average one? If you can’t do that then all the time you spend taking them out to dinner is wasted.
trumped 8y ago
How to make sure that you can fire your first engineer without too much damage? maybe state-by-state instructions...
jazzychad 8y ago
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 than a founder, yes, but not the 30-50x typical equity ratio we see today.
- benatkin 8y ago
  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.
- brianwawok 8y ago
  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?
  - westoncb 8y ago
    > 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 have no idea what my contribution could have been if I were made to feel like the company was partially my project too, and that there wasn't some massive (though never explicit) social divide between the founders and everyone else, the rest of us being mere tools for the founders' use (only one job I was at really gave that impression—the others were pretty good about creating an environment where everyone felt equal. But from speaking with many other prospects, it appears to be a typical attitude). There are thresholds in perception of ownership which when crossed give access to new categories of behavior in the perceiver. Think about 1%, 5%, and 10% equity in terms of sharing an object among a corresponding number of people: how much do you feel that thing is yours when sharing it with 100 people? With 20 people? With 10 people? For me, 10% is about where the line would be where I'd be willing to drop side projects etc. and seriously dedicate myself to the company. (And in my experience, this is not atypical: in the very early stage startup I was in, basically everyone was laying groundwork for their own startups on the side, or at least had other projects they were more interested in—but they'd make sad, fake displays of their dedication to the company to try and cover. At our largest there were still only ~7 people in the company.)
danbrooks 8y ago
Nice article. On TripleByte - they should make it clearer that the platform is only for the Bay Area and Software Engineering.
- fermienrico 8y ago
  I am being cynical but this article feels like a reason to promote/plug TripleByte complete with a $15,000 offer at the end.
  - suyash 8y ago
    The article offered no new insights, it was more like an infomercial for the author’s company.
- mmt 8y ago
  Indeed, the title is startingly misleading, but it's par for the course. It seems that "Engineer", in the context of hiring, for anything YC-sponsored, means programmer. Even "Work at a Startup" was (and likely still is), exclusively for software engineers. This is despite the fact that YC actually accepts/funds companies that aren't pure software plays.
Fede_V 8y ago
An interesting exercise: assume the first engineering hire you want has to be at least the senior engineer bar at a top tech firm. In order for the engineer's median compensation to match the median compensation he would make working at FANG, how much stock would you have to give them making reasonable assumption about valuations (ie, assume your start up will have a trajectory in the top 30% percentile, but not in the top 0.1%).
- opportune 8y ago
  I think FANG is not the right group to look at when it comes to “top” tech firms unless you also mean other companies like FANG wrt how competitive they are, such as MS, unicorns, hedge funds, etc. Depending on what you’re making you also might be doing yourself a disservice by only wanting to hire from “the best” - if you’re making a simple website or CRUD app as part of a larger business strategy such as online ordering, you don’t need to hire an expert in big data
k__ 8y ago
I think with a good business side you can get away with mediocre first technical hires, which you will probably end up with.
dasmoth 8y ago
How have we ended up with “engineer” as the only acceptable job title for people who build software? What happened to programmer? Developer? Or even (glances at title bar...) Hacker?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mful 8y ago
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 startup: - You will develop a wide breadth of skills you simply can't develop at FAANG, as you will be involved in product meetings, business strategy conversations, and will regularly eat lunch with the CEO. I imagine the reverse of this is true as well, in that there are skills developed at FAANG that are hard to develop as employee <50. - You will get to fast-track your career progression, in that you will be in line for promotions much earlier than in large companies, as opportunities emerge. - Companies (including FAANG) will look for folks with your skillset (my startup experience was a huge plus in my recent job search). - You will work on hard problems, with passionate people; folks aren't punching the clock here. This is fun. Also, for folks just thinking about comp, I'd like to gently point out that a 40 hour week on work you feel "meh" about is ~35% of your waking life. That's not to say you can't find exciting work at FAANG (I hope I have), but rather that there is more to a job than comp or career progression, and working with passionate folks on hard problems can be incredibly fulfilling. Edit: formatting
- thrownaway1337 8y ago
  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.
- arikrak 8y ago
  For future career prospects, a stint at FAANGM is a safer bet than joining a small startup. Most startups fail and it may not easy to find another job right away. If you're at a big tech company, you'll have the credential to find a job more easily (and with their job stability you can generally choose to look for one while working there).
throwawax911911 8y ago
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).
deepGem 8y ago
As engineer no 1 at an early stage startup, you don't need ths same skills that are needed at FAANG. I may be wrong, but you are constantly iterating and mostly building software that has a shelf life of may be 3-6 months. You are not building for reliability or scale. You are building mostly ad-hoc and to fulfil an immediate market need (which may or may not exist 2 months from now). Where as at FAANG you are by design building for reliability and scale from day 1. Very different skills. I can't comment which skill is more valuable. They are somewhat orthogonal to each other right ? The better you get at software engineering the more process oriented you become. Hopefully an early startup gives you that kind of progression, but very unlikely, since the progression is directly correlated to the startup's scale and success. If someone desires to put good software engineering into practice from day 1, then engineer #1 at an early stage startup is not the right choice. This is all based on anecdotal experiences so am happy to stand corrected.
ristem 8y ago
I think it is important to offer more equity to your engineers.
needlepont 8y ago
As the first engineer at a successful startup. Responsibilities- * Take over everything technical I was good at and hired for. * Take over policy and progress on everything I was good at. * Be on call 24/7. * Do whatever the CEO/CIO didn't want to do. Think this is pretty standard from my reading of other startups. The one lesson I should have learned and didn't is that as first engineer you should get 10% or more equity if you stay > 5 years.
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219 points by runesoerensen 8y ago

