
How to Hire Your First Engineer - runesoerensen
https://blog.ycombinator.com/how-to-hire-your-first-engineer/
======
jazzychad
These are good points for finding your first engineer, but here is a tip for
helping close your dream hire: _offer more equity._

Your first eng hire will shoulder nearly all of the technical burden soon
after as the founders transition into more of the non-technical roles (sales,
outreach, recruiting, fundraising, business strategy). The amount of blood,
sweat, and tears poured in by the first eng hire is somewhat less than a
founder, yes, but not the 30-50x typical equity ratio we see today.

~~~
brianwawok
Depends on pay, right? If you are offering employee #1 market pay, why would
you give them 10% equity? That is potentially millions of dollars for not
taking a risk.

I have been on both sides of this, and have thoughts. What do you think is
fair for employee #1 making at or near market rate?

~~~
stemuk
Even if you pay your #1 employee at market rate he is taking huge risks and
should be compensated accordingly. Working at an early stage company often
comes with huge job insecurity, loss of medical benefits more mature companies
might be able to offer (better insurance etc.) and a possible kink in your CV
(3 years at Microsoft look much better than spending 3 years at an
unsuccessful company that eventually shut down).

To sum it up, I would expect a #1 engineers equity to be at least half of a
founders equity AND payed at near-market rate.

~~~
localhost3000
lol @ startups with no engineers yet paying “market rate”... they will _maybe_
pay market rate within their stage band i.e. compared to other SV seed-stage
startups, but this will still be _way_ below the liquid total comp at a post
IPO tech company. At this point in the tech cycle the math is so out of whack
in favor of big co that I can’t with a straight face recommend to anyone that
they join a seed startup as an early employee engineer unless they’re already
well off financially (5-7 years ago I felt like I could). There are
exceptions, of course.

~~~
solatic
Yeah but those exceptions are pretty big. The hiring pipelines at FAANG are so
over-tuned for false negatives that there are plenty of engineers who are good
enough to work at a FAANG for FAANG-level compensation yet are not actually
getting offers from FAANG companies. They're on the market for (market minus
FAANG)-rate compensation.

Then you have to remember that FAANG companies are large enterprises, by
definition, and that comes with a lot of overhead - design by committee,
politicking between middle-management fiefdoms, not being a part of the
conversation when irrefutable directives are issued by executives four levels
above you, varying levels of paperwork and documentation that are necessary in
large organizations. That's soul-sucking for a lot of people, and those people
will exclude themselves from FAANG-level compensation, and are on the market
for (market minus FAANG)-rate compensation.

The real reason why a lot of founders can't hire at market rate compensation
is that any early employee, even if you're paying them market rate, needs to
buy into your vision just as much as you do. The upside for early employees,
even more than potential compensation, is in being a strong influence,
including at relatively senior levels, as the company grows. If, as an IC, you
find yourself being recruited by somebody who you think is a strong and
experienced leader, selling a product that you personally think is important,
then you grab the bull by the horns and get on. If somebody who rambles and
can't make eye contact asks you to join to build out Uber-for-pidgeons, it
doesn't really matter how much compensation is being offered; you're going to
walk away.

~~~
adrianN
There are many companies that offer pretty good pay and great job security
outside FAANG. Try Microsoft, Oracle, Siemens, Airbus, SAP or one of the
million medium sized companies whose name you've never heard of unless you're
in the same line of business.

~~~
vonmoltke
My experience has been that those companies (except for Microsoft and Oracle)
have been well below FANG compensation levels, while being in line (and
sometimes lower) than what I can get from later stage startups and not much
higher than I have heard from early stage startups. I have only looked for
opportunities in NYC and Dallas, though, so that might skew my observations.

