
How to Hire - andygcook
http://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-hire
======
tom_b
_“Experienced” people often have higher personal burn rates and sometimes
you’ll need to pay them more, but remember that great companies are not
usually created by experienced people (with the exception of a few roles where
it really matters a lot.)_

Scary statement for me to read. I'm getting older and worry that the above
thinking will eventually cut off cool and even just new opportunities for me.
Also hard to audition for longer periods as suggested, but I'm definitely in
favor of building a strong professional network and having a good portfolio of
work.

~~~
bcrescimanno
Ageism should scare you--and it should scare the author of this post. The
inevitable forward progress of time means that literally every, single one of
us will be on the wrong end of this equation at some point.

The (possible) saving grace is that a lot of people who came up in the 2000s
tech scene are now on the "other side of 30" and becoming quite "experienced"
themselves. Hopefully, that group's attitude will change these biases. Too
often though, you can read between the lines and discover what they're really
talking about is: "You can't convince experienced people to take less money to
work obscene hours--especially when their perception is likely that much of
their job will cleaning up for all the 'inexperienced' folks you hired."

The idea that "great companies are not usually created by experienced people"
strikes me as exceptionally hyperbolic and based more on the publicity of Wall
Street Darlings than any evidence that highly experienced people can't (or
don't) build something great.

[edit: Just thought that I'd add that I agree with just about every other
point made in this post and focusing on one issue generally isn't constructive
so I apologize for going down the rant hole without first acknowledging that
the post, overall, is quite spot on.]

~~~
beat
On the flip side, as an old friend once said, "Do you have ten years of
experience, or one year of experience ten times?"

Highly experienced people can be priceless _because_ they have dealt with
similar situations before (and it's not the technology, it's the situations).
But if they didn't learn from their experiences, it doesn't help. And imho a
majority of the old hands are still doing things wrong - sometimes due to
management interference, sometimes due to ignorance, but mostly due to simply
not making the effort to do better.

One of my own interviewing mantras is, "I don't care so much what you know how
to do, as how you deal with what you don't know how to do." But honestly, this
mantra taken to its logical extreme massively favors raw intelligence and
flexibility over experience. That's not always a Good Thing.

~~~
jroseattle
I am right in the middle of this right now. In my 40s, looking for a job at
the moment. My interviews have been decent to downright bizarre. The trend of
the interview approach is very curious to me.

I've been looking at a variety of lead engineer/architect positions to
development manager. Many of these positions come with some immediate needs,
i.e. addressing large systems as part of a business expansion.

I find myself being interviewed by individual engineers asking heavy comp-sci
questions, mostly in the academic sense. In several cases, during the
interview, the individuals were focused on specific answers to questions that
could hold several interpretations. Ambiguity is a great way to assess
individuals and critical thinking, but when someone is looking for the
answer...well, it doesn't necessarily pan out.

The kicker, after these meetings, is interviewing with the C-level folks who
explain how their technical team can't get product out the door, and wonder
how I'm going to help to that end. I've been shipping products for multiple
years, in many cases longer than the individuals on the teams I'm interviewing
with have been in the industry.

What's funny to me is that I'm a guy that prides myself on being current in
technology. I'm not that old dude who is resistant to the latest thing -- I
really enjoy seeing where the industry is going.

I'd love to get to depth on my experience -- why we built something the way we
did, decisions we made, difficulties and how we addressed those -- it's like
those questions are irrelevant. At the last interview, I was asked how much I
enjoy playing "Dominion". I like Dominion, but really.

~~~
geebee
I understand how you feel. I went on some intensely technical interviews a few
years back (late 30s). Many of the questions were the sort of thing you'd
expect on an undergraduate data structures and algorithms class, though there
were a few brain teasers thrown in there for good measure.

My interviewers were young, and at lunch, I tried to talk to them a bit about
the business problems they were trying to solve. Their knowledge about this
seemed very thin. I pressed a bit, and finally was told that this is what the
"product managers" are for.

