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Poll: Best way for startups to find awesome developers?
Upvote so everyone can share their most effective strategies on finding developers.
- ianterrell 15y agoUnlisted: Do awesome shit. Want awesome devs? Do awesome shit.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- lowglow 15y agoThis. I can't tell you how many times I've inquired about a company that I thought was doing amazing things.
- chubot 15y agoYeah I think that is pretty much how Google found all those awesome engineers from Digital Research and Bell Labs back in 1999-2002. These really seasoned engineers were surprised by what Google had accomplished and wanted to know how the hell it worked.
- sebg 15y agoStart a meetup group that hacks on open source software that your company uses. Bonus points if you provide beer + pizza.
- phamilton 15y agoIf you are in an area with ample developers and/or students, try a hack-day with prizes.
- sethg 15y agoI’ve recently started going to Python meetups. At the last one I attended, the technical presentation was given by the CTO of a local startup, and he made sure to let all of us know that he was hiring. At the one before that, another startup covered the tab for the post-meeting trip to the pub, and somebody from that startup passed out postcards encouraging people to apply. I have no idea how effective the technique is, but the principle seems sound: everyone at the meetup can be assumed to have interest/skill in Python, and this way you target them without opening yourself up to being spammed by job-seekers who are desperate but not competent.
- arihelgason 15y agoI'm partial to Hackruiter (http://www.hackruiter.com http://www.hackruiter.com). Recruitment done by engineers for engineers.
- guelo 15y agoLooks like they can't help "We're unable to help any additional companies hire right now. Sorry! " Seems strange for YC to fund a non-scalable business.
- navyrain 15y agoAllow for telecommuting. I'm surprised this gets so easily dismissed.
- jbermudes 15y agoSeconded. I understand that SF is the place where all the cool kids play, but it's kind of sad that in this day and age of the internet we're still chained to desks in a particular location.
- guelo 15y agoOnce I'm looking to hire someone a thousand miles a way I might as well look for someone cheap on the other side of the planet. A telecommuter in Arkansas is in the same job market as all the guys in Bangalore, not the guys in SF.
- rimantas 15y agoWhy cheap? Once you cannot find someone good within 10 miles away is that a reason not to find someone good 500 or 5000 miles away?
- navyrain 15y agoAs with most things, you get what you pay for. If you look to hire someone cheap from the other side of the planet, don't expect them to perform as well as the guy hacking on your SF startup from Seattle.
- bad_user 15y agoI'm on the other side of the planet, and I'm not that cheap. I mean, sure, with a SF-level salary you can hire 2 people like me, but you shouldn't expect of me to work for peanuts either. And sure, you can find devs that are willing to work for 1000 USD per month, but good developers want good salaries, regardless of their location. And emphasizing on cheap will bring you shitty results. Personally I would hire people from all over the planet not because it's cheaper, but because the poll of talent is bigger and you can find people specialized for the job you need a lot quicker, giving you a better ROI. Btw, I like working with americans as you guys generally seek value over price better than any other nationality I interacted with, but on the other hand I'm amazed at how few startups are doing offshoring, especially since startups, IMHO, need it the most.
- dizm 15y agoDefine awesome. - Someone who gets things done, maybe using bailing wire and duck tape. - Someone who can solve problems no one else can - Someone you can have a beer with. - Someone who doesn't have a mind of their own and keeps their mouth shut. - Someone who can't keep their mouth shut and thinks everything you do is wrong. Sometimes you have to choose.
- sebkomianos 15y agoIt'd be great if you could also start a "Best way for developers to find jobs at awesome startups?" poll.
- wangii 15y agono way. talents are made, by himself or great employer. it's a wrong question to ask where to find them. as entrepreneur, your job is to make people excellent.
- sgentle 15y agoI'm not sure that is true. I agree that talent is made (thanks, K. Anders Ericsson), but I think that anyone running a business has a finite amount of their own resources to spend. Devoting more of those resources to developing employees takes them away from developing the business. To put it another way: the harder your job is, the less likely you are to succeed. Less skilled employees make your job harder.
- daimyoyo 15y agoHave something worth working on. No one wants to work on the next groupon clone, but if you have a company that's trying to change an entire market(and has a real shot at doing so) A+ developers will knock down your door to work with you.
- axiom 15y agoThis is the other unseen cost of being in a bubble. All the best talent gets tied up in lame duck me-too companies, and makes it impossible to hire people for the good companies.
- psychotik 15y agoDoesn't the fact that the talented engineer picked a lame-duck company cause him/her to lose points? A good engineer should be equally good at making big bets, especially when it comes to picking a company he/she wants to work for.