I remember hearing as a high schooler that The Italian Mob acquired great loyalty through only hiring people whose family they knew or had met before. Maybe a dumb metaphor, but the painpoints, lonely nights, long hours and competing offers you're gonna face with your Engineer #1 are going to require some deeply rooted trust. We're lucky enough to live in a time where our skills are in great demand and compensation can be matched without blinking an eye - my advice to business minds hiring their first engineers is to get to know them, build trust and find the ones who are committed to building cool shit with you for the long haul. Don't just make it about comp and perks. > As I said at the start, hiring your first engineer is incredibly hard unless you’re lucky enough to have a friend you can convince to join

Ceredron 8y ago
"Comitted to building cool shit" is not a motivation that will persist through hard times.
- elpakal 8y ago
  Maybe you didn't make it this far < Don't just make it about comp and perks.
newnewpdro 8y ago
There's an argument to be made that you want someone incentivized by something rational like compensation. If your critical employees joined the company for romantic and/or emotional reasons, it can be very difficult to retain them should they somehow become disillusioned. You can far more easily acquire funding to increase compensation than you can make someone change their mind about how they feel about something the leadership has done or the direction the company is heading.

toomuchtodo 8y ago

I find it interesting how many startups try to remove all bias from the hiring process, make interviews as objective and metric based as possible, but in the end, personal connections (friendships even) are still most important for your first hires.

maxxxxx 8y ago
It makes sense to me. Either you validate someone through knowing them or, if you don't know the person, use interviews and other tests.
sbilstein 8y ago
There is so much risk in hiring an early employee, it's totally reasonable to try and only hire from a personal network for the first three. Managing great employees can be challenging; managing someone you don't know is great can be 10 times more difficult.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

kache_ 8y ago

before you hire an engineer, make sure you have your onboarding streamlined

lmilcin 8y ago
This is the worst advice. You don't want to spend resources on problems that are not yet even problems. Especially extremely early when you don't have any resources to burn. One super power startups have is being frugal with money, why would you want to throw it away?
- nosseo 8y ago
  No engineer taking a role like this is going to expect an onboarding process. Many of them are specifically drawn by the idea they'll get to sit down and solve a problem on day 1.
  - phamilton 8y ago
    > Many of them are specifically drawn by the idea they'll get to sit down and solve a problem on day 1 I don't see how engineer #1 or engineer #100 changes that. When I onboard a senior engineer, they get a problem on day 1.
    - PeterisP 8y ago
      The difference is that when hiring engineer #1 there's no technical infrastructure to which you'd onboard someone, and nobody who's really qualified to make a decent technical onboarding process - you're hiring a person to create this process (among others) from scratch, make the initial decisions themselves (instead of being told them during onboarding) and onboard others.
      - wolco 8y ago
        Onboarding become here are the bathrooms, there is a great place to eat down the street.

