I'd never ask a prospective employee to work on a side project as a prerequisite to an interview, but I agree that it's almost mandatory to see that a dev has s

I'd never ask a prospective employee to work on a side project as a prerequisite to an interview, but I agree that it's almost mandatory to see that a dev has singlehandedly built and shipped a product if they're going to be a first hire at a startup. This doesn't have to be a 'side project'; it could have been a new product with a small team at their existing company, or a job at a small startup with only a small handful of people, or even just a cool thing that they built in university. A 'big company' developer, one that has only worked for large companies, that lacks this qualification, might be a good co-founder, but isn't really a good first technical hire. The pay cut, though, is insulting. I won't ask an engineer to take a below-market rate to work for my company, unless they've got an equity stake that makes up for it. Which, frankly, moves them into co-founder territory.