In short, I realized that they were asking me about these CS-related
questions, at least in part, because this is the bubble of their work life.

One interviewer seemed unengaged in the discussion, waiting for a pause. Then
he asked "how would you swap two integers without creating a third integer?"
At lunch, in between two 3-4 hour blocks of technical interviews.

I'm done with these interviews. Well, ok, if my family was looking at
foreclosure and going without health insurance, I'd subject myself to them
again. But it is a priority of mine not do do another one of these interviews
again.

It's not that I won't do a technical interview per se - there's a wide range
of what counts as a technical interview, and not all of them are equally
unpleasant. But I will view it as a personal... _letdown_ if I find myself at
the whiteboard showing how to add a branch to a binary tree ever again in my
life. Or, to put it another way, I don't want to reload data structures and
algorithms into "exam ready" memory in my own head again. I know where to find
these things when I need them.

The reason I say _letdown_ is that I most definitely do see my own personal
role in this. If I fail to establish enough of a personal reputation for
competence that people are asking me to do this, then that is, at least in
part, my "fault". However, it does come with the territory - as far as
creative fields go, software development is an area where the programmer's
contributions are fairly obscured (unless they are working on open source
projects).

------
ohazi
> Whenever possible (and it’s almost always possible), have someone do a day
> or two of work with you before you hire her; you can do this at night or on
> the weekends.

No. Absolutely not.

If a candidate really is as good as you think he/she is, they already likely
has a full time job that they're perfectly happy with (as you already well
know):

> Often, to get great people, you have to poach. They’re never looking for
> jobs, so don’t limit your recruiting to people that are looking for jobs.

They might have other compelling offers, and they'll certainly have personal
projects, hobbies, and people that are more worthy of their time than this
insulting little game. The developers who know what they're worth won't put up
with this. Why are you trying to hire the ones who will?

Hire fast / fire fast is fine, but seeing a founder do this is a big red flag
for me. It screams indecisiveness, lack of confidence, and mediocrity. Does he
try to pull this stunt with everyone he hires? What am I supposed to think of
the rest of the team? Can I get behind someone whose hiring process is so
driven by fear that he's willing to miss out on the best candidates?

This tactic might help you hire a decent candidate over a mediocre or a
terrible one, but you'll be missing out on (or even creating ill will toward)
the great candidates. It's already hard enough to get them on board -- why
would you make this harder on yourself?

~~~
farmdawgnation
Sorry, but speaking as a software engineer who does have a bit of talent, I
disagree with you in saying that this type of audition exercise is below me.
We complain and complain and complain as an industry about how the interview
process that The Big Boys still use (which is essentially just a pop quiz of
vocabulary terms at its core) is broken. Why is this not a better alternative?

You wouldn't pitch this as "hey, I'm still not sure about you so I'm going to
ask you to do X to prove your worth" \- though it seems that's the
interpretation you're getting from this. It's less a question of raw skill
than it is a question of how all the different subtleties that factor into
effective teamwork would play out when you're working on something together.
There are so many vectors that are in play when it comes to actually _working_
with someone tells you _so_ much more than just an interview will.

~~~
ohazi
> I disagree with you in saying that this type of audition exercise is below
> me. > We complain [...] is broken. Why is this not a better alternative?

It's not a better alternative because many of the best developers in Silicon
Valley _don 't_ disagree with me. There are many reasons for this -- not
everyone is a carefree recent college grad, and many people can't afford the
luxury of taking the time off to do something like this. You might argue that
it's a paid trial, but often "can't afford" has more to do with family
obligations, time commitments, and mental bandwidth than money, even if they'd
be more than willing/able to push hard in a start-up environment if it were
their full-time job. Many of the best developers aren't willing to leave their
current job or take time off without the commitment of a written offer. They
may be more risk averse than someone younger with fewer obligations, for many
of the same reasons outlined above.

