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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 d

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.