mvpu 8y ago

Some traits I look for in engineer #1: a) should obsess about architecture and code organization (they will be laying a foundation so having a bit of OCD helps), b) should make good tradeoffs and optimize for speed (they will be building the wrong things initially), c) mature enough to understand that they will be writing and rewriting a lot (see (b)) and d) last but not least, should have a strong desire to do a startup (knowing all the risks)....

gregw134 8y ago
Don't you mean not optimize for speed, since they will be building the wrong things initially?
- fredophile 8y ago
  I think they meant optimize for speed of writing code not running it.

lmilcin 8y ago

1. Find somebody that is very good and passionate at something. 2. Present your idea the best you can. 3. Only hire if he/she is interested in your idea. 4. Offer stake in your business so it is also his/her business.

scarface74 8y ago
Why would I be interested in your idea? More than likely you aren’t trying to feed starving children. I might pretend like I’m interested, but at the end of the day, it’s just a paycheck.
- lmilcin 8y ago
  Well, this is simple. You want somebody invested and passionate about the project. Have you ever noticed, you can move mountains if you are genuinely interested in something? That it is difficult to focus and too easy to procrastinate if you don't want to do something or find something boring? Corporations are good at solving large problems because they can throw funds and money at the problems. They can absorb the damage caused by people who are barely productive. When you are startup you can't do that. But the advantage you have is that you are looking for one person at this point in time and you can be picky and wait until you find the one. Bad hire at this point in time can frequently spell disaster for your budding enterprise. I don't want to say that it is totally impossible to find somebody who might not be interested about your idea but will still do good job. But it is unlikely and then remember, you are not only looking for your first engineer but also your first manager, possibly CTO, etc. Look at stories of successful startups -- in most cases first hires seem to have been critical and mostly seem to be passionate people who then established themselves close to the top of new organization.
- repsilat 8y ago
  > 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.
  - 8y ago

lordnacho 8y ago

Hiring is a difficult task that I'm currently in the middle of attempting, so Harj's article is something I recognize. I'm not after a first dev, but I am part of a team that is after a dozen or so devs and I've now been day 1 on three different ventures. The problem is that the main piece of advice is correct but unuseful. Indeed, you should look at people you've worked with. In some sense they've all interviewed with you already, so you know what it's like to work with them, you know how good they are at communicating, and you know their limitations. Unfortunately, most people haven't worked with enough people to have more than one or two likely candidates for whatever they're thinking of doing. Your homies are either not right for the role, unwilling to move from a position of comfort, or not willing to put your friendship on the line. The same is also the reason why your company cannot grow via connections of employees past some point, the r < 1 on that series and it will converge on some low number. Where my problem is a bit different to the article is that before you have any devs, you have a really big problem identifying good devs. Heck even hiring for devs outside your specialty is hard. If you can't do X, how are you going to find a good X? You will end up falling back on recommendations and reputation, and you'll pay up for a branded individual if one is around. Not in itself terrible, but every penny counts early in a startup. I was talking to a shop who were after their first programmer a few months back, and they did the sensible sounding thing of bringing in a trusted friend from a FAANG to interview people. Main issue with that is that person is thinking about how a megacorp hires people. Mainly avoid guys who can't reverse a linked list, and stick the new guys into a process that already exists. But it's not quite the same things you care about as a day 1 startup. Day 1 guys need energy. Sad to say it, but this probably tilts against people who have kids. In my first day 1 jobs, I didn't have kids, I could wake up at 6 and code to 11 at night. Or you do like my current firm, where I was also day 1, but let people work from home. Then you suddenly have a very big carrot for experienced hires. The guys in the previous paragraph did the same. Day 1 guys also need a high degree of autonomy. When you've got nothing, as in not even a chat about what stack you're using, day 1 guy needs to put down those foundations. This is a lot harder than you think. Not only do you need to consider budget, you need to think about what a small team can do, you need to think about what imaginary future employees will want to work with, and you need a way to get from little team to big team where your hands aren't tied by your day 1 decisions. And you gotta balance current technical debt against future payments on that account. You also need to be broadly read. You can be highly specialized, but you need to have some idea of what's going on in the software world in general. Chances are you will end up picking the most standard choice of everything that isn't your specialty, like Django for a web framework or SciKit for a bit of ML. But you need to have an idea about a huge variety of things to know what the landscape roughly looks like. So how do you find a person like that? Well actually none of the methods other than "network" will actually check for these qualities. Most people are specialists with a label that enables them to move to other jobs with similar titles (Low Latency c++ dev), and recruiters are on the lookout for the label. Inbound and Outreach are also not going to tell you how broad someone is, because everyone writes stuff on their CV to look specialised, with a bit of breadth to catch a few interviews. Meetups, maybe, depends on how good you are at directing the conversation. A skill in itself.

