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While I appreciate Carson's candidness in blogging how they do things, there's a couple of dangerous things in his recommendations. "I’d recommend waiting unti
by mikk0j 14y ago
While I appreciate Carson's candidness in blogging how they do things, there's a couple of dangerous things in his recommendations.
"I’d recommend waiting until you’re overwhelmed with your work."
This is a bad idea. Do not. Hire when you can afford to pay close attention to what you are doing. Your first hire is crucial to your company culture and direction, so you need to be on the spot here. Packed schedule and cognitive overload do not a good hiring setup make.
Additionally, that recommendation assumes that you are hiring someone to do the stuff that you don't have the time to do. While that's certainly true and helpful in many cases, it shouldn't be the whole truth. I like the maxim "hire people smarter than yourself". Because if you do, maybe you'll see that you weren't packing your schedule with the right things after all.
"Avoid hiring a friend as a first employee."
Right, there is the fact that it potentially changes the dynamic. But not in all cases. If you, say, hire your closest friend since childhood, it's very possible that your friendship will survive anything the work life throws at you, and makes that in turn stronger. On the other hand, hiring a more 'distant' friend has the massive benefit that you not only know the person, but likely know their network, too, and there is no better filter or background check than sharing the same social circle. Carson does mention this in "ask friends for recommendations" of course.
"I’d recommend your first employee should be a designer with strong frontend dev skills."
Um. What if that's exactly what we don't need? Ok, cheap shot, but it's a bit silly to say that everyone needs a designer-dev (then again, Treehouse training does prepare people for that...).
And while he says that you should start with freelancers, he doesn't mention that the first hire can also (in most legislations) start as a contractor or on trial period, which is a safety net for both the employee and the employer.
- jandrewrogers 14y agoYeah, some of the recommendations are specific to his application and business, generalizing poorly to other startups. For tech startups actually doing real tech development, like a new class of distributed database, the advice about (1) hiring freelancers and (2) needing front-end dev skills is obviously incorrect. Sometimes, the best first hire is a very senior software engineer that has the domain expertise and experience to lay the groundwork for a code base. The parts you can outsource effectively are the parts that are not core to your business success and you have to be able to identify which parts are which. A first hire should be able to lead a role working on a core part of the business, whatever that business may be. The competent execution of the core part of the business will be a primary determinant of success.
- zinssmeister 14y agothere is also nothing wrong with hiring a friend in a funded tech startup (as employee #1). I'd actually recommend it, because you are still in that phase where you are looking for people to work with you and not for you. And just like when finding a co-founder, getting along with a person is very important.
- mikk0j 14y agoI thought about this more after my comment. Yes, this is very true. Finding employee #1 is different from finding a co-founder but not by much, especially if you want them to stick around and work well with you. And founding a company with someone you are already friends with is I think much more common that founding with someone who you've just met.
- ryancarson 14y agoClearly you'll need both devs and designers. The theory behind hiring a good designer/frontend dev is that it'll allow you to iterate on UX much quicker, which is usually a bigger win for your customers. Clearly this is generalized advice so take it with a grain of salt.
- larrys 14y ago"Clearly this is generalized advice" It might be a good idea in your blog posts to not write them as so absolute and more circumspect (for some of the points) since the devil is in the details for most things like this. And it's hard to cover all bases with the appropriate caveats in a short blog post. Statements like this clearly indicate what has worked for you and are good "One thing that has always worked really well for me is to hire a freelance designer and developer to build the first version of the product." (helpful) while a statement like this is to absolute "I’d recommend your first employee should be a designer with strong frontend dev skills. Do not hire a customer support person." in part because there is no caveat as to which cases and types of startups this applies to. Good info though just something to think about.
- ryancarson 14y ago"the first hire can also (in most legislations) start as a contractor or on trial period, which is a safety net for both the employee and the employer." Great point. That's happened to us in several instances.
- PanMan 14y agoHow do you then handle negotiations? Contracting rates are often a lot (2x-5x) higher than fulltime employment. Do you do the contracting on a really low (contracting) rate, or do you succeed in explaining they will go down 3x in salary once they get the 'real' job?
- ryancarson 14y agoGenerally people understand that contracting rates aren't applicable to full-time employment. Primarily because their time isn't 100% booked as a freelancer.
- larrys 14y ago"But not in all cases." An interesting dichotomy about blog posts like this in general. They tend to benefit people who already know something and might pickup up an idea or two that they hadn't thought of. They are able to see the fit because of their past experience and can tell right from wrong if you want to call it that. But a post about something that you know nothing about can many times lead you in the wrong direction as you don't know enough to even see where the particular info fits with your situation as you have illustrated above.