Generally referrals from existing engineers is the most common. Outside of that I have seen a couple of stealth startups create a separate corporation and use

Generally referrals from existing engineers is the most common. Outside of that I have seen a couple of stealth startups create a separate corporation and use it to recruit people. In some cases there are some advantages to having a separate corp to employ people and have its sole client be the stealth startup. EDIT: Fixed some grammar.