
How (not) to get a job at a startup... - auston
http://getrealordie.com/?p=12
======
festivusr
Granted, this guy's cover letter is not going to win him the job. But "Send us
your resume! We'll post it on our web site and make fun of it! And your
grammar, even though ours is not completely correct either!" is not going to
win this company applicants, either.

~~~
edw519
Good catch. Perhaps this article should be retitled, "How to Not Show Class
when you are Recruiting."

~~~
auston
Perhaps, or possibly "How discourage self-entitled leeches from applying to
your company".

~~~
alaskamiller
I don't see how you can label people looking for jobs to be leeches.

PS. It just hit me after staring at this post for a minute that leaches isn't
even the right spelling. Wow, I need coffee.

~~~
auston
Please see: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=360681>

~~~
fallentimes
They still aren't leeches.

Edit: It just hit me that I copied Alaska Miller's spelling. I need pizza.

------
Dilpil
New title: How (not) to make hackers want to work for you:

1\. Offer below market rates.

2\. Be extremely vague about option plan.

3\. Show a history of verbal abuse towards previous applicants.

------
abstractbill
I agree he was obnoxious in his email, but the "We’ll take care of you ...
trust me" response doesn't inspire a ton of confidence, sorry.

Surely this is what stock options are for?

~~~
helveticaman
I was thinking the same thing. First off, whenever someone says "trust me," as
a rule of thumb, don't. His advice sounds really self-serving. Trustworthy
people are always open to committing in writing or in ways that don't require
so much trust.

Now, the dude who wrote the cover letter doesn't seem all that stupid to me.
Sure, the writing isn't great, but for all you know English is his second
language. I'm not so sure about his hacking skills, though (CSS?). I'd still
interview him.

~~~
potatolicious
CSS is very difficult in the sense that implementations vary so wildly, and
browsers demonstrate random bugs where you least expect it. Oodles of
experience counts for a lot.

~~~
IsaacSchlueter
CSS is a pretty badly designed language, and the implementations are terrible.

It's hard to find people who really grok it on a deep level, and also have
enough real-world experience to deal with the quirks on a regular basis.

------
lacker
I don't think that guy really wanted the job. He's trying to do you a favor by
pointing out that you are asking for a lot more than you are offering.

------
comatose_kid
While you may not agree with the writer's suggestions, he was largely
respectful. You were sarcastic, and made fun of his grammar. I'm sure he feels
great reading your response on your blog.

Here's a question we should all ask ourselves: How could we have handled it
better?

I would have written back to the fellow, thanking him for his interest. At
least your karma points in the real world (you know, the ones that are even
more important than those on HN) would do well.

Next, given that you haven't yet found a candidate, I'd either look to hire
someone remotely, or hire a contractor to work on the most important stuff.

Good luck.

------
jd
In a healthy company a lot of value is created. Therefore, there should be
plenty money for salaries. So, simply, if salaries are low the company isn't
generating enough value or the bosses are cheap.

How is that a good thing? Of course, in a startup you can't have everything -
but that doesn't change the fact that in startups the employees often share a
great deal of the risk (in opportunity cost) and don't get rewarded in the
same scale when it all works out. Worrying about money, especially in times
like these, is perfectly natural.

And quoting somebody's email verbatim, without permission? That shows a lack
of class (it's really that rude), but worse, it shows a lack of -judgment-
because Auston should know he can't gain anything by ridiculing somebody's
cover letter and grammar mistakes.

Don't get me wrong. I do agree that a hurriedly written cover letter that only
focuses on the salary should land the resume on the no-hire pile. But why
attract negative publicity to your own company? I don't get it.

~~~
auston
Right, I suppose I should have been more candid.

We are in the final stages of the development of the product. So there is no
revenue; we're paying market (45-60k) plus options, but we're not ready to
just dish that out to anyone.

It's kind of like finding a girlfriend. If you're filthy rich (and its
obvious) than the playing field becomes uneven. We want people who are
motivated by long-term opportunity, not taking a salary and clock punching
from 10-5.

OK you may have a point here, but surely, if this post were to discourage
people who are only looking for a salary haven't the "ends justified the
means" ?

~~~
axod
45-60k is market? :/ ouch.

~~~
auston
It is in Broward and Palm Beach county, Florida.

~~~
noodle
after cross-referencing salary.com and payscale for boca raton, the average
pay for someone with 2 years experience (just to approximate the skills
required for the position) is about $58k. $45k is off the bottom end of the
chart, approaching the 0th percentile.

to pay above market, you'd need to be paying $60k minimum, not maximum.

all of this is, of course, assuming benefits (health/dental/etc).

