
Ask HN: How do you hire good developers? - polack
I&#x27;m co-founder of a startup that&#x27;s going into an expansion phase. We are backed by a large VC and have more demand for our product than we can supply. Our problem is that we cannot attract any good developers.
Every time we find someone we want to hire they turn us down in favour of some of the tech giants. We offer high compensation (salary, vacation and options) and interesting problems to work on using the latest technology, but it feels like the good developers that don&#x27;t run their own startup is too afraid of the startup world.
We know how important a good core team is for a startup, so we don&#x27;t want to hire people we don&#x27;t think fits in our team. Right now we are relying on a bunch of consultants to keep the company alive, but that doesn&#x27;t feel like a long term solution.<p>So help us HN; how do you attract good developers to a small startup? What can we offer people (besides the &quot;safety&quot; of a large company) to give us a shot?
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smilesnd
As a dev I will say this the hiring process sucks. I have learn that during
the interview process unless it is written down and signed then it is probably
a lie. Companies will say anything to get me to sign a piece of paper. Saying
you use the latest technology or work on interesting problems doesn't tickle
my pickle.If you want to get me excited about working for your startup take me
out to lunch. Let me talk to the people I would be working with on a daily
bases. Let me ask them what they think about the project and day to day
operations and such. The best interview experience I ever had was just that
simple. I knew I could work along the guys and they gave me a clear picture
what to expect working there. Salary is always negotiable and all that other
stuff.

~~~
accountatwork
> I have learn that during the interview process unless it is written down and
> signed then it is probably a lie.

This happened to me when I took a job at Microsoft and it sucked. The worst
thing was that when I asked around I found that Microsoft does this kind of
bait and switch all the time and that a lot of other people were in a similar
situation and thought that it was normal.

It's not normal. People should not lie to you about what a job is going to be,
and there are many companies that will try to give you good information about
what the job will be like.

------
pauleastlund
I think it's partly a matter of priming the pump with a one or two fantastic
initial hires. Go above and beyond to get a couple terrific people on board
(offer a title, or an opportunity to earn a title, or a big piece of equity,
etc.), and then you have "and we have an amazing team" as a big new piece of
your sales pitch to the rest.

Anecdotally -- from my own job search experiences, and from my experiences
hiring engineers at a few different places -- a candidate's sense of the
people they'll be working is a huge factor in their decision. Make that factor
strongly in your favor and you'll be in good shape. Also, don't be afraid to
have a rigorous technical interview process -- I think that can double as a
sales pitch for great candidates who want to be at companies that recognize
and appreciate their skills.

~~~
polack
This is great advice. I will try to reach out to some more high-profile people
here in the local community. Maybe a nice title and a position with lots of
freedom could interest someone.

------
jasonkester
My first guess is that maybe your "high" salary isn't high enough. That's
usually the reason that companies think there are no good developers out
there.

They're out there. But they're expensive. How much are you offering?

~~~
polack
You might be right, but we are pretty certain that we pay at least 20% more
than the larger companies around here. Nobody has requested a salary that we
have said no to. The feedback we have been given is that we do pay better, but
that it feels safer for them at a larger place or that they have found
something more interesting.

I understand that the domain (finance) we are in isn't the most attracting for
some people, but we try to pitch the exiting parts like scalability and
machine learning.

~~~
p4wnc6
Many people are uncomfortable talking about or negotiating salary. So the
feedback you are receiving might just be a candidate's polite way of reframing
their choice that was actually based on salary.

Also, are you factoring equity into the total value of your offer when you say
something like '20% more than ...'? I'm not sure it would be reasonable if you
are. I experienced a start-up offer once that handled it that way. There was a
base salary offer, then a listing of stock options and their current value,
and then the "offer" was equal to the sum of the two. That showed me the
company has a serious flaw in understanding the riskiness of their own stock,
or in empathizing with people who can't use stock options to pay the rent, or
both.

~~~
poof131
I think you are exactly right on equity and expose a problem of startups and
recruiting that borders on disingenuous at the very least. VCs fund multiple
startups expecting many to fail. As I’ve seen first hand, a prototype can land
a million dollar convertible note at a $10m cap. For the founders to then turn
around and act like 1 percent of the stock is really worth $100k isn’t even
close to reality. To account for realistic exits you probably need to cut that
by 1/3\. So to match a big company offer of $100k salary and $100k equity (of
liquid stock), you need to match the salary and offer 3x equity for the
compensation to be about equal.

Yet most startups won’t match salary and then try to pretend that their equity
is worth way more than it is. “We’ll pay you $70k but give you $150k in equity
so the comp is more!” When the reality is the comp is actually significantly
less if equity is more fairly valued. In this fictitious example, the $220k
offered comp is really more like $130k, so about a 30% pay cut from the $200k
offered by the big co. Startup equity isn’t worthless, but it needs to be
valued at a significant discount which varies by the stage.