- axiom 15y agoNah, I don't think so. When a company like Color (and honestly I don't know that Color is a lame duck, I'm just using them as an example) has $40 million to burn they can afford to pay a kid right out of school $150k/yr + $1M in equity. Most startups can't, even if they are totally viable high quality businesses. So in a non-frothy market those good quality companies would be able to find talent - but in this kind of market it's borderline impossible unless you're a super-hyped rock star startup. Anyway, I'm probably just jaded because it's been so insanely hard to hire lately (compared to ~1 year ago.)
- joncooper 15y agoDo you know it to be the case that Color has paid a kid just out of school $150k + $1M in equity? When I was trying to hire Rails & front-end folks recently I was seeing the market around $100 - $130k for reasonably experienced people, and had success hiring in that context. $150k for someone out of school seems unlikely to me. Re: Color - I assume they raised their $40mm at something like $100mm post-money, which would mean a 1% option grant. That strikes me as far outside the norm for any engineer that isn't a core part of the team.
- Retric 15y agoWorking for a well funded lame-duck company can be more profitable than most startups. Pulling some numbers from thin air: Conciser the breakeven point on 180K for 5 years vs 100K for 5 years? Well, 80K * 5 = 1/4 million + some interest. But what do you compare that to? let's assume it's been funded and you are getting .1% of the company. Well breakeven is now a ~250 million sale but what are your chances of hitting a 250+ million sale? PS: This is on the extreme end, but it just goes to show you that trading significant amounts of income for stock in funded companies is rarely worth it.
- diego 15y agoFinding awesome developers is easy. For example, look at popular and respected projects on GitHub. Search Google. Attend conferences. Go to meetups. I could go on, there are countless ways. Hiring those developers is hard unless they think you/your company are awesome.
- BrandonM 15y agoStreamline your hiring process so it's not so expensive. We talk about agile software and fast iteration all the time, but we don't apply it to employees. It shouldn't be so expensive to decrease the level of filtering on incoming resumes, try more people out, and get rid of the ones that don't work out. Otherwise, the alternative is to create ridiculous criteria that doesn't even describe a good employee for your situation. Instead of being productive in a company, I'm off developing a me-too open source project just to even get a chance of getting hired to a decent position. This is infuriatingly frustrating from the point of view of someone who is a great developer but enjoys things other than programming.
- vailripper 15y agoThe difficulty is that bad developers aren't just inefficient, they can do extensive damage to your project quickly, while also costing you a great deal of money. Paying a developer 4k to write code you have a scrap, while tying up your good developers while they struggle through basic problems. The challenge is coming up with good criteria to evaluate people on. I feel your pain that oftentimes the criteria has nothing to do with the actual job, but in large part it's a signal that the company isn't worth working for if they don't know what they want.
- exabrial 15y ago"outsource to the midwest"... Lotta brilliant people live out here where the cost of living is a lot cheaper.
- hoag 15y agoActually, this was one of the original reasons I set out to build our new startup http://www.venturocket.com http://www.venturocket.com We use a unique skill keyword-based pay-per-connection bidding and matching system as a means of filtering out unqualified candidates. I'd love to invite you to try it out, and hopefully it will help you with your awesome developer search (at least once we get more users!)! :)
- mef 15y agoRun a get together at a local bar, whether a one-off or a monthly thing, centered around something developers find interesting. Spread the word as best you can, let people know you'll be buying a few rounds and that stimulating discussion will be had. I've found that in that kind of environment I figure out very quickly if someone knows their stuff and would be a good fit or not.
- chaplibm 15y agoWhat about a start-up that is on the ground level and doesn't have traction?? Has a solid concept but is in need of a kick ass developer to really make the project take off...whats the best route in that situation?
- Aloisius 15y agoI've basically spammed every person I know for months. In person, in email, on Twitter, on LinkedIn... it doesn't matter, I ask all the time. If that doesn't work, I find companies that are going under and then use LinkedIn to find employees there and go on the attack. Sadly, professional recruiters (who are taking upwards of 20% of the first year salary at this point)... are far better than I am at it (which is why I've retained a few). At this point though, I'd probably be willing to offer anyone a 20% referral fee (~$20-30k) for a top-notch iOS developer.
- anamax 15y agoWhy should awesome devlopers, however defined, want to work at your startup? When you have a good answer to that question, then it's just a matter of making it known to awesome developers. That task will be a lot easier if you actually have a good answer to that question. Reminder - every startup promises to change the world, cool technology, lots of resources, great people to work with so if you're different ....
- bugsy 15y agoFor considerably more bang for your buck, rather than implement a mixed bag of "this and that" gimmicks to "find awesome developers", companies should focus on eliminating all the things they are doing to drive away awesome developers.
- ratandeep 15y agoTo recruiting of developer for the start up should be on the basis of talent means in which technology he/she have exceptional skill and good analytically skill these has to be assess by the interviewer. But it's not on the basis of college and grades. These kind of things can leads a problem for developer as well as company.