philfreo 8y ago

I've been hired as Engineer #1 at two startups (both doing well). I wrote some thoughts recently about how I was recruited into that role: https://twitter.com/philfreo/status/1012171080834969601 https://twitter.com/philfreo/status/1012171080834969601 On the hiring side, I also incorporated some hard lessons learned about growing our Eng team from 2 to 14 here: http://philfreo.com/blog/when-who-how-to-hire-an-engineering-team-including-hiring-remotely/ http://philfreo.com/blog/when-who-how-to-hire-an-engineering...

mark-r 8y ago
I've done the #1 employee thing too. The founder was someone I had worked for previously. He was technical enough that I didn't have to worry about growing the team from there, he handled it all.
orsenthil 8y ago
I see you mentioned something like. Make sure you’re still excited after 30 days (or fire fast). That's a big NO-NO for me. 30 days is way too small for any company to make a decision on a hire. It just means your process for hiring is not good. We must start with firing people who were responsible for the that bad hire first.
alexpetralia 8y ago
Fantastic blog post on hiring. Thanks!

Moodles 8y ago

I wonder what proportion of HN would have different careers if software engineering paid, say, as much as humanities while humanities paid like software engineering. It seems like everyone here (myself included) isn't really in it for the money, but who knows what would happen.

Kenji 8y ago
I would have gone for the humanities in your scenario. What do you think, I'm stupid and go for breadless jobs? I love doing good work and what that good work is doesn't matter that much. If gardening paid as well I'd be gardening.
astura 8y ago
I'm only in it for the money. I'm good at my job and I enjoy it for the most part, but I'm only doing it because I get paid well.
ravenstine 8y ago
I like software engineering and have always had a personal interest in it. In fact, I'd say that I'm more passionate about it than 90% of the programmers I've worked with and spoken to. Having said that, software engineering as a profession is shitty in some respects. I don't think I would do it if it paid as little as the humanities. I'd continue doing it on my own time, but the drudgery of dealing with other people's bad code, corporate practices, clueless bosses, clients who undervalue and lowball you, etc. wouldn't be worth dealing with. It's not so much that I wouldn't be able to make a living, because I think I'd be content living on relatively little(as I am currently experiencing), but life is just too short to deal with professional software engineering when I'd get so little out of it. Alternatively, I'd just go into woodworking. Income becomes relative to the quality of work produced (I've never worked anywhere that actually cared about or rewarded quality code) and I could say or do whatever I want without someone else reaping most of the benefits and judging my actions by outdated 1950s office standards.
Swizec 8y ago
I love engineering. But you know what, when rent is $3000+ per month, there's only so far my rational mind will let me go. I loved art and drawing too. But I wisely chose not to master in art when going to college.

projectramo 8y ago

How do you tell a good engineer from an average one? If you can’t do that then all the time you spend taking them out to dinner is wasted.

trumped 8y ago

How to make sure that you can fire your first engineer without too much damage? maybe state-by-state instructions...

jazzychad 8y ago

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 than a founder, yes, but not the 30-50x typical equity ratio we see today.

benatkin 8y ago
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.
brianwawok 8y ago
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?
- westoncb 8y ago
  > 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 have no idea what my contribution could have been if I were made to feel like the company was partially my project too, and that there wasn't some massive (though never explicit) social divide between the founders and everyone else, the rest of us being mere tools for the founders' use (only one job I was at really gave that impression—the others were pretty good about creating an environment where everyone felt equal. But from speaking with many other prospects, it appears to be a typical attitude). There are thresholds in perception of ownership which when crossed give access to new categories of behavior in the perceiver. Think about 1%, 5%, and 10% equity in terms of sharing an object among a corresponding number of people: how much do you feel that thing is yours when sharing it with 100 people? With 20 people? With 10 people? For me, 10% is about where the line would be where I'd be willing to drop side projects etc. and seriously dedicate myself to the company. (And in my experience, this is not atypical: in the very early stage startup I was in, basically everyone was laying groundwork for their own startups on the side, or at least had other projects they were more interested in—but they'd make sad, fake displays of their dedication to the company to try and cover. At our largest there were still only ~7 people in the company.)