------
13ren
There's an attitude of putting people down going round HN.

The applicant in the story put down the other applicants. LeadLog put down
him, publicly. And now, HN is putting down auston. Everyone is criticising
everyone else's spelling and grammar - and therefore becoming more self-
conscious of their own.

If you are truly capable of creating value for others, putting others down is
pointless for you. But it's worse: focusing on other's mistakes can and _will_
erode your ability to create value for others. You will end as a destroyer of
value.

Pride comes before a fall, and you won't be the first. Not by a long way.

 _s/Dashboard/LeadLog_

~~~
unalone
I largely agree with you, but to play devil's advocate: a little hostility
helps people to check themselves. It forces you to think before you speak and
before you post, which means there's a good chance you check yourself before
you submit thing. It ensures a degree of quality control, and that's something
that I think Hacker News benefits rather than suffers from.

The first forum I joined was one of people who enjoyed ripping on people who
said stupid things and who wasted space. I joined there at a pretty young age:
I still credit it for teaching me to think about and revise things that I post
online. I still remember it fondly, in part because it was a tight community:
it scared most people away, but that was good, because it was a site for a
niche audience. (Similar, I'd say, to the niche audience that ought to be in
Hacker News.)

I've also worked with forums that aimed towards nice: they tended to have a
less fanatic userbase, and the people who remained were of _wildly_ varying
quality. Nice in excess leads to a downfall.

(I also haven't noticed much unfair hostility until the last month: the
election polarized a lot of people, and brought in a lot of attitudes that
seem less concerned with new information and interesting articles. Hopefully
it will pass.)

~~~
13ren
<http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html>

I think you've combined two meanings in the word _hostility_ : one is to argue
and debate, i.e. antagonistic or Socratic; the other is to be disrespectful
and insulting - aggressive domination, to win by making the other lose. The
same with _nice_ as its opposite: one meaning is to approve of anything with
no objectivity or truth; the other is to respect others. I agree that
challenging people is a good thing (even though it can feel uncomfortable and
"not nice"), provided it is done is in a respectful way.

I think the key is whether one's goal is to get to the truth and learn and
build; or whether one's goal is humiliation to show your superiority. However,
it's fraught with danger to evaluate what someone else's goal is, because your
interpretation of their intention is necessarily a step distant from the truth
about them. But I see many comments on HN that are clearly seem way or the
other (the remainder I'm not sure of).

I really love being shown I'm wrong by someone who sees more than I do. For
the supernatural sense of expanding one's world, it's second only to
experience. :-)

~~~
unalone
Hacker News has turned nasty very recently. I mean, there have always been
people who get into furious discussions, but now those are starting to become
front-and-center of the site. I think it's in response to the noise the site
is getting, but it's annoying nonetheless.

I've always defined _hostility_ in a kind of weird way. For me, it's absolute
intolerance to new ideas until a good reason is given for them. Which is to
say, if somebody suggests something new, the burden of proof is entirely on
them to explain themselves, before I'll consider the idea. In return, I assume
everybody else works similarly, and post accordingly. It's a policy that leads
to people contributing lots of fleshed-out ideas, and it keeps noise way down.

Of course, by that definition it's possible to be both hostile and polite. I
just see hostility as being a slight notch above debate: in debate, there are
two well-defined sides that play off each other. On a site where there can be
a wide variety of opinions and ideas, the barrier for entry should be set a
wee bit higher.

~~~
13ren
I can see that would work well for when you're posting.

For when you are reading, I guess it keeps your own personal attention
uncluttered by noise. It also implies you wouldn't challenge poorly presented
ideas, but just ignore them as noise. Interesting.

Yeah, I was mainly thinking hostile as opposed to polite.

~~~
unalone
Depending on how a bad idea is presented, I either downvote (if it's presented
without any backup whatsoever, like "Mac users suck") or I ignore. If it's
making a case with faulty information, I try to at least correct the
information in the post. But I try only to focus on the really relevant
threads of conversation, the ones that I have a chance of learning from.

------
lemonysnicket
_About us:

We are LeadLog, a small startup company in South Florida building lead
management software. We're two biz dev guys, a ux guru and a hacker with solid
business experience. _

Hmm...something seems wrong about this equation...

