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Startup Hiring 101: A Founder's Guide

129 points by ivankirigin 6y ago

wordchucks 6y ago
Wow, fantastic resource. Thanks for sharing!
alex_young 6y ago
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- yellowstuff 6y ago
  Yes, and a lot of the best software writing I've ever seen was an advertisement for Fog Creek Software. Having an ulterior motive doesn't make this a bad article.
  - respondo2134 6y ago
    If you're refering to Joel's writing, yes he always cast Fog Creek in a good light and was always recruiting but I don't remember him selling fogbugz via hsi writing.
nickwalton00 6y ago
Read the first section and has already been super helpful for a newbie founder. Thanks!
respondo2134 6y ago
>> early-stage startups who have raised enough money to hire their initial team Is it just me who sees this as backwards? raise money => hire => build? shouldn't you have done something before you raise money, or is this my old-fashioned ideas colliding with the new "growth hacker" startup mentality?
- austincheney 6y ago
  In my case I have built something I believe could be a compelling business interest. It works well enough for complex and sophisticated demos but still has a ways to go for commercial readiness. Once I finish my current military deployment I would like to raise capital so that I can hire developers to get this to the finish line. No matter how confident I am in my strengths as a developer I suffer no illusions about doing everything myself.
- AlwaysBCoding 6y ago
  I think there's a fairly common story that goes like: two people, founders, spend a few months hacking on an idea together, without getting paid, build a functional MVP, run a beta, get positive feedback from beta users, maybe start making revenue, enough to have confidence in product-market-founder fit, want to start taking salaries so they can work on the nascent product full-time, reach a level of codebase complexity where adding another developer would add a lot of value, decide the right path forward is to raise a seed round to launch and reach a revenue milestone in 12-18 months, raise enough money to pay the founders salaries + make a few hires... And now you're in the situation where you have put in enough upfront work to have confidence in product-market fit but still choose to raise money and build out an initial team ahead of real revenue / traction.
- threeseed 6y ago
  The world is flush with seed money. So if you have a good team and a relatively good idea you will fairly easily raise a seed round from someone. And it's generally an awful idea for founders: (1) because most assume they will raise a Series-A when statistically they won't and (2) you don't learn to hustle when you have millions in the bank. The best way is to follow companies like Buildkite. Hustle your way to a few million a year in ARR and then you can reach out to Series A investors on your terms instead of theirs.
  - sebmellen 6y ago
    Buildkite is an awesome story. $20.2 million in Series A funding at a $145 million valuation [0] is stellar for a bootstrapped company. I'll take this as inspiration for my startup. Of course, it's much harder to build this way, but money breeds complacency, so it's probably best not to look for it. Do you have experience with the seed/Series-A dynamic? [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/18/melbourne-based-ci-cd-platform-buildkite-gets-28-million-aud-series-a-led-by-openview/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/18/melbourne-based-ci-cd-plat...
systemvoltage 6y ago
Aside: One of the worst trends we have going is emojis in articles, commit messages, readmes and PRs. Emojis are great for chat when you want to express emotions. When it comes to reading text anywhere else: - It distracts from years of training we have in recognizing characters of a particular language and word shapes - It takes an extra second to process the symbol since we're not used to it. For example, "Notice a _bug_emoji_ ? Send us an email." [1] - It draws eyes to the Emoji's first because they're foreign symbols and they're painted in color. - Notion is one of those products that encourages this. I really don't see the benefit. Perhaps in labels it is ok - since its a symbol that's used to categorize things, and it is not prose. [1] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/#byline https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/...
- bjelkeman-again 6y ago
  And Notion stops me from zooming on the text and disables reader view (iOS feature that shows the text only). Why? Zooming is core feature of a web browser.
- benjaminjosephw 6y ago
  Now imagine if you're a user who's grown up in a generation that have always had emojis: - They are part of our language and easily recognized from years of training - Emojis are recognized immediate before reading a word and add to the speed and efficiency (as well as depth) of communication - It becomes easier to understand sentiment before reading a word - You're rules about where you should and shouldn't use emojis seem arbitrary It's not as easy as it used to be to understand what all users want - your intuition about your preferences don't necessarily apply as broadly as they might once have. As more young people build software products and become bigger audiences for other products, you're probably going to have to broaden your perspective on what experiences are common to all users.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    Instead of arguing from first principles and the origins of Emojis, we're arguing - "Just get used to it". This is, my friend, how we regress as a society as no one challenges the status-quo. I was hoping you'd provide some objective reasons that my comment was lacking, but you did none of those. I am open to hear and listen. We don't broaden the perspective for flat earthers, right? If we did, we would regress. If there is any glimmer of hope - it would turn Emojis like symbols in Japanese Kanji script. They'd become logographic characters that are universally recognized across all languages. But, we're far from that. It needs to be formally included in the language, dictionary and schools.
matheist 6y ago
Super interesting to read and get the hirers' perspective, but there's a lot here that feels really creepy and manipulative to me as a potential employee, and I think I'd drop out of the funnel the instant someone tried one of these things on me. (Which, maybe, win-win? Maybe I'm not the employee you're looking for.) > Sometimes a candidate’s current company will counteroffer, which throws a big wrench in everything. The good news is that you can follow a few simple steps to position yourself well before a counteroffer is made: > - Candidates are less likely to reneg once they officially sign, so get them to sign your offer before they tell their employer. Good news! Employ your mark's commitment bias to advance your own position at their expense. Similarly the section just a bit later on exploding deadlines — first a few tactics on how to use exploding deadlines yourself, and then just a few sentences later, with no shame, arming the candidate with phrases to push back on exploding deadlines from other companies... I can't recommend strongly enough, patio11's classic on salary negotiation: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ But I think I might start recommending this one to job-hunters too. As a way of saying "this is what you're up against, be aware what some people will try to do to you to get you to compromise your negotiating position."
- logicOnly 6y ago
  That author(patio11) needs to learn copywriting. He tells people to "suck less". What a shakespeare.
  - benjaminjosephw 6y ago
    "If I were a little more paranoid and a little more Marxist, I’d honestly think that..." you'd disparage a good article to get fewer people to read it and learn how to be better at salary negotiations ;) Seriously though, Shakespeare or not, patio11 has probably helped a lot of engineers do a lot better for themselves with this.

