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No. I'm CEO of an early stage startup (robusta.dev) and we've been extremely successful in bringing talented engineers. It's the accomplishment I'm most proud o

No. I'm CEO of an early stage startup (robusta.dev) and we've been extremely successful in bringing talented engineers. It's the accomplishment I'm most proud of, more then our product or anything else. We pay competitive salaries and offer generous option grants, but it's not the reason why people join. I know this, because we typically work out the compensation once people have already decided to join (contingent on a fair offer, of course) Developers (at least the ones we're trying to hire) want end to end responsibility, to do meaningful work, to not be micromanaged, and to have their voice and opinion heard and taken into account. They don't want to be another cog in the machine turning out code according to preprocessed requirements. Our developers write their own user stories, go on calls with customers so they have the full picture, and can take on any responsibility in the company that isn't currently being handled well. We also let you work from home and manage your own hours. You're an adult, we don't want to decide for you how you work best. I'm open to hearing contrary opinions, but this has worked very well for us

black_13 5y ago
omegalulw 5y ago
How close are you to IPO?
- nyellin 5y ago
  We're pretty far away. Why?
  - omegalulw 5y ago
    A big reason for joining startups, even with a lower offer, is the IPO upside. I was wondering if that was relevant to your case.
    - nyellin 5y ago
      There's a trade-off. The closer you get to an IPO the less options you get (in terms of equity percentages). On the other hand, there is far more certainty that those options are worth something. At an early stage startup you can get very substantial equity, but in exchange for higher risk.
strikelaserclaw 5y ago
This is where being open to remote helps, i work for a cool SF company which is a startup, i get paid probably slightly lower than their engineers in SF. I'm fine with that only because i live in a low col area, if i lived in SF, i would feel an anxiety that i would never be able to afford to live there on startup salaries, which is both true and kinda sad.
manuelabeledo 5y ago
> We pay competitive salaries and offer generous option grants, but it's not the reason why people join. I know this, because we typically work out the compensation once people have already decided to join (contingent on a fair offer, of course) It does sound like money is a big factor. Did any of your employees take your offer with a significant pay cut from their previous job?
- nyellin 5y ago
  It isn't the deciding factor. We've had employees choose us over other offers with higher salaries. An unfair offer can make people avoid your company, but a higher salary is rarely the reason why people say yes. Fwiw, my personal experience as a developer also matches this. Before starting Robusta, I turned down a very high offer from Microsoft to go to a development job at a startup because I preferred a high impact job over better compensation.
  - manuelabeledo 5y ago
    > We've had employees choose us over other offers with higher salaries I guess the question here is, how much higher? If I was offered a good package with sizeable equity and/or options, in a startup with a good outlook and decent valuation, I could forsake a slightly better cash offering. But if I was to be paid say 25% more in cash, I doubt I would have gone for the startup gig. Mostly because I have a family to feed and a mortgage to pay. I would love not to have to think about money, but realistically, I can’t afford to say “no” to cash.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - yawnxyz 5y ago
      That's an interesting question — this kind of hiring probably ends up biasing the hiring process towards a certain kind of people. Not saying it's right or wrong, I'm just saying that this type of situation (giving up higher wages for opportunity or mission) definitely selects for certain types of people in certain situations.
mindwok 5y ago
This matches my experience. Last time I changed jobs, the questions I asked were all thinly veiled scenarios to draw out whether as a developer I’d have the agency to do things without micromanagement. My now team lead saw through this pretty quickly and said he doesn’t believe in involving anyone in a decision who can’t add value to the discussion. That answer pretty much convinced me to join.
windex 5y ago
> You're an adult, we don't want to decide for you how you work best. I wish more people thought this way.
jzig 5y ago
Wow, that’s exactly what I want and haven’t been able to quite put into words. And you’re the only person in a leadership position that I’ve seen who gets it. Maybe I should work for you!
- nyellin 5y ago
  Send a CV to natan@robusta.dev
  - aspyct 5y ago
    Ahah, bonus upvote for being straight to the point :)
- crossroadsguy 5y ago
  Maybe you don't. Not if your next company has customers in more than one timezone and one of them is polar opposite of yours and by "manage your own hours" the implicit expectation from you was that "manage customers as well whether it's your sleeping hours or waking hours". That's exactly how my company played its cards by allowing "flexibility" and then later confidently telling "well, it's your responsibility" while hiring in other timezones has been "on the cards" since 2+ years now. Some CEOs tell devs at the time of hiring - "we are a family", "we don't differentiate between day and night", "we are hustlers". Anyway, besides the bleak possibility I painted I hope OP's company does it better.
  - nyellin 5y ago
    OP here and that's not the intention. I very much hope that we will manage to stay the same as we scale and grow.
emptybottle 5y ago
There was a poll about this recently on HN and salary did actually score much higher than culture. I think the reality is it’s complicated and many things need to be above a threshold, and reasonably better than their current role.
- Viliam1234 5y ago
  From my perspective, in a perfect world, culture would be more important than salary... but it is much easier to lie about the culture at the interview, and also much easier to change the culture later. The information about salary is more reliable.
Zigurd 5y ago
That's how I hire and run software development projects. I hire with this management style in mind. Hiring people who can't work this way raises the risk that person will not work out for other reasons. There are big companies throughout tech that over-control their developers and other key workers. I don't know how they arrived at the theory that they can get more work, more reliably, out of coders by "managing" them with over-formalized project management styles. There is some aspects of process, like creating adequate test code and root cause analysis, that needs to be formalized. But apart from the it makes no sense for coders in a first tier tech company to be managed by bureaucratic methods like SAFe. I recently recruited a very high achieving engineer out of an organization that I would not have thought would be so bureaucratic.
ShamelessC 5y ago
I'm glad this works for you, but I don't think your case study is sufficient evidence to prove the author's proposed hypothesis as outright wrong. I see another user mentioned this and was flagged for some reason.