~~~
p4wnc6
This is one of my favorite posts about valuing start-up options: <
[http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/11/how-much-are-
startup-...](http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/11/how-much-are-startup-
options-worth/) >.

But, funny enough, any time I have been in a negotiating position with a
start-up, they act deeply offended that I would _even ask_ about liquidity
preference, makeup of the board, etc. Many of them refuse to answer these
questions. It really flushes out a lot of insecurity and reveals toxic
attitudes when founders won't talk frankly about this stuff.

Basically, the start-up world is about providing lifestyle employment that
subtly devalues and manipulates skilled workers who don't happen to know
enough about employment, or haven't had much life experience with it yet.
_Sometimes_ this can be profitable for early stage employees, but most often
it is only profitable for outright founders and investors. Holders of regular
options rarely make money from them, and when they do it rarely is significant
in their lives and usually doesn't compensate them for foregone wage they
could have earned in other jobs.

Unfortunately, there is a steady supply of people who value affiliation with a
certain tech in-group, and lifestyle aspects of a job, like foosball tables,
beer night, dog-friendly offices, etc., more than competitive wage. Usually
these people don't realize they aren't being paid or that their options are
not worth what they think they are worth, and later they become dissatisfied
with the arrangement but have no negotiating power to change it.

Another toxic side effect of this is that some start-ups can have wildly
varying pay levels for employees of the same stature in the firm. If two
different people are brought in as data scientists, say, but while one of them
was completing a Ph.D. the other was working and experienced some of the poor
compensation stuff, then when each is hired, one of them will do a better job
at negotiating and have a better understanding of what is reasonable. The
other may just be happy to have a job after grad school.

Fast forward a few months and both of the data scientsts are each doing a
great job and are each adding about the same amount of value to the firm, but
one is paid more, and by being paid more is probably also viewed as a higher-
status employee and may be closer in line for a promotion or an additional
raise. Virtually never will the firm "do the right thing" and adjust the
lower-paid person up to a matching salary, because there's no market force
compelling them to (due to that employee's asymmetric lack of knowledge about
the situation).

Founders and investors often foolishly think of these information asymmetries
as arbitrage opportunities, as one might in a financial market. But for
extracting productivity from human workers, it usually doesn't work that way,
and you're carrying a lot of risk that the whole company will become a toxic
place that can't be saved even by vast amounts of "culture" engineering.

Note that rarely is it the founders / investors who are behaving irrationally
in these cases (at least not w.r.t. their hiring efforts). It's more often the
entry level or bright-eyed engineer who doesn't want to think about unpleasant
negotiation or fairness in salary levels, and accepts free lunches in place of
401(k) matching.

~~~
poof131
Agree with all that you said and I have seen it first hand as I tend to be a
poor negotiator and overly trust people. My main issue is the selling of the
“mission” by investors and founders. Even in the first comment of the article
you linked, Mark Suster talks about people obsessing about options. Certainly
we should all be doing stuff for more than money, but if founders and
investors weren’t concerned at all about the money why not make these
companies non-profits. The reality is they use the information asymmetry for
their benefit and then try to pretend it doesn’t matter and people should be
about the mission. If you want a mission join the military or the peace corp.
Your B2B app isn’t a “mission”.

------
stray
You're probably in the Bay Area -- and if you don't want remote developers
you're shutting yourself off from all of us who wouldn't move there no matter
how high the compensation.

~~~
polack
We're actually in Copenhagen. Probably should have mentioned that in the OP.

Point taken though, we should consider taking in remote workers. My only
"fear" is that it will be hard to build a good company culture without a
"core" team sitting in the same location. We have some remote consultants
working on our gui right now, and even though they do a fantastic job, it adds
quite a lot of overhead in management and I'm not really satisfied with the
knowledge sharing between the remote and the on-site teams. I guess there is a
lot of room for improvements on our part here though.

~~~
brudgers
It will be hard to build a good company even if everyone sits together...heck,
it will be hard to build a bad one. I don't necessarily think that remote is
or is not the answer, but finding the right person regardless of where that
person lives and what that person needs is the problem.

I'd add that extrapolating from consultants to employees is fraught with
hazard [the same is true for extrapolating from employee to consultant]. The
context for the relationship is different. Anyway, reducing management
overhead should not be a goal...managing people is a _full time_ job. Probably
one of the hardest ones out there when done well.

Think about it this way: somehow the company leadership views people doing a
fantastic job as unsatisfactory. Despite needing to ramp up staffing. Is that
an attractive culture to potential hires?

Good luck.

