

How to hire engineering talent in LA? - elikami

My partner and I founded our startup in June. Since launch, we&#x27;ve already been through outsourced labor in India, and localized contractors through oDesk, and it&#x27;s just not meeting our expectations. We realize to grow successfully we need to get some real amazing engineering talent as full time &amp; offer equity and potential co-founder status. The struggle is we&#x27;re based in LA, and talent is hard to come-by. Most candidates are either working for the Snapchats and Factuals of the world, or they&#x27;re doing their own thing &amp; just freelancing.<p>Any tips &#x2F; tricks on how to attract and find good engineers &amp; developers? We really need to move on this as we&#x27;re hindering our development.<p>TY
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qodeninja
Pay them a Silicon Valley salary, or you can hire someone from SF that loves
LA, like me.

I wish there were better paying tech jobs in LA. I'd go in a heartbeat.

The biggest problem with wanna-be LA tech companies is that they havent
figured out that the engineers are the rock stars and try to undercut them on
salaries and perks. Good luck with that.

Maybe I'm generalizing.

Anyway, as a startup your challenge is immensely larger, not to say its
impossible, but consider that all the talent is concentrated in the Bay for a
reason -- then refactor your expectations.

I would suggest you develop your own prototype, pitch to investors and then
move your office to San Jose, it'll at least be cheaper and youll have better
access to engineers.

Excellent well-established engineers cost money, inexperienced and
undiscovered ones can be lured if you are in the right location.

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elikami
Definitely take your point to heart. We've bootstrapped this thing so far, but
have recently started seed rounds to find money to pay the talent.

What's the going SV rate? including some equity/title included?

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Phlarp
For co-founder caliber talent? $100/hr or equivalent. Minimum.

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notduncansmith
Bare minimum. That's less than my consulting rate in Alabama, and it's not
exactly Silicon Valley out here.

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Phlarp
I feel like an hour of consulting work at that rate is slightly different. I
personally wouldn't expect to bill for 2000 hours of work in a single year as
a contractor.

As a technical co-founder, I would expect the full 200k/yr as salary, plus
equity and a cash bonus if goals are met.

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lscore720
Good question - LA is indeed a challenging town for recruiting engineers. A
few thoughts:

1\. Meetups; i.e. if it's a Ruby shop, you could sponsor, participate, or
simply attend Ruby meetups. Creating awareness of your company and meeting
people/making a positive impression could only help spread the word.

2\. Industry events; i.e., a founder of an EdTech start-up could meet some
helpful contacts or even directly connect with engineers passionate about your
specific field of work/product/mission.

3\. Your existing network: mentors, accelerator partners, CS professors, old
colleagues on LinkedIn, etc. It never hurts to ask :)

3\. Unique perks; first one that comes to mind is potential for remote work.
Given the adventure (read: nightmare) that is LA traffic, this could draw lots
of attention. I understand it's difficult as a small start-up, as cohesiveness
and face time is important, but even one to two days/week (or the potential
for more once the employee's established) could set you apart.

FWIW: I run a tech recruiting agency with a distributed team around the
country - LA is one of our cities. Feel free to shoot me a message if you have
any Q's or if you're curious about using a recruiter: brad@tomesei.com.

Good luck!

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elikami
great insights, much appreciated.

We're happy to talk to your recruitment team. My email is eli(at)arbibo.com

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aespinoza
Have you ventured into Orange County ? Not everybody that works or is willing
to work in LA lives in LA. Try looking a little more south, specially Irvine.

From what I have seen there are a LOT of .Net developers in LA and Orange
County, if your stack is .Net you should not have a problem finding good
people.

Ruby and Python developers are a pain to find. A lot of the "Good" developers
are not even proficient in the language/tools.

There are good java developers here, but not as much as .Net developers.

Tips:

* Use LinkedIn to find people in LA, Orange County and even San Diego.

* Target user groups. There are a lot of good developers in the UG and they usually have friends that are developers as well.

* Always get recommendations from people that know the developer you are interested. I have even seen some startups that only hire people that have been recommended from someone they know.

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rubiquity
> _Ruby and Python developers are a pain to find. A lot of the "Good"
> developers are not even proficient in the language/tools._

Care to elaborate on this? I used to live in San Diego and didn't experience
this. Is it that much different in OC/LA?

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paf31
My approach is to try to attract strong developers by using the best languages
and tools. What technology stack do you use?

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qodeninja
Stack and tools dont attract strong developers. Salary and work-life balance
does.

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paf31
You couldn't pay me enough to work on some stacks.

Also, certain technologies do a good job of convincing potential employees
that you know what you're doing and committed to using the best tools
available IMO.

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qodeninja
I agree completely.

It's hard to generalize though, you can find engineers for just about any
stack with the right price points.

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cbames89
You should talk to the guys at Originate. They know how to grab talent. Also,
they're pretty open to talking to people and are at quite a few events
throughout the nation.

Full disclosure: I used to work at Originate.

