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It's a (thoughtful) list for the "senior engineer in 500+ heads company". If you work for a small startup (where you'll be forced to be "senior engineer" if yo

by avip 7y ago

It's a (thoughtful) list for the "senior engineer in 500+ heads company". If you work for a small startup (where you'll be forced to be "senior engineer" if you like it or not), you'll have no "manager", "peers", "projects", "hiring", "mentoring", "networking", and so 95% of the list items immediately pop.

jefozabuss 7y ago
Manager = CTO/CEO peers = peers projects = you’d have at least one (and smaller additions to the product that could be projects in their own) hiring = you could be involved in the hiring process even though probably the CTO will handle it mentoring = you can mentor others or get nentored by e.g the CTO ... etc so where is that 95%?
arcticbull 7y ago
If you're at a startup you better be hiring! That's your #1 job! You better keep that bar high because the next round of folks will be hired by them. Further, at a small startup you can't get away from a bad hire, they're literally adjacent to you for 50+ hours a week. Further to this point, networking is crucial too, but it's more networking outside the company. With other startups, with other technical folks -- your hiring pipeline is built on your personal network until you get to at least 20+.
- littleblah 7y ago
  To add to this, I found these resources great: 1. https://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-hire https://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-hire 2. https://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec02/ https://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec02/
- SMFloris 7y ago
  As the CTO of a small-ish startup, this rings so true. All our employees were hired from our network. Its only now that we'll look for other sources to benefit or hiring pipeline.
littleblah 7y ago
While I agree to certain extent, you still have these things in different shapes and sizes. Startup teams are a tight knit community in my experience, but as it scales, these aspects start to show their heads.
icebraining 7y ago
I worked at a five person startup, and I had all of those.

by avip 7y ago

jefozabuss 7y ago

Manager = CTO/CEO peers = peers projects = you’d have at least one (and smaller additions to the product that could be projects in their own) hiring = you could be involved in the hiring process even though probably the CTO will handle it mentoring = you can mentor others or get nentored by e.g the CTO ... etc so where is that 95%?

arcticbull 7y ago

If you're at a startup you better be hiring! That's your #1 job! You better keep that bar high because the next round of folks will be hired by them. Further, at a small startup you can't get away from a bad hire, they're literally adjacent to you for 50+ hours a week. Further to this point, networking is crucial too, but it's more networking outside the company. With other startups, with other technical folks -- your hiring pipeline is built on your personal network until you get to at least 20+.

littleblah 7y ago
To add to this, I found these resources great: 1. https://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-hire https://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-hire 2. https://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec02/ https://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec02/
SMFloris 7y ago
As the CTO of a small-ish startup, this rings so true. All our employees were hired from our network. Its only now that we'll look for other sources to benefit or hiring pipeline.

littleblah 7y ago

While I agree to certain extent, you still have these things in different shapes and sizes. Startup teams are a tight knit community in my experience, but as it scales, these aspects start to show their heads.

icebraining 7y ago

I worked at a five person startup, and I had all of those.