~~~
atmosx
This book[1] answers nearly all the questions a company would have about going
remote. Might be a worthy read for the OP.

As you pointed out thought, remote or local, doesn't say much, there are other
things that are more important.

[1] [https://37signals.com/remote/](https://37signals.com/remote/)

------
d4rkph1b3r
1\. Are you _sure_ you're offering above market? I can't tell you the number
of times i've been contacted by a company with a 'great market rate' salary,
offering me a better position than I'm in, for _way_ less than my current
salary.

2\. Smart people want to work with smart people, so make sure the people doing
the interview are doing the right things to attract the right folks. If I see
a red flag in an interview, I'm going to be very weary.

3\. Get involved in a community! Whatever your stack is, start going to
meetups for it, release some open source, give talks on your infrastructure,
etc. Pretty soon you can be one of the names that comes up when someone is
looking to work with a certain technology.

Look at Jane Street's model. They are a tiny (or, at least used to be, maybe
now they're just small) compared to the big companies. They are _the_ OCaml
guys, they don't have a big team, but if you want to make $$$ are interested
in functional programming, you absolutely look into working there and their
name comes up in a lot of conversations. Good luck!

------
evm9
From my experience, paying the premium to get on GitHub, StackOverflow, and
any other major job post site as well as paying mid to upper six figures will
always bring in good candidates.

Also offering a killer relocation package to candidates that aren't located
near you can help.

~~~
ereckers
Mid to upper six figures alone aught to do it.

------
JSeymourATL
Simple: Give developers good reasons to join. It's not always about perks and
benefits. Everyone wants their work to mean something.

Alan Eustace, SVP of Engineering @ Google, is often called their best
recruiter. You might find some ideas that apply to your situation >
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvebAGerh88](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvebAGerh88)

------
sharemywin
Most people don't jump for lateral moves. That leaves two options. Pay a lot
more or find someone that can grow into the role. It's that simple. Or spend a
lot of time, money and energy looking for someone that's dumb enough to jump
for a lateral move.

~~~
throweway
I jumped for lateral move. For a better work environment and culture. To
escape high pressure and assholes.

~~~
sharemywin
fair point. but, I suspect that they are a high pressure environment.

------
edoceo
1) your space is "boring" and a start-up is high risk; you will naturally have
to evaluate a larger number of applicants before finding the right one. From
my experience when I worked in banking (USA, c2005) we had a hard time finding
devs; in adult-content (c2009) applicants were plentiful; now I'm back in
regulatory compliance and devs are "hard" to find; my associates in the-next-
hot-lo-mo-so app have more candidates

2) You may be able to find one good dev-hire as a core builder; and continue
to run with consultants going forward. Many times I've been able to engage a
dev-consultant part-time and continue to increase the engagement -
transitioning into full-time (or close to it).