danbrooks 8y ago

Nice article. On TripleByte - they should make it clearer that the platform is only for the Bay Area and Software Engineering.

fermienrico 8y ago
I am being cynical but this article feels like a reason to promote/plug TripleByte complete with a $15,000 offer at the end.
- suyash 8y ago
  The article offered no new insights, it was more like an infomercial for the author’s company.
mmt 8y ago
Indeed, the title is startingly misleading, but it's par for the course. It seems that "Engineer", in the context of hiring, for anything YC-sponsored, means programmer. Even "Work at a Startup" was (and likely still is), exclusively for software engineers. This is despite the fact that YC actually accepts/funds companies that aren't pure software plays.

Fede_V 8y ago

An interesting exercise: assume the first engineering hire you want has to be at least the senior engineer bar at a top tech firm. In order for the engineer's median compensation to match the median compensation he would make working at FANG, how much stock would you have to give them making reasonable assumption about valuations (ie, assume your start up will have a trajectory in the top 30% percentile, but not in the top 0.1%).

opportune 8y ago
I think FANG is not the right group to look at when it comes to “top” tech firms unless you also mean other companies like FANG wrt how competitive they are, such as MS, unicorns, hedge funds, etc. Depending on what you’re making you also might be doing yourself a disservice by only wanting to hire from “the best” - if you’re making a simple website or CRUD app as part of a larger business strategy such as online ordering, you don’t need to hire an expert in big data

k__ 8y ago

I think with a good business side you can get away with mediocre first technical hires, which you will probably end up with.

dasmoth 8y ago

How have we ended up with “engineer” as the only acceptable job title for people who build software? What happened to programmer? Developer? Or even (glances at title bar...) Hacker?

deleted 8y ago

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mful 8y ago

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 startup: - You will develop a wide breadth of skills you simply can't develop at FAANG, as you will be involved in product meetings, business strategy conversations, and will regularly eat lunch with the CEO. I imagine the reverse of this is true as well, in that there are skills developed at FAANG that are hard to develop as employee <50. - You will get to fast-track your career progression, in that you will be in line for promotions much earlier than in large companies, as opportunities emerge. - Companies (including FAANG) will look for folks with your skillset (my startup experience was a huge plus in my recent job search). - You will work on hard problems, with passionate people; folks aren't punching the clock here. This is fun. Also, for folks just thinking about comp, I'd like to gently point out that a 40 hour week on work you feel "meh" about is ~35% of your waking life. That's not to say you can't find exciting work at FAANG (I hope I have), but rather that there is more to a job than comp or career progression, and working with passionate folks on hard problems can be incredibly fulfilling. Edit: formatting

thrownaway1337 8y ago
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.
arikrak 8y ago
For future career prospects, a stint at FAANGM is a safer bet than joining a small startup. Most startups fail and it may not easy to find another job right away. If you're at a big tech company, you'll have the credential to find a job more easily (and with their job stability you can generally choose to look for one while working there).

throwawax911911 8y ago

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).

deepGem 8y ago

As engineer no 1 at an early stage startup, you don't need ths same skills that are needed at FAANG. I may be wrong, but you are constantly iterating and mostly building software that has a shelf life of may be 3-6 months. You are not building for reliability or scale. You are building mostly ad-hoc and to fulfil an immediate market need (which may or may not exist 2 months from now). Where as at FAANG you are by design building for reliability and scale from day 1. Very different skills. I can't comment which skill is more valuable. They are somewhat orthogonal to each other right ? The better you get at software engineering the more process oriented you become. Hopefully an early startup gives you that kind of progression, but very unlikely, since the progression is directly correlated to the startup's scale and success. If someone desires to put good software engineering into practice from day 1, then engineer #1 at an early stage startup is not the right choice. This is all based on anecdotal experiences so am happy to stand corrected.

ristem 8y ago

I think it is important to offer more equity to your engineers.

needlepont 8y ago

As the first engineer at a successful startup. Responsibilities- * Take over everything technical I was good at and hired for. * Take over policy and progress on everything I was good at. * Be on call 24/7. * Do whatever the CEO/CIO didn't want to do. Think this is pretty standard from my reading of other startups. The one lesson I should have learned and didn't is that as first engineer you should get 10% or more equity if you stay > 5 years.

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