
Hiring Employee #1 - gommm
http://blog.asmartbear.com/startup-hiring-advice.html
======
jarin
I know a decent number of people I would want to be my first hire, and I think
they might be interested. The biggest mental hurdle for me is "How can I
ensure that I can pay them every month?"

~~~
smartbear
You simply need to set expectations according to the truth. If you have 6
months of their salary banked, tell them that. If you're uncertain you can pay
them, tell them and hire people who are OK with that.

~~~
jarin
Haha yeah, that's probably the REAL hurdle. Banking 6 months salary as a solo
consultant. Good excuse as any other to raise rates again :)

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pedrocarvalho
My employee #1 was not the first or the second person I hired. I tried and
failed a lot in finding the right person. I even made the biggest mistake of
all of using a recruiter. What eventually worked for my company was someone
straight out of college, with no previous experience, but that is smart and
has the right small company culture.

This whole process was hard, but I learned a lot.I now have developers solve a
small problem by writing code in a technology/language they don't master. If
they know python, I give them a laptop with Visual Studio and tell them to
solve the problem using .NET and C#, if they know Java and come from
enterprise consulting, I give them a terminal window and python, if windows
then linux, and so on. This gets them off their comfort zone and I can look
for what I'm really looking: problem solving skills and being able to learn
and pick up new things fast.

Another important thing is to be completely open about where your company
stands: does it have money in the bank, does it have paying and happy
customers, etc. I found that this scares away a lot of candidates, especially
the ones coming from big companies, wanting to change their lives by working
in a small company.

~~~
pbsd
It's not just important that they pick up things fast. If you ask to do some
task in Python, that would be done much faster in (say) C#, they should be
able to point this out, instead of just following the recipe you gave them.
Good judgment is important.

~~~
blacksmythe
That is a hard judgment to make, unless you know both Python and C#. Any of
the candidates are going to be able to do the task far quicker in the
technology they already know.

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akg
I usually use the criteria of "What does this person do in their spare time?"
There should be two things that they should be doing:

1\. They should be coding all the time. Not just for their current job, but
because they genuinely like it. They may not be able to write a red-black tree
in your 5minute coding quiz, but if they are truly passionate about coding and
technology they will bring a wealth of knowledge with them. More so, they will
have lots of exposure to new technologies, ideas, and have good ties in the
community.

2\. They should be passionate about the industry you are in. I would expect
half of the Spotify team to be almost deaf by now, because they are listening
to music all day long -- and loving it.

It's hard to find people that will fit both, but you should at least settle
for the point 1. Especially now, with public code repositories like Github, it
is easy to see the quality of code that most people can churn out and how
passionate they are about engineering good solutions.

~~~
rickmb
> They should be coding all the time

Seriously, this may make for great code-monkeys but very limited software
developers. There are tons of things you can do to become a better developer
that don't involve actual coding. Especially if your job is already mostly
coding, for god's sake spend as much time as you can doing those other things.

I'm not interested in people who can write awesome code, but couldn't finish
even a small development project unless somebody else holds their hand through
every step of the way.

Totally agree with 2 though. Probably even more important than 1, because a
mediocre programmer with a passion for the actual business can make a great
product. An awesome programmer will just make great code. I prefer the former.

~~~
akg
You're totally right. I think when I say "coding", I don't literally mean
writing code. Coding requires different facets of creation: designing,
testing, etc. I think another way to say point 1, is to say that the person
should be passionate about technology, which I guess is kind of like point 2,
but for tech.

And of course, you want someone with some breadth of experience and interests.
I would venture that a well-rounded person has a lot more to offer just
because he has a larger set of tools at her disposal that can be used to solve
problems.

Finding that "special" someone is always such a challenge ;-)

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AznHisoka
What do ppl think about the idea of hiring someone in their freshman/soph year
in college, and grooming them, sort of like a "farm system" or minor leagues
in baseball. The thinking is that the juniors/seniors probably have
competitive internship offers already, and you're better off targeting people
earlier. Sure they might be unreliable early on, but gradually they'll become
loyal and great employees after 3-4 years.

Another option, though definitely not cheap is to find people that want to
move to the USA, and give them a visa.

~~~
asanwal
Like this idea and have tried it and continue to to do this at my startup. But
for a startup, it can be challenging for a few reasons.

1\. We're already stretched thin so we generally need folks who can contribute
quickly. If the person requires lots of oversight and guidance, that can take
time which is already in short supply. That said, we've had some freshmen who
put seniors and even experienced hires to shame. So this is clearly person-
specific. If you're hungry, humble and happy and have some basic fundamentals
down, we can usually make it work.

2\. We can train them up and then they go to big high paid job later. This is
always a risk in any market, but an intern can learn a ton with us in a couple
of years which makes them more marketable to the big boys. Of course, it is
our responsibility to make them love us so much that they want to stay, but
when leaving school with big student loans, parents/friends who might feel
working with a known brand is better, it can be tough to turn down the big
paycheck/brand name.

Despite the challenges, we continue to think the pros outweigh the cons and so
will keep trying. We're probably a bit more selective than when we started,
however, given some lessons we've learned along the way.