129 points by ivankirigin 6y ago

wordchucks 6y ago

Wow, fantastic resource. Thanks for sharing!

alex_young 6y ago

Advertisement for Gem

yellowstuff 6y ago
Yes, and a lot of the best software writing I've ever seen was an advertisement for Fog Creek Software. Having an ulterior motive doesn't make this a bad article.
- respondo2134 6y ago
  If you're refering to Joel's writing, yes he always cast Fog Creek in a good light and was always recruiting but I don't remember him selling fogbugz via hsi writing.

nickwalton00 6y ago

Read the first section and has already been super helpful for a newbie founder. Thanks!

respondo2134 6y ago

>> early-stage startups who have raised enough money to hire their initial team Is it just me who sees this as backwards? raise money => hire => build? shouldn't you have done something before you raise money, or is this my old-fashioned ideas colliding with the new "growth hacker" startup mentality?

austincheney 6y ago
In my case I have built something I believe could be a compelling business interest. It works well enough for complex and sophisticated demos but still has a ways to go for commercial readiness. Once I finish my current military deployment I would like to raise capital so that I can hire developers to get this to the finish line. No matter how confident I am in my strengths as a developer I suffer no illusions about doing everything myself.
AlwaysBCoding 6y ago
I think there's a fairly common story that goes like: two people, founders, spend a few months hacking on an idea together, without getting paid, build a functional MVP, run a beta, get positive feedback from beta users, maybe start making revenue, enough to have confidence in product-market-founder fit, want to start taking salaries so they can work on the nascent product full-time, reach a level of codebase complexity where adding another developer would add a lot of value, decide the right path forward is to raise a seed round to launch and reach a revenue milestone in 12-18 months, raise enough money to pay the founders salaries + make a few hires... And now you're in the situation where you have put in enough upfront work to have confidence in product-market fit but still choose to raise money and build out an initial team ahead of real revenue / traction.
threeseed 6y ago
The world is flush with seed money. So if you have a good team and a relatively good idea you will fairly easily raise a seed round from someone. And it's generally an awful idea for founders: (1) because most assume they will raise a Series-A when statistically they won't and (2) you don't learn to hustle when you have millions in the bank. The best way is to follow companies like Buildkite. Hustle your way to a few million a year in ARR and then you can reach out to Series A investors on your terms instead of theirs.
- sebmellen 6y ago
  Buildkite is an awesome story. $20.2 million in Series A funding at a $145 million valuation [0] is stellar for a bootstrapped company. I'll take this as inspiration for my startup. Of course, it's much harder to build this way, but money breeds complacency, so it's probably best not to look for it. Do you have experience with the seed/Series-A dynamic? [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/18/melbourne-based-ci-cd-platform-buildkite-gets-28-million-aud-series-a-led-by-openview/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/18/melbourne-based-ci-cd-plat...

