4 ms·

> but if you're looking for specialist expertise (eg. computer vision, control engineering, operations research) it's a lot trickier and not always only a matte

by OldHand2018 6y ago

> but if you're looking for specialist expertise (eg. computer vision, control engineering, operations research) it's a lot trickier and not always only a matter of compensation. It's not tricky at all. Those are chicken/egg jobs - can't get the job without experience; can't get the experience without the job. Hire some people and train them. They won't all work out, but the ones that do will be worth it.

jfim 6y ago
That's definitely doable at big corporations, which is why they can afford to hire generalists and assign them somewhere, train them, and reassign them somewhere else in the company if they don't pan out. For smaller companies, any given hire has an outsized impact, there's a more limited budget for hiring, there might not be the resources available to train a new hire from scratch for hard to train skills, and there might not be enough "bench space" for people that don't pan out. Many companies don't really need this kind of specialist expertise though. I wouldn't be surprised if hiring is much harder in the robotics industry than in, say, consumer mobile app development.
- spaced-out 6y ago
  This is a a lot of words to say running a tech company is hard. Big-Ns are willing to pay people with specialized skills north of 500K, if you want those skills pay up, otherwise find someone who you can pay less that will grow into the role. Get more money from your investors. If you can't do any of those, then I guess you can't afford to run your business. In my experience in startups, the executive suite is full of people who imagine themselves a future Gates/Jobs/Musk/etc... Well, being that successful is hard.
- webmaven 6y ago
  > For smaller companies, any given hire has an outsized impact, there's a more limited budget for hiring, there might not be the resources available to train a new hire from scratch for hard to train skills, and there might not be enough "bench space" for people that don't pan out. So prioritize finding intrinsically motivated learners instead of specific skills, and make sure you have a budget for any learning resources (books, courses, etc.) they would need to make rapid progress. Also, make sure that writing/improving documentation to help the next hire is one of their main responsibilities (this demonstrates what they are learning, gives senior folks the opportunity to correct mistakes & misunderstandings, selects for good communication skills, improves your onboarding, etc.)

jfim 6y ago

That's definitely doable at big corporations, which is why they can afford to hire generalists and assign them somewhere, train them, and reassign them somewhere else in the company if they don't pan out. For smaller companies, any given hire has an outsized impact, there's a more limited budget for hiring, there might not be the resources available to train a new hire from scratch for hard to train skills, and there might not be enough "bench space" for people that don't pan out. Many companies don't really need this kind of specialist expertise though. I wouldn't be surprised if hiring is much harder in the robotics industry than in, say, consumer mobile app development.

spaced-out 6y ago
This is a a lot of words to say running a tech company is hard. Big-Ns are willing to pay people with specialized skills north of 500K, if you want those skills pay up, otherwise find someone who you can pay less that will grow into the role. Get more money from your investors. If you can't do any of those, then I guess you can't afford to run your business. In my experience in startups, the executive suite is full of people who imagine themselves a future Gates/Jobs/Musk/etc... Well, being that successful is hard.
webmaven 6y ago
> For smaller companies, any given hire has an outsized impact, there's a more limited budget for hiring, there might not be the resources available to train a new hire from scratch for hard to train skills, and there might not be enough "bench space" for people that don't pan out. So prioritize finding intrinsically motivated learners instead of specific skills, and make sure you have a budget for any learning resources (books, courses, etc.) they would need to make rapid progress. Also, make sure that writing/improving documentation to help the next hire is one of their main responsibilities (this demonstrates what they are learning, gives senior folks the opportunity to correct mistakes & misunderstandings, selects for good communication skills, improves your onboarding, etc.)