~~~
DrQuack
Don't mean to derail the thread, but how come applicants for adult-content
were plentiful? I would expect most people to try to avoid that area, if only
for the reputation "costs"?

~~~
atmosx
Towards whom? Handling HA in porn websites, especially in the top-20, is quite
a challenge IMHO and any mid-to-senior DevOps/sysadmin position in such a
company would carry some weight to a resume.

------
aprdm
would help to see how you're advertising the role if you can share (keep the
company name hidden if you want..)

other thing is, are you getting applications? is it after the applications
that they leave you?

and where are you based?

------
tmaly
Its a slow grind using the traditional approaches. The current best developer
in my group I hired after a 2.5 year search.

I would look for people that have side projects that are open sourced online.
It shows they have a passion for what they do.

People who understand core programming concepts but program in a different
language are ones I would consider if there are few candidates available in
the language you use.

------
EliRivers
"We know how important a good core team is for a startup, so we don't want to
hire people we don't think fits in our team."

Is this code for "cultural fit"?

------
tixocloud
To attract great engineers, show them these interesting problems that you're
trying to solve. Talk about it publicly. Start an engineering blog. Network at
tech events.

You're right in that a startup represents risk - what else can you offer in
place of that risk? More money? More time? More freedom? More opportunity?
You'll have to figure out what ticks with the developers you're trying to
attract.

------
S4M
Would you consider remote contractors? I (think I) am a decent full stack guy,
and used to be a Quant (mentioning that because you said in the comments that
your startup is in finance). Now I do contracts to fund my own startup. My
email is in my profile.

------
robodale
I'm a Senior Full-Stack Software Developer+Engineer born and living in the US
with 14 years experience. I have a job right now, but I'm in the "Active
Looking" status. I'm remote only, but would like to visit the company once in
a while. I know how to ship. Hit me up.

------
take_five
As someone who considers himself a good developer, I'll try to share some
points with you. Hopefully they will be helpful, even if I'm positive you'll
find at least one of them outrageous.

1) Companies don't do a good job of communicating their story. A typical job
ad is a listing of technical terms. I don't care about them for the most part.
What I want to hear is your story. That includes: \- Who you are, how you came
to be \- What the problem you're trying to solve is, whom it will help. Do I
make the lives of poor children better or do I help yet another rich bastard
from Wall Street to get even richer? Now, for me that matters. \- What you
have done already, what worked, what didn't, what you plan to do next \- Who
the people you have are, their backgrounds, their culture, their interests,
their personalities \- What the working culture is like, the process, the
values, the priorities, the attitude \- Handling of all kinds of non-standard
situations, personal conflicts. What if someone wants to work remotely, needs
specific hardware/furniture, would like to take a break for whatever reasons,
then come back? Will this be discussed or faced with a stone wall? \-
Technical stuff, just to be thorough, in the last place though

Basically anything and everything to tell me who you are. Otherwise I can't
distinguish between you and hundreds of others. The job ads which are personal
stand out, sadly these only come as frequently as the year digits change.

2) If you want someone to come to work for you in your office, you absolutely
must provide a complete and thorough relocation package covering the entire
expenses. It's been said before in the thread, but it deserves to be mentioned
as a separate answer.

I don't know much about Denmark, but I'm familiar with Germany. Let's say you
were based in Munich and wanted a great developer to come to you. This is what
I'm thinking:

\- To rent and set up an apartment in Munich you'd need at least 10-12K Euros
in cash upfront \- Contracts are typically for a year minimum, that's another
15K Euros in delayed obligations \- If I come, find out after two weeks we
don't fit and want to leave, I'll end up with a huge debt of close to 30K
Euros, a punishment just for trying a new job \- If I stay, with the demeaning
salaries offered by German companies, it'll still going to take some 12-18
months to compensate those expenses. Meaning I will be working for free for
all this time. \- Verdict: I'm staying home. Even a job as a cleaning
personnel is better than that, as in more lucrative and safer. But of course
I'll just find a remote job for whomever pays the highest bid. Developers are
in demand, you know.

And this is not even the worst. In France you need to have someone to vouch
for you financially to be able to rent an apartment. In Belgium the minimum
contract duration is either 3 or 8 years (considered short-term and long-
term). Also, in France you have to pay some yearly tax as a tenant. What if I
leave after a couple of months? Who's going to settle that when the year end
comes, while I'm away with my visa long expired?

In short, unless the company is completely taking away those risks and
problems, there's just nothing that could compel me to move.

3) Pay good money. I think for a good developer a very basic arrangement
should start at about 4000 Euros as takeaway money, after taxes, rent,
utilities and everything else. If that is someone who stands out, the price is
higher.

4) Be flexible in all kinds of arrangements. Payment, working hours, holidays,
everything should be open for negotiation. Things like NDAs and non-competes
will scare away many great developers who have their own projects. Since you
are run by VCs, they probably force you to require those documents to be
signed by any hire, and that is a problem you'll have to solve before looking
for great people.

5) Be nice and respectful with people. Don't push them through humiliating
technical interviews. Don't tell them their CV is a lie. Don't tell them they
have a wrong degree, they are not smart and don't have what it takes to be a
great developer. Germany companies are notorious for being extremely arrogant
and condescending, but others may be different. Just know if you have those
personality traits, you have to keep them in check, as people from other
cultures may find them plain hostile.

If you have these basics covered, you shouldn't have much problem finding
people.

~~~
airswimmer
Can not agree more. That explains well about how LinkedIn screws itself.

------
lordkrandel
Start searching in role-playing groups. Seriously. Talk about your ideas to
the people who play.

------
DrQuack
Why not try to post in this month's Who is hiring? thread?

------
algorithm_dk
Leave some contact information.