systemvoltage 6y ago

Aside: One of the worst trends we have going is emojis in articles, commit messages, readmes and PRs. Emojis are great for chat when you want to express emotions. When it comes to reading text anywhere else: - It distracts from years of training we have in recognizing characters of a particular language and word shapes - It takes an extra second to process the symbol since we're not used to it. For example, "Notice a _bug_emoji_ ? Send us an email." [1] - It draws eyes to the Emoji's first because they're foreign symbols and they're painted in color. - Notion is one of those products that encourages this. I really don't see the benefit. Perhaps in labels it is ok - since its a symbol that's used to categorize things, and it is not prose. [1] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/#byline https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/...

bjelkeman-again 6y ago
And Notion stops me from zooming on the text and disables reader view (iOS feature that shows the text only). Why? Zooming is core feature of a web browser.
benjaminjosephw 6y ago
Now imagine if you're a user who's grown up in a generation that have always had emojis: - They are part of our language and easily recognized from years of training - Emojis are recognized immediate before reading a word and add to the speed and efficiency (as well as depth) of communication - It becomes easier to understand sentiment before reading a word - You're rules about where you should and shouldn't use emojis seem arbitrary It's not as easy as it used to be to understand what all users want - your intuition about your preferences don't necessarily apply as broadly as they might once have. As more young people build software products and become bigger audiences for other products, you're probably going to have to broaden your perspective on what experiences are common to all users.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  Instead of arguing from first principles and the origins of Emojis, we're arguing - "Just get used to it". This is, my friend, how we regress as a society as no one challenges the status-quo. I was hoping you'd provide some objective reasons that my comment was lacking, but you did none of those. I am open to hear and listen. We don't broaden the perspective for flat earthers, right? If we did, we would regress. If there is any glimmer of hope - it would turn Emojis like symbols in Japanese Kanji script. They'd become logographic characters that are universally recognized across all languages. But, we're far from that. It needs to be formally included in the language, dictionary and schools.

matheist 6y ago

Super interesting to read and get the hirers' perspective, but there's a lot here that feels really creepy and manipulative to me as a potential employee, and I think I'd drop out of the funnel the instant someone tried one of these things on me. (Which, maybe, win-win? Maybe I'm not the employee you're looking for.) > Sometimes a candidate’s current company will counteroffer, which throws a big wrench in everything. The good news is that you can follow a few simple steps to position yourself well before a counteroffer is made: > - Candidates are less likely to reneg once they officially sign, so get them to sign your offer before they tell their employer. Good news! Employ your mark's commitment bias to advance your own position at their expense. Similarly the section just a bit later on exploding deadlines — first a few tactics on how to use exploding deadlines yourself, and then just a few sentences later, with no shame, arming the candidate with phrases to push back on exploding deadlines from other companies... I can't recommend strongly enough, patio11's classic on salary negotiation: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ But I think I might start recommending this one to job-hunters too. As a way of saying "this is what you're up against, be aware what some people will try to do to you to get you to compromise your negotiating position."

logicOnly 6y ago
That author(patio11) needs to learn copywriting. He tells people to "suck less". What a shakespeare.
- benjaminjosephw 6y ago
  "If I were a little more paranoid and a little more Marxist, I’d honestly think that..." you'd disparage a good article to get fewer people to read it and learn how to be better at salary negotiations ;) Seriously though, Shakespeare or not, patio11 has probably helped a lot of engineers do a lot better for themselves with this.