------
mful
Anyone else getting a little tired of the immediate reduction of any
conversation around early-stage startup job opportunities to "comp vs FAANG"?
As someone who spent the last 5 years in early stage startups, before recently
accepting a FAANG offer, I'm starting to realize folks who only think about
comp probably aren't good fits for startups. Here are a few quick reasons to
take less comp at a super early stage startup:

\- You will develop a wide breadth of skills you simply can't develop at
FAANG, as you will be involved in product meetings, business strategy
conversations, and will regularly eat lunch with the CEO. I imagine the
reverse of this is true as well, in that there are skills developed at FAANG
that are hard to develop as employee <50.

\- You will get to fast-track your career progression, in that you will be in
line for promotions much earlier than in large companies, as opportunities
emerge.

\- Companies (including FAANG) will look for folks with your skillset (my
startup experience was a huge plus in my recent job search).

\- You will work on hard problems, with passionate people; folks aren't
punching the clock here. This is fun.

Also, for folks just thinking about comp, I'd like to gently point out that a
40 hour week on work you feel "meh" about is ~35% of your waking life. That's
not to say you can't find exciting work at FAANG (I hope I have), but rather
that there is more to a job than comp or career progression, and working with
passionate folks on hard problems can be incredibly fulfilling.

Edit: formatting

~~~
ryandrake
As someone who did a long string of failing small companies and finally
settled in among the FAANGs, I respect your experience but disagree with
everything you said.

Wide breadth of skills? If you’re hired as a code monkey you’re going to
monkey code. Nobody ever asked me what I thought about the latest business
partnership or synergy strategy. Just code.

Career progression? Another nope. With only a few people in the company, you
can’t go up and you can’t build a team under you. Who are you going to manage?
There’s nobody under you! My startup coworkers used to jokingly give each
other fake “Senior Director” titles which were meaningless of course because
there were two managers in the whole company, one was the CEO. Even if you did
somehow get a fancy title or a team under you, and got bought by a big
company, you’re back to “3rd engineer from the left” in their hierarchy.

Hard problems? I don’t know, not in my experience. Just problems unappealing
to the bigger players.

And for all that you risk the company not being able to make payroll or
canceling your benefits. Sorry, I can say definitively that working at small
companies probably set my career _back_ 10 years.

EDIT: I suppose it’s highly dependent on the company.

~~~
mful
I think your edit hits the nail on the head, as we’ve clearly had different
experiences.

I should clarify that a lot of the hard problems at early stage cos are around
creating something that is not only new, but is also a viable business, with
minimal resources and huge time pressure. Whether the technical side is hard
or not is another question entirely.

Anyways, thanks for the comment — in addition to providing a good
counterpoint, it’s a good reminder for me that my experience is neither
universal nor even necessarily the general case. YMMV.

~~~
rimliu
I wonder, how often "huge time pressure" is more imagined than real. Unless
"time"="investors".

------
philfreo
I've been hired as Engineer #1 at two startups (both doing well). I wrote some
thoughts recently about how I was recruited into that role:

[https://twitter.com/philfreo/status/1012171080834969601](https://twitter.com/philfreo/status/1012171080834969601)

On the hiring side, I also incorporated some hard lessons learned about
growing our Eng team from 2 to 14 here:

[http://philfreo.com/blog/when-who-how-to-hire-an-
engineering...](http://philfreo.com/blog/when-who-how-to-hire-an-engineering-
team-including-hiring-remotely/)

~~~
mark-r
I've done the #1 employee thing too. The founder was someone I had worked for
previously. He was technical enough that I didn't have to worry about growing
the team from there, he handled it all.

------
elpakal
I remember hearing as a high schooler that The Italian Mob acquired great
loyalty through only hiring people whose family they knew or had met before.
Maybe a dumb metaphor, but the painpoints, lonely nights, long hours and
competing offers you're gonna face with your Engineer #1 are going to require
some deeply rooted trust.

We're lucky enough to live in a time where our skills are in great demand and
compensation can be matched without blinking an eye - my advice to business
minds hiring their first engineers is to get to know them, build trust and
find the ones who are committed to building cool shit with you for the long
haul. Don't just make it about comp and perks.