~~~
palish
Yeah. They're going to sink like a lead log.

~~~
IsaacSchlueter
Telling that the blog domain name is "get real or die".

The job request and the response to criticism are anything but realistic.

So I wonder which one Dashboard is going to do?

------
mikeryan
So what is the rate offered? I admit the attitude is a bit high brow, but he
may have an extremely valid point.

~~~
fallentimes
Maybe, but he sounds self-entitled. Those are the worst type of people.

I don't like either of the attitudes in the post. I would never work for the
poster and I would never hire the applicant.

~~~
nanijoe
If my potential employer has a problem with money being my motivation, scratch
my name from the interview list. IF I really wanted to work for slave wages,
there is a McDonalds on every street corner

~~~
auston
To be clear: We don't care if money is your motivation, it is ours as well, we
simply don't want money to be your _ONLY_ motivation.

~~~
alaskamiller
From looking at their job posting and their website it sure gave me a good
impression of how great they are...

Wait, no, see they (I'm assuming it's you now) didn't. They didn't explain why
it is they offer something beyond money as an incentive to work for them. They
don't talk about their passion, office situation, their work ethic, or what it
is they're working on.

The job posting itself was just bland and generic, akin to the kind of cattle
call you find on craigslist. It sounds more like the LeadLog is the one
exhibiting self-entitlement here. How dare they get people that only cares
about being paid!

~~~
auston
Ha. Everyone here encourages thinking that differs from ours.

I suppose we are generic in the job posting (I really appreciate the feedback)
and again, as I stated, we're trying to find someone who is looking for more
than just money, someone looking for place to work where they fit in and feel
at home.

If you were trying to meet a decent girl with values, would you go around
waving $100 bills and wearing diamond pendants?

We're not trying to flash around our new funding and put emphasis on our fancy
office and wii and ping pong table and couch and full kitchen. We're trying to
find someone who would be looking at this as an opportunity, someone with
ambition and not just a need for an inflated paycheck until the start up dies.

~~~
nostrademons
Something you have to understand: as a startup without a product, without
users, and without revenue, your bargaining position _sucks_. It's incredibly
easy to start a company; it's incredibly difficult to finish one successfully.
If you're Google or Twitter or are funded by YC, you can attract applicants
based on the strength of the opportunity. If not, you don't have much to offer
besides the money.

Put yourself in a candidate's shoes and ask yourself: what do you have to
offer that they can't get on their own? What's to stop a candidate from taking
your idea and competing with you?

A pre-traction startup is riskier for employees than it is for founders. If it
fails, they get to put "Software Engineer at Company Nobody Has Heard Of" on
their resume, while you at least have a founder title. They probably will
learn fewer skills. And they don't get the feeling of being in control of
their own destiny, because you're calling the shots.

The only thing they _do_ get is a salary, as well as not having the
responsibility for success or failure fall on their shoulders. But here you
say you want someone who's not really interested in the money, and you want
them to take a passionate, active role in the startup. If they don't care
about the salary, and the responsibility falls upon their shoulders anyways,
why should they work for you instead of starting their own startup?

~~~
auston
Best feedback here.

------
arien
On one hand, money isn't everything, but on the other it's naive to think that
people don't have bills to pay, so I can't agree completely with the "don't
mind the salary" song. It is important, we like it or not.

That aside, I couldn't find any indicators about the offered salary. But
unless I'm missing something, the requirements are really standard, nothing
out of the ordinary (complexities of PHP? With CodeIgniter? Right!), and being
a startup I wouldn't expect it to be high.

So, maybe a decent rant, but probably out of place.

------
fallentimes
This should be titled: How to post a startup story on a site that loves
startups and get down modded in to oblivion.

Impressive Auston.

~~~
auston
lol, thanks.

------
thomasmallen
So asking for fair pay will eliminate you from consideration? Count me out.

------
fourlittlebees
Y'all are missing the point. Start-up offers totally unrealistic salary, and
gets some script kiddie who couldn't hack his or her way out of a paper bag.
Said script kiddie builds the app using toothpicks and glue. App actually gets
users and completely s __*s the bed. Founders realize they have a great idea
and a loyal audience, but now have to spend a HUGE amount of money completely
rebuilding the app because the existing codebase is useless.

What's worth more? Scaling your app at the outset and then rolling in profit?
Or saving bucks at the outset and then blowing 10x more later on trying to fix
the mistakes. Let's ask Twitter.

------
noonespecial
Whenever some one tells you "Its not about the money..." that's how you know
its about the money.

------
geuis
I lived in south Florida for years before coming out to San Francisco. Working
in IT down there was horrible. I will _guarantee_ they aren't paying more than
$35k-$40k per year. Here in SF I make nearly 3x as much as before doing the
job they are advertising.