black_13 5y ago

omegalulw 5y ago

How close are you to IPO?

nyellin 5y ago
We're pretty far away. Why?
- omegalulw 5y ago
  A big reason for joining startups, even with a lower offer, is the IPO upside. I was wondering if that was relevant to your case.
  - nyellin 5y ago
    There's a trade-off. The closer you get to an IPO the less options you get (in terms of equity percentages). On the other hand, there is far more certainty that those options are worth something. At an early stage startup you can get very substantial equity, but in exchange for higher risk.

strikelaserclaw 5y ago

This is where being open to remote helps, i work for a cool SF company which is a startup, i get paid probably slightly lower than their engineers in SF. I'm fine with that only because i live in a low col area, if i lived in SF, i would feel an anxiety that i would never be able to afford to live there on startup salaries, which is both true and kinda sad.

manuelabeledo 5y ago

> We pay competitive salaries and offer generous option grants, but it's not the reason why people join. I know this, because we typically work out the compensation once people have already decided to join (contingent on a fair offer, of course) It does sound like money is a big factor. Did any of your employees take your offer with a significant pay cut from their previous job?

nyellin 5y ago
It isn't the deciding factor. We've had employees choose us over other offers with higher salaries. An unfair offer can make people avoid your company, but a higher salary is rarely the reason why people say yes. Fwiw, my personal experience as a developer also matches this. Before starting Robusta, I turned down a very high offer from Microsoft to go to a development job at a startup because I preferred a high impact job over better compensation.
- manuelabeledo 5y ago
  > We've had employees choose us over other offers with higher salaries I guess the question here is, how much higher? If I was offered a good package with sizeable equity and/or options, in a startup with a good outlook and decent valuation, I could forsake a slightly better cash offering. But if I was to be paid say 25% more in cash, I doubt I would have gone for the startup gig. Mostly because I have a family to feed and a mortgage to pay. I would love not to have to think about money, but realistically, I can’t afford to say “no” to cash.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - yawnxyz 5y ago
    That's an interesting question — this kind of hiring probably ends up biasing the hiring process towards a certain kind of people. Not saying it's right or wrong, I'm just saying that this type of situation (giving up higher wages for opportunity or mission) definitely selects for certain types of people in certain situations.

mindwok 5y ago

This matches my experience. Last time I changed jobs, the questions I asked were all thinly veiled scenarios to draw out whether as a developer I’d have the agency to do things without micromanagement. My now team lead saw through this pretty quickly and said he doesn’t believe in involving anyone in a decision who can’t add value to the discussion. That answer pretty much convinced me to join.

windex 5y ago

> You're an adult, we don't want to decide for you how you work best. I wish more people thought this way.

jzig 5y ago

Wow, that’s exactly what I want and haven’t been able to quite put into words. And you’re the only person in a leadership position that I’ve seen who gets it. Maybe I should work for you!

nyellin 5y ago
Send a CV to natan@robusta.dev
- aspyct 5y ago
  Ahah, bonus upvote for being straight to the point :)
crossroadsguy 5y ago
Maybe you don't. Not if your next company has customers in more than one timezone and one of them is polar opposite of yours and by "manage your own hours" the implicit expectation from you was that "manage customers as well whether it's your sleeping hours or waking hours". That's exactly how my company played its cards by allowing "flexibility" and then later confidently telling "well, it's your responsibility" while hiring in other timezones has been "on the cards" since 2+ years now. Some CEOs tell devs at the time of hiring - "we are a family", "we don't differentiate between day and night", "we are hustlers". Anyway, besides the bleak possibility I painted I hope OP's company does it better.
- nyellin 5y ago
  OP here and that's not the intention. I very much hope that we will manage to stay the same as we scale and grow.

emptybottle 5y ago

There was a poll about this recently on HN and salary did actually score much higher than culture. I think the reality is it’s complicated and many things need to be above a threshold, and reasonably better than their current role.

Viliam1234 5y ago
From my perspective, in a perfect world, culture would be more important than salary... but it is much easier to lie about the culture at the interview, and also much easier to change the culture later. The information about salary is more reliable.

Zigurd 5y ago

That's how I hire and run software development projects. I hire with this management style in mind. Hiring people who can't work this way raises the risk that person will not work out for other reasons. There are big companies throughout tech that over-control their developers and other key workers. I don't know how they arrived at the theory that they can get more work, more reliably, out of coders by "managing" them with over-formalized project management styles. There is some aspects of process, like creating adequate test code and root cause analysis, that needs to be formalized. But apart from the it makes no sense for coders in a first tier tech company to be managed by bureaucratic methods like SAFe. I recently recruited a very high achieving engineer out of an organization that I would not have thought would be so bureaucratic.

ShamelessC 5y ago

I'm glad this works for you, but I don't think your case study is sufficient evidence to prove the author's proposed hypothesis as outright wrong. I see another user mentioned this and was flagged for some reason.