4 ms·

I find it absolutely crazy that companies do this. My company's strategy is get one extremely solid person across all our verticals (Android / iOS / Backend /

I find it absolutely crazy that companies do this. My company's strategy is get one extremely solid person across all our verticals (Android / iOS / Backend / Infra) to minimise communication overhead and maximise iteration speed (since we throw out half the code we write anyway). I would be very hard pressed to hire more than 2-3 people in each role even if we were offered 10s of millions.

recuter 5y ago
Headcount perversely increases the valuation sometimes. Hence, big head positions.
- saila 5y ago
  I've been wondering why a seemingly stable startup would go on a massive hiring spree leading to all kinds of chaos rather than take a more measured approach and have started to suspect that this is the reason right here.
- rongenre 5y ago
  Headcount absolutely does. In the 90's there was a joke that they'd take the engineering headcount and multiply it by 10M (or something), subtract a multiple of management and there's your valuation.
- mwcampbell 5y ago
  This seems so backward to me. Since technology is all about achieving more with less work, shouldn't headcount always count against the valuation?
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
> My company's strategy is get one extremely solid person across all our verticals (Android / iOS / Backend / Infra) to minimise communication overhead and maximise iteration speed (since we throw out half the code we write anyway). but ... but ... that makes sense ... I have found that having fewer good engineers is much better than lots of bad ones. That approach is treated as heresy, in today's tech industry.
- mwcampbell 5y ago
  Perhaps the thinking is that it's easier to hire multiple good-enough programmers to get dependable productivity, and to replace one if something goes wrong. In the extreme case, if a company has one programmer who is very good when they're working at peak productivity, but then they have a period of low productivity for whatever reason, that company is in trouble. I've been that person.
  - hn_user82179 5y ago
    Additionally, it's a bigger loss felt when that person leaves.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
      ...which is why it's so important to foster an environment, where they don't want to leave. I kept engineers (really good ones) for decades. They had many "life problems" (like divorce, cancer, etc.) during that time, and I kept them on. It's entirely possible. I have done it. I ran a team that was all "top-shelfers."
      - infinite8s 5y ago
        I assume you were able to do it with more than just money?
        ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
        Definitely. My company offered “competitive” salaries (i.e. “low”). I feel as if I was a very “human” manager, and that seemed to make the difference. My employees were loyal to me, not the company. Not an ideal situation, but it WFM.
      - lostcolony 5y ago
        You still should avoid being too siloed. Bus factor matters; their life problems you might be able to keep them, but you're ensuring you suffer death problems the same time they do.
TuringNYC 5y ago
>> I find it absolutely crazy that companies do this. It has changed a bit, but a large part of it is due to HR policies around salary bands. You can have one person do 10x or 5x and another do 1/3x but their salaries are often max .5 factor apart. Ive been in situations where i'd rather reward (perhaps with a vest period) one person with 3x the salary and just skip all the inter-person communications bs, but HR makes it hard. We were able to do this at hedge funds, and i'm sure small startups can do this, but as companies grow, HR will generally not allow this.
- JonChesterfield 5y ago
  It strikes me as a fundamental mistake that HR are not responsible for the consequences of their policies. Failing to hire people leads fairly directly to failing to ship products, yet that doesn't appear to be attributed back to the team that insists they are all asking for above 'market rate'.

recuter 5y ago

Headcount perversely increases the valuation sometimes. Hence, big head positions.

saila 5y ago
I've been wondering why a seemingly stable startup would go on a massive hiring spree leading to all kinds of chaos rather than take a more measured approach and have started to suspect that this is the reason right here.
rongenre 5y ago
Headcount absolutely does. In the 90's there was a joke that they'd take the engineering headcount and multiply it by 10M (or something), subtract a multiple of management and there's your valuation.
mwcampbell 5y ago
This seems so backward to me. Since technology is all about achieving more with less work, shouldn't headcount always count against the valuation?

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

> My company's strategy is get one extremely solid person across all our verticals (Android / iOS / Backend / Infra) to minimise communication overhead and maximise iteration speed (since we throw out half the code we write anyway). but ... but ... that makes sense ... I have found that having fewer good engineers is much better than lots of bad ones. That approach is treated as heresy, in today's tech industry.

mwcampbell 5y ago
Perhaps the thinking is that it's easier to hire multiple good-enough programmers to get dependable productivity, and to replace one if something goes wrong. In the extreme case, if a company has one programmer who is very good when they're working at peak productivity, but then they have a period of low productivity for whatever reason, that company is in trouble. I've been that person.
- hn_user82179 5y ago
  Additionally, it's a bigger loss felt when that person leaves.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    ...which is why it's so important to foster an environment, where they don't want to leave. I kept engineers (really good ones) for decades. They had many "life problems" (like divorce, cancer, etc.) during that time, and I kept them on. It's entirely possible. I have done it. I ran a team that was all "top-shelfers."
    - infinite8s 5y ago
      I assume you were able to do it with more than just money?
      - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
        Definitely. My company offered “competitive” salaries (i.e. “low”). I feel as if I was a very “human” manager, and that seemed to make the difference. My employees were loyal to me, not the company. Not an ideal situation, but it WFM.
    - lostcolony 5y ago
      You still should avoid being too siloed. Bus factor matters; their life problems you might be able to keep them, but you're ensuring you suffer death problems the same time they do.

TuringNYC 5y ago

>> I find it absolutely crazy that companies do this. It has changed a bit, but a large part of it is due to HR policies around salary bands. You can have one person do 10x or 5x and another do 1/3x but their salaries are often max .5 factor apart. Ive been in situations where i'd rather reward (perhaps with a vest period) one person with 3x the salary and just skip all the inter-person communications bs, but HR makes it hard. We were able to do this at hedge funds, and i'm sure small startups can do this, but as companies grow, HR will generally not allow this.

JonChesterfield 5y ago
It strikes me as a fundamental mistake that HR are not responsible for the consequences of their policies. Failing to hire people leads fairly directly to failing to ship products, yet that doesn't appear to be attributed back to the team that insists they are all asking for above 'market rate'.