~~~
auston
We're paying market: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=360681>

~~~
geuis
Yeah, thanks for proving my point. All of you people in South Florida need to
sink into the ocean. I was the IT admin for a mid-sized real estate company
for 2 years and while I liked my job and loved the people I worked for, the
pay was crap. I looked for 6 months for a job after leaving there and jobs
like yours were the only ones that kept popping up. You expect to get the most
skilled person in the world, yet only want to pay them in packing peanuts.
There's a reason that skilled people like me(I consider myself skilled) leave
South Florida, and its because of people like you.

~~~
auston
Right, so in an area where water front condos are $1000 a month
(<http://tinyurl.com/64hphe>) 3 - 5 times that each month is definitely NOT
reasonable.

------
dnaquin
I had to say basically the same thing to a CEO just a couple weeks ago.

Of course I did after I was offered the job for what I can only describe as a
joke. I asked for twice as much and though he offered me more, I had to say no
and wish him the best of luck finding any developer at that price, let alone
one who knew fizz-buzz. Needless to say, I couldn't have worked for him even
if he met my demands. Truly the "we'll take care of you, trust us" makes no
difference once you know how you're valued.

------
keefe
"We’ll take care of you if you are dedicated to your work, trust me." - Trust?
How about no...

------
bjun
Hrm... because startups are not about making money right?

------
henryw
good developers may be "interested in working on something innovative", but no
one is gonna work for long without proper compensation.

------
strlen
Actually, if you're looking to "make money in a start-up", you'd join a start-
up that you believe has growth potential and ask for an appropriate equity
stake. As a trade off, you _yourself_ accept a below market rate as a form of
an investment.

If one is not seeking money in a start-up, but rather experience, environment
and personal growth it would make sense for them to ask for a market rate
salary (which is a valid concern if they've got a a family to feed or a
mortgage to pay). Before you say "but isn't the experience/environment worth
something" - yes it is, and the trade offs they make to gain that experience
would be working longer hours, less job stability as well as lack of
chances/challenges/opportunities/perks that only a big company could provide
(e.g. if you're looking for a great UX/UI person you are probably competing
with Yahoo, who has a really strong UX/UI organization; Yahoo offers its
developers the challenge to scale a web application to thousand node
deployments and billions of page views, you would never be able to do that).

For an employee applying to your start-up, taking a higher salary _may_ as
well be a smart thing to do, as judging by your posting (again, I may be
wildly off track here and I mean no offense) you're building yet another LAMP
webapp - not anything that's going to be wildly different from what there is
on the market - in other words, you aren't building the next
flickr/delicious/twitter much less youtube/facebook (and of course not the
next google/yahoo). That's fine and there are always the above mentioned
reasons to join your start-up (experience, environment) but the equity may not
end up amounting to much (you could build a viable small business, but you
wouldn't have a spectacular exit, especially for employees holding 0.25-2%
equity which would be typical for a lead engineer).

Another point: if an employee sells themselves short to you (e.g. less
options, less salary) how do you know they won't sell your product short (e.g.
write worse code to save time; or purchase inferior hardware/hosting services
to save money -- or even literally, sell your product for less than it's worth
if they're a sales person).

So in short, your choices are either to expect an employee that matches the
compensation you give them (below average comp. - below average employee,
"market comp" - average employee, great comp - great employee) or convince the
employees that their equity will amount to something. That's not always the
wrong way to go: if building customer facing web applications isn't your
company's core competency you don't need a great UI hacker - but that clearly
isn't your case.

------
fallentimes
Paying people what they used to get paid +1 is such a yes-man brigade.

"Oh so & so gave you that, we should do that too".

I understand why companies do it, but there has to be a better way. More
incentives? More equity? Back end performance driven pay?

One data point does not equal market rate. And other factors: work hours,
environment, benefits, perks, etc are just as important.

Has anyone else dealt with this at their company?

~~~
mseebach
It's a good rule of thumb. If I'm going to work for less what I'm getting now,
there should be a well articulated reason for it.

Now, that might be that I'm currently overpaid, but still looking to leave my
job, or that the job is very very cool, or that I'm getting stock options that
I'm really confident in - and of course, if I'm relocating to an area with a
significantly different cost of living.

------
asif
Is it too late to jump on top of the pile?