> As I said at the start, hiring your first engineer is incredibly hard unless
> you’re lucky enough to have a friend you can convince to join

~~~
Ceredron
"Comitted to building cool shit" is not a motivation that will persist through
hard times.

~~~
elpakal
Maybe you didn't make it this far

< Don't just make it about comp and perks.

------
deepGem
As engineer no 1 at an early stage startup, you don't need ths same skills
that are needed at FAANG. I may be wrong, but you are constantly iterating and
mostly building software that has a shelf life of may be 3-6 months. You are
not building for reliability or scale. You are building mostly ad-hoc and to
fulfil an immediate market need (which may or may not exist 2 months from
now). Where as at FAANG you are by design building for reliability and scale
from day 1. Very different skills.

I can't comment which skill is more valuable. They are somewhat orthogonal to
each other right ? The better you get at software engineering the more process
oriented you become. Hopefully an early startup gives you that kind of
progression, but very unlikely, since the progression is directly correlated
to the startup's scale and success.

If someone desires to put good software engineering into practice from day 1,
then engineer #1 at an early stage startup is not the right choice.

This is all based on anecdotal experiences so am happy to stand corrected.

------
Fede_V
An interesting exercise: assume the first engineering hire you want has to be
at least the senior engineer bar at a top tech firm.

In order for the engineer's median compensation to match the median
compensation he would make working at FANG, how much stock would you have to
give them making reasonable assumption about valuations (ie, assume your start
up will have a trajectory in the top 30% percentile, but not in the top 0.1%).

~~~
opportune
I think FANG is not the right group to look at when it comes to “top” tech
firms unless you also mean other companies _like_ FANG wrt how competitive
they are, such as MS, unicorns, hedge funds, etc.

Depending on what you’re making you also might be doing yourself a disservice
by only wanting to hire from “the best” - if you’re making a simple website or
CRUD app as part of a larger business strategy such as online ordering, you
don’t need to hire an expert in big data

------
Moodles
I wonder what proportion of HN would have different careers if software
engineering paid, say, as much as humanities while humanities paid like
software engineering. It seems like everyone here (myself included) isn't
really in it for the money, but who knows what would happen.

~~~
Swizec
I love engineering. But you know what, when rent is $3000+ per month, there's
only so far my rational mind will let me go.

I loved art and drawing too. But I wisely chose not to master in art when
going to college.

~~~
Moodles
Yeah, same. I think I could have enjoyed going into history but the huge
salary disparity certainly helps make the choice between two otherwise more or
less equal paths.

Also, rent in some cities might not be as much if fewer people went into tech
;-)

------
throwawax911911
Almost all the early employees I have met in successful startups have been
towering contributors to say the least. Many of them enjoyed very very
comfortable jobs in FANG (or equivalent money companies) before taking this up
OR moved into one afterwards.

Unless the startup founders themselves are technically up to the bar required,
I would think this is going to require huge motivation to make folks like that
join. That can be either in the way of convincing them with your software
potential enough for them to make the switch OR a ton of money/equity (And not
FANG level money, even better). I would go with the latter in 90+% of cases,
probably both.

IOW - I don't think we have a proper market place today that serves these high
tier developers who will single handedly make or break it for you. I don't
think the normal recruiting methods apply to excellent established candidates.
You might luck into one, but it is going to be real hard unless you draw from
known sources.

FWIW, I am very curious if there is one such premium marketplace as well.
(Sorry if this sounds gentrifying, but there are a bunch of engineers I know
whose gross comp is close to 1MM/yr or more and I don't think you are going to
find them prowling LinkedIn or responding to regular methods anytime soon.
Anecdotally I do believe many of them have the capacity to do magic
technically though).

------
dasmoth
How have we ended up with “engineer” as the only acceptable job title for
people who build software? What happened to programmer? Developer? Or even
(glances at title bar...) Hacker?

------
toomuchtodo
I find it interesting how many startups try to remove all bias from the hiring
process, make interviews as objective and metric based as possible, but in the
end, personal connections (friendships even) are still most important for your
first hires.