~~~
bedris
What are some of these lessons (if you don't mind sharing)?

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Peroni
Not bad. I quite like the idea of screening applicants with essay questions
however this brings two issues. First, I would be amazed if your response rate
was as high as 10%, in fact I'd be shocked given the fact that the kind of
people you are looking to hire probably aren't using Monster and craigslist in
the first place to find work. Second, the point is almost counterintuitive.
You said yourself that the best people are already in work and probably have a
stable job. Most of those simply won't bother to jump through additional hoops
when all they want is to speak to an actual human about the position.

Shameless Plug: I've written a pretty extensive post recently on making your
start-up more appealing to potential hires which works nicely with your post:
[http://voltsteve.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-should-i-join-
your...](http://voltsteve.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-should-i-join-your-start-
up.html)

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hgh
This seems fairly off. I think more likely is hiring someone you know or have
heard of already, or has been referred to you, and the "interviews" wouldn't
include essay questions, rather a series of drinks, coffees, meals to assess
technical and personal fit. Employee #1's concern hopefully isn't ensuring
that they get paid on time every month and will be willing to roll with the
punches. That said paying someone late sucks.

~~~
smartbear
You can't assess technical competence from coffees, only from writing code.
You can't assess email communication skills from drinks, only from writing.

Like in the Matrix, you don't truly know someone until you fight them.

~~~
hgh
Certainly the right meetup over coffee would digress into laptops out battling
over technical ideas and implementations or reading through some samples?

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gruuk
Shouldn't it be "Hiring Employee #2" instead? When starting a business, you
should always pay employee #1 (yourself) even if it is a small amount at
first. Many businesses fail because the founders forgot this simple yet
essential step.

~~~
ahoyhere
Perhaps, but in every sense -- legally, tax-ably, and accounting-ly -- a
founder is not an employee.

~~~
einhverfr
Depends on the business structure, right?

If it is a corporate form, then the first person you hire is likely to be
either an employee if the founder is (in the sense of an officer) or not (in
the sense of an officer).

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earl
From the article:

    
    
       if during the interview she asks how often you do performance reviews,
       that means she doesn’t understand the startup culture
    

This is really stupid. All bosses, from a two person shop to a twenty thousand
person shop, should regularly be sitting down with their employees and
communicating what that person has been doing well, not doing well, what the
boss wants to change, etc. You don't have to be a hidebound corporation with
100k employees to benefit from being explicit about the manager communicating
feedback and from setting aside time for this to explicitly happen. Not to
mention that many founders are learning how to be a manager, and often are far
from clear about their expectations. Making them explicit does nothing but
help the relationship. See also Rands' opinion [1], [2]. Communication doesn't
just happen; it's something that is made to happen.

Justintv had similar experiences about the benefits of being really clear what
a manager wants [3]. Protip: employees don't read minds. He found that this
was the typical project workflow:

    
    
       Vague problem definition: "Create an automated test suite for the website."
    
       Employee defines it in some way that we didn't actually have in mind: "Create
       an extensible, Selenium based framework for performing every action a user can
       on the site."
       
       Employee works on that for a while, sometimes months, without feedback: "I'm
       making great progress!"
       
       Manager checks on progress, has a "wtf" moment: "Wait, I just wanted something
       that pinged five URLs and checked for 500s."
       
       Massive micromanagement ensues: "OK, clearly you don't understand what we're
       doing; I'm going to have to take over."
       
       Massive employee disenchantment: "WTF just happened?"
     
    

[1]
[http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2011/10/11/the_rands_t...](http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2011/10/11/the_rands_test.html)

[2]
[http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2009/08/31/no_surprise...](http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2009/08/31/no_surprises.html)

[3] [http://www.businessinsider.com/three-signs-you-have-a-
manage...](http://www.businessinsider.com/three-signs-you-have-a-management-
problem-and-that-problem-might-be-you-2011-4?page=1)

~~~
bguthrie
Performance reviews aren't the same thing as feedback. Feedback and
communication are essential; performance reviews are regimented checks that
often completely fail to provide the needed feedback, because no one wants to
appear to be doing a bad job when it comes time to talk salary.

For feedback to be effective is has to be mutual, constant, and constructive.
Performance reviews are often none of these things.

~~~
rhizome
_performance reviews are regimented checks that often completely fail to
provide the needed feedback, because no one wants to appear to be doing a bad
job when it comes time to talk salary._

There are enough companies decoupling performance and salary reviews (e.g.
6mos apart) that there are already well-established techniques for dealing
with the problem you mention. Beyond that, my experience is that companies bad
at communicating by means of performance reviews (i.e. they're late/irregular,
or not substantive, or tied to salary) are bad at communicating in general,
and inquiring about performance reviews can be seen as a leading indicator in
an interview about how communicative about important stuff they are in
general. Don't mistake loud offices/people with opinions about the business to
be the same as managerial communication.

