
Ask HN: Best books for startup hiring? - chatmasta
I’m a big believer in reading a few months ahead of what you need to do. I’m in the midst of creating a startup and we are about to start fundraising. I’ve read <i>Venture Deals</i> by Brad Feld and feel comfortable with that aspect of it, but the next step will be hiring. Does anyone have recommendations on good books to read for the post-seed, early hiring phase of a startup?
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amorphous
Quite controversial but basically the blueprint of how I want to build the
company I work for: "Why employees are always a bad idea"

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davismwfl
I don't have any good book recommendations sorry, but as a serial entrepreneur
and current CTO for a backed startup I can give a few pieces of advice.

1\. Hire for what you need now, try not to overhire for too many future ideas.
You just burn cash and it hurts the business.

2\. In the early stages hire more for culture than just pure raw talent. If
you have a person who is a 10/10 technically but a 7/10 culture, but you have
a 10/10 culture and 7/10 technical, take the culture fit first. You need
people who can be flexible and work with the team more than one person who
happens to be an amazing engineer or whatever.

3\. Look for people who share an understanding about startups. Meaning they
won't feel demeaned if you ask them to clean up the bathroom before an
important client/investor visit. I always had this as a standing rule in my
teams, I'll be the first to take the worst job, but everyone has to help do it
in the early days. If they get this, they are a team player, if they are too
good for it, pass on them. I can't stress this enough in the early days. Later
on, not so critical but I always will favor #2 and #3 people.

4\. Try to hire specialized generalists in the beginning whenever possible.
Sounds like an oxymoron but it isn't. You want someone who is say deep in one
area but is capable of helping across the spectrum and is happy to do it.
Kinda goes with #3.

5\. When hiring business people, always always always hire culture. They are
the face and voice to the client, if they don't share the values of the team
you are done from the start.

6\. Don't get hung up on where someone went to school or what degree they do
or don't have. Look at the people applying, treat them with respect and your
companies name will spread quickly. If everyone who interviews with you walks
away and says damn, I didn't get that job but man I sure would like to work
with them, you've done excellent.

7\. Focus on treating people right and doing what is right more than what is
easy or expedient. We use the value of "people first" where I am at now, and
it is a value I take to every environment I lead in. Does that mean we have
never screwed up and upset someone, NO. Does it mean we have always done our
best to put the person over the easier options, yea, we have tried.

8\. Don't disrespect engineers and give them a "test" to do at home and send
to you. This is a major red flag to me for any employer, but it is not
uncommon in SV. If you want to test them, respect their time and yours and
talk to them. You want to test their ability to read code and deal with it,
show them code and have them talk to you about it and what it does/doesn't do
and what is wrong/right with it. Along with this one, don't do meaningless
whiteboard problems asking them to reverse a string, who cares. Ask real
questions.

9\. Asking real questions in interviews is important. There is a trend right
now in SV where they like to separate "culture fit" interviews from
"Engineering" interviews. This is crap. Doing them separately is a waste of
time and isn't realistic. Combine them into a conversation, sit with your
candidates (phone, in person whatever) and talk with them like they are a team
member, ask them hard questions, find out what they know and don't know, but
do it as a team member and you'll learn all you need to know about their
culture fit and technical skills and save multiple rounds of interviews. This
also means you'll get to candidates while other startups are wasting time
scheduling more and more rounds. Early on, if there are two of you founding
the company, there should be at max two rounds besides an initial phone
screen. If there are 3 or more, you need to make it two-three rounds max, and
make all hiring decisions in say 7-10 days at max. Don't do the wait and see
if something better comes along, you'll lose time waiting, if you find a good
fit they are a good fit.

Ok I could write a book, sorry, bit of a passion thing for me on hiring.
Always happy to share experiences and answer questions I can, 20+ years of
building teams has let me make a lot of mistakes to learn from.