~~~
sbilstein
There is so much risk in hiring an early employee, it's totally reasonable to
try and only hire from a personal network for the first three.

Managing great employees can be challenging; managing someone you don't know
is great can be 10 times more difficult.

------
lmilcin
1\. Find somebody that is very good and passionate at something.

2\. Present your idea the best you can.

3\. Only hire if he/she is interested in your idea.

4\. Offer stake in your business so it is also his/her business.

~~~
scarface74
Why would I be interested in _your_ idea? More than likely you aren’t trying
to feed starving children. I might pretend like I’m interested, but at the end
of the day, it’s just a paycheck.

~~~
repsilat
> it’s just a paycheck

This is probably part of why it's hard to find a good first engineering hire
-- for better or worse, most engineers aren't a good fit for that stage of a
company's growth.

~~~
scarface74
Doesn’t the founder have the same motivation? To make money?

~~~
repsilat
Founders do not treat their company as "just a paycheck". They're not just
turning up to punch the clock. Early on, the company is their life -- their
efforts determine its success, and their company's success is their own
success. The same goes, to a lesser extent, for early employees.

Maybe that's not widely agreed, though. I saw an ad on the "Who's Hiring?"
post this month looking for a first engineer with a broad and deep skill set
and big responsibilities offering 0.2% equity... Essentially no motivation to
move heaven and earth to make the company succeed. Shrugs.

~~~
scarface74
_Founders do not treat their company as "just a paycheck". They're not just
turning up to punch the clock. Early on, the company is their life -- their
efforts determine its success, and their company's success is their own
success_

Yes because they have a hope for a larger reward later.....

 _The same goes, to a lesser extent, for early employees._

Them not so much.

For instance Marco Arment was the first engineer at Tumblr. The exit was for
$1 billion. He is rumored to have received less than $6 million.

------
mvpu
Some traits I look for in engineer #1: a) should obsess about architecture and
code organization (they will be laying a foundation so having a bit of OCD
helps), b) should make good tradeoffs and optimize for speed (they will be
building the wrong things initially), c) mature enough to understand that they
will be writing and rewriting a lot (see (b)) and d) last but not least,
should have a strong desire to do a startup (knowing all the risks)....

~~~
gregw134
Don't you mean not optimize for speed, since they will be building the wrong
things initially?

~~~
fredophile
I think they meant optimize for speed of writing code not running it.

------
needlepont
As the first engineer at a successful startup.

Responsibilities- * Take over everything technical I was good at and hired
for. * Take over policy and progress on everything I was good at. * Be on call
24/7\. * Do whatever the CEO/CIO didn't want to do.

Think this is pretty standard from my reading of other startups. The one
lesson I should have learned and didn't is that as first engineer you should
get 10% or more equity if you stay > 5 years.

------
k__
I think with a good business side you can get away with mediocre first
technical hires, which you will probably end up with.

------
projectramo
How do you tell a good engineer from an average one?

If you can’t do that then all the time you spend taking them out to dinner is
wasted.

------
danbrooks
Nice article.

On TripleByte - they should make it clearer that the platform is only for the
Bay Area and Software Engineering.

