

Help request: How to find programmers for a startup - notauser
http://theplanis.com/blog/preview/recruitingengineers/

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nzmsv
Another point I'd add/emphasize is: don't treat engineers as stupid. This
includes downplaying complexity and the amount of work involved, but also not
being serious about the business side of things.

The worst thing to say is "Just build it, and let me worry about selling it",
or "Everyone will be excited about this, trust me". To an engineer this just
sounds like you haven't done any actual work yet, besides thinking of the
idea, and you are unlikely to do anything, ever. If you expect a coder to
build something for you, have a plan of work that you will contribute (even
though it will change).

Also: "Anyone who hasn't spent a whole night awake writing blog posts, calling
Japanese leads and obsessing over traffic numbers will probably view the
product as the most important thing in the enterprise."

Should it be "will probably _not_ view the product..."? And what about
partnerships a being bad thing to mention? This would be helpful to me too, to
know more about what to watch for :)

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ionfish
> Should it be "will probably not view the product..."?

I don't think so; the idea that the author is attempting to convey is that
people who haven't spent a lot of time working on the parts of a business that
aren't building the product won't realise how important those other things
are. Admittedly it could have been explained a lot more clearly—I had to go
back and read that sentence over too.

~~~
nzmsv
Ahh, I get it now :) I thought the sentence was about why this specific
product is the most important out all products out there. And it's actually
comparing the product to other things involved in making it, like markering
and customer support.

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strlen
If you're the first technical person in a company, you're either a founder/co-
founder or an chump. I simply not only refuse to answer emails from "business
guys" who "came up with the next great idea and are looking for an engineer to
build it", but I also will not even consider _funded_ start-ups that don't
have technical co-founders: it's safe to say, that they will lack true
technical leadership and their engineer team will be composed not of people
who wish to work in a start-up, but of people who have nowhere else to go.

More often than not, if you look at successful technology companies even the
"business guys" (the CTO and even the CFO) often have an EE/CS/Math/Physics
degrees and have, at one point, have held technical roles.
Engineering/math/natural sciences act as "brain gymnastics" which come in
handy in any role which requires fast, analytical thinking.

That being said, in enterprise software having a strong sales team is often
more important than having a strong product. Ideally, you'd want to have a
founder who had worked in roles such as field sales/application engineer/sales
engineer/consultant and has a Computer Science background: this way they will
understand both the technology involved _and_ the acute pain the target
customers experience.

For consumer Internet, however, "sales guys" are only needed when you have
something to sell (e.g. a critical amount of impressions in an advertising-
supported site). The canonical examples (Craigslist, eBay, Google
AdWords/Overture) are brilliant in that they're self serve: you don't need a
large sales force to sell them.

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johnrob
I'll throw in some more advice: if you're going to start a company w/o a
technical person, pick an idea that allows you to pre-sell. Enterprise
applications are a good, because it's not uncommon to get commitments from
buyers before the product exists. If you can do this, it demonstrates two
things to prospective developers:

1) The idea/market has legs

2) You can pull your own weight

~~~
strlen
I wouldn't start an enterprise software company w/o a technical person either.
A non-technical sales person from an enterprise company won't be aware of the
acute pains the customer's IT/engineering departments have. They'll be able to
make sales pitch, but given an equal sales pitch by Oracle/IBM/SAP and a
start-up-you-never-heard-of, which one (as a non-technical manager) would you
choose?

As I've said earlier, the best person to start an enterprise software company
would be an applications engineer/field sales engineer/professional services
consultant from either a large or fast growing enterprise software company.

Not only will they know how to sell, they will also understand the technology,
be able to program well enough to create a prototype, be interview developers,
know how to _support the customer_ , deal with the end-users and know most
importantly what the end-users want (best enterprise software is the
enterprise software employees are begging to install).

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pgbovine
also, buzzword-laden mass emails sent from business school students to
engineering student email lists are real turn-offs :) if you're a business
school student, i'd advise to get some friends who are hackers to read over
your recruiting emails before sending them out.

~~~
dwynings
If they had hackers as friends, they wouldn't need to send out recruiting
emails. Most of the time your first hires are your friends. If you can't
convince a friend to be a cofounder, how can you ever expect to convince a
stranger to work for you?

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anamax
In some sense, hiring engineers is like selling. In both cases, you need to
convince them that you've got something that they want. Neither group cares
about what you need/want.

Two related points.

If you can't "sell" an engineer, why are you sure that you can sell to your
proposed customers?

While developing your pitch, be sure that you'll be happy with folks who want
what you're offering. If it's not unique, you'll lose the good ones to folks
who offer "more".

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copper
> Engineering respect is an inverse log scale

What is the inverse log scale? 1/log(x) or exp(x)?

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j_baker
And for God's sake, don't ask for "programming ninjas".

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notauser
Finding engineers/programmers seems to be a real problem for potential
entrepreneurs.

I thought I might try and write up some of my experiences - I plan to post
this to a whole bunch of the London start up lists where the worst offenders
hang out. If you have any suggestions for improvements I would appreciate
them.

Thanks!

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oujheush
My opinion: make it clear that they will not be drug tested nor do you care
about how they may choose to relax in their free time. This will set you apart
from many large corporate environments as well as indicating that you value a
programmer's productivity rather than their conformity.

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sunchild
While I agree with ALL of the OP's points, I also wonder why any serious
engineer would even bother reading these kinds of requests in the first place.
It's usually obvious within the first few words whether a potential client
"gets it" or not.

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omouse
Stop using the word "engineer". There isn't such a thing as a "software
engineer", it's a made-up business/defense-dept. term. Software engineers
don't seem to be recognized by professional engineering certification body nor
should they be.

Just call them computer programmers or software developers but treat them with
respect, don't treat them like code monkeys.

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notauser
Thanks to everyone, some very good comments. I'm doing a revision before
posting it :-)