~~~
fermienrico
I am being cynical but this article feels like a reason to promote/plug
TripleByte complete with a $15,000 offer at the end.

~~~
suyash
The article offered no new insights, it was more like an infomercial for the
author’s company.

------
lordnacho
Hiring is a difficult task that I'm currently in the middle of attempting, so
Harj's article is something I recognize. I'm not after a first dev, but I am
part of a team that is after a dozen or so devs and I've now been day 1 on
three different ventures.

The problem is that the main piece of advice is correct but unuseful. Indeed,
you should look at people you've worked with. In some sense they've all
interviewed with you already, so you know what it's like to work with them,
you know how good they are at communicating, and you know their limitations.

Unfortunately, most people haven't worked with enough people to have more than
one or two likely candidates for whatever they're thinking of doing. Your
homies are either not right for the role, unwilling to move from a position of
comfort, or not willing to put your friendship on the line.

The same is also the reason why your company cannot grow via connections of
employees past some point, the r < 1 on that series and it will converge on
some low number.

Where my problem is a bit different to the article is that before you have any
devs, you have a really big problem identifying good devs. Heck even hiring
for devs outside your specialty is hard. If you can't do X, how are you going
to find a good X? You will end up falling back on recommendations and
reputation, and you'll pay up for a branded individual if one is around. Not
in itself terrible, but every penny counts early in a startup.

I was talking to a shop who were after their first programmer a few months
back, and they did the sensible sounding thing of bringing in a trusted friend
from a FAANG to interview people. Main issue with that is that person is
thinking about how a megacorp hires people. Mainly avoid guys who can't
reverse a linked list, and stick the new guys into a process that already
exists. But it's not quite the same things you care about as a day 1 startup.

Day 1 guys need energy. Sad to say it, but this probably tilts against people
who have kids. In my first day 1 jobs, I didn't have kids, I could wake up at
6 and code to 11 at night. Or you do like my current firm, where I was also
day 1, but let people work from home. Then you suddenly have a very big carrot
for experienced hires. The guys in the previous paragraph did the same.

Day 1 guys also need a high degree of autonomy. When you've got nothing, as in
not even a chat about what stack you're using, day 1 guy needs to put down
those foundations. This is a lot harder than you think. Not only do you need
to consider budget, you need to think about what a small team can do, you need
to think about what imaginary future employees will want to work with, and you
need a way to get from little team to big team where your hands aren't tied by
your day 1 decisions. And you gotta balance current technical debt against
future payments on that account.

You also need to be broadly read. You can be highly specialized, but you need
to have some idea of what's going on in the software world in general. Chances
are you will end up picking the most standard choice of everything that isn't
your specialty, like Django for a web framework or SciKit for a bit of ML. But
you need to have an idea about a huge variety of things to know what the
landscape roughly looks like.

So how do you find a person like that? Well actually none of the methods other
than "network" will actually check for these qualities. Most people are
specialists with a label that enables them to move to other jobs with similar
titles (Low Latency c++ dev), and recruiters are on the lookout for the label.
Inbound and Outreach are also not going to tell you how broad someone is,
because everyone writes stuff on their CV to look specialised, with a bit of
breadth to catch a few interviews. Meetups, maybe, depends on how good you are
at directing the conversation. A skill in itself.

------
ristem
I think it is important to offer more equity to your engineers.

------
trumped
How to make sure that you can fire your first engineer without too much
damage? maybe state-by-state instructions...

------
kache_
before you hire an engineer, make sure you have your onboarding streamlined

~~~
lmilcin
This is the worst advice. You don't want to spend resources on problems that
are not yet even problems. Especially extremely early when you don't have any
resources to burn.

One super power startups have is being frugal with money, why would you want
to throw it away?

~~~
nosseo
No engineer taking a role like this is going to expect an onboarding process.
Many of them are specifically drawn by the idea they'll get to sit down and
solve a problem on day 1.

~~~
phamilton
> Many of them are specifically drawn by the idea they'll get to sit down and
> solve a problem on day 1

I don't see how engineer #1 or engineer #100 changes that.

When I onboard a senior engineer, they get a problem on day 1.

~~~
PeterisP
The difference is that when hiring engineer #1 there's no technical
infrastructure to which you'd onboard someone, and nobody who's really
qualified to make a decent technical onboarding process - you're hiring a
person to create this process (among others) from scratch, make the initial
decisions themselves (instead of being told them during onboarding) and
onboard others.

~~~
wolco
Onboarding become here are the bathrooms, there is a great place to eat down
the street.