But the most important reason why this is not a better alternative is that any
developer who doesn't want to put up with this doesn't have to put up with it,
since it's by far not the norm. Any developer who feels this way and is
actually any good would have an easy time of finding an equal or better
opportunity elsewhere.

> You wouldn't pitch this as "hey, I'm still not sure about you so I'm going
> to ask you to do X to prove your worth" \- though it seems that's the
> interpretation you're getting from this.

It really doesn't matter how the company tries to spin this. In the current
environment, the best developers in Silicon Valley can work wherever they
want. By using a paid trial as policy, these companies are (willfully or not)
turning away some of the best developers that they interview, for very little
gain.

tl;dr: It doesn't matter whether or not you perceive this exercise as being
below you. If a large enough contingent of the best developers won't put up
with it, the companies who use the exercise are losing out.

~~~
farmdawgnation
> They may be more risk averse than someone younger with fewer obligations,
> for many of the same reasons outlined above.

Arguably, if they're risk averse they have no business in the startup game.
But that's neither here nor there.

I see where you're coming from. I guess when I read it I understood it as
"Hey, let's get together for an evening an work on something - I'll even pay
you with it if it's for our company" type thing, which sounds entirely
reasonable. Then again, taking a PTO day to do a trial day of work has a
really minimal level of risk to it.

I think there's a happy medium between where the industry is now and the line
you're unhappy with crossing. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. :)

~~~
lawnchair_larry
_> Then again, taking a PTO day to do a trial day of work has a really minimal
level of risk to it._

You're not going to find much support for that idea among people in demand.
I'd interpret that as a huge red flag that this person does not respect my
time. Also, imagine you're applying at a few different places and they all do
this. Suddenly, you've wasted your vacation days on working harder without
getting paid.

------
Michael_Murray
Great thoughts in this one, but missing what I think is the biggest key to
hiring correctly in the startups I've been part of is what Paul DePodesta said
in Moneyball - ""What gets me really excited about a guy is when he has
warts... and the warts just don't matter."

I've always thought that hiring in a startup is really like what the A's had
to do in Moneyball - you don't have the advantages in terms of money,
facilities, and even equity value of some of your much better funded
competition for talent.

In that situation, you have really only three levers to pull - 1) give up more
than you want (which is what I've seen too many people do); 2) sell the
benefits of the startup life and your mission; and 3) find talent that can
perform at a similar level that's undervalued.

The place that I've seen startup hiring really add value is when someone can
be incredibly effective at #2 (which the author talks about) and they can
develop a process that effectively hires for #3.

I've built my last couple of companies in the information security space and
#3 is especially important, because there's a significant premium paid for
high-value talent in our space. So, finding talent who can perform at an
extremely high level whose "warts" don't matter has been a life-or-death
matter for creating a company that can compete with those in the space that
have more money (either through funding or scale).

~~~
lawnchair_larry
I disagree. InfoSec has these companies who hire #3, thinking they can
underpay, and it's given the whole industry a bad name because of the shoddy
work and dubious claims they make. They go in and play pass the hash, charge a
lot, and the company is really no better off.

No offense, but do you think the fact that you have made multiple attempts and
not yet created a company that has become a prominent name in the industry
means that your approach may not be working?

~~~
Michael_Murray
I entirely agree on the large number of companies who do crappy work in the
infosec industry... there's a lot of them, especially in the penetration
testing realm.

We're not one of them. Nor were any of my previous teams whether they were at
my companies or at companies I worked for (whose names you definitely know).

"Prominent name" is a marketing thing as much as anything... I'd be willing to
put the accomplishments of our teams up against most. Hitting $10M in revenue
in under 3 years building a security firm with no investment and no debt isn't
something I'm going to feel too bad about, even if we don't spend a lot of
time making a big deal about that.

You're making the classic mistake of thinking that a company that makes a lot
of noise is the same as a company that does great work.... those venn diagrams
sometimes overlap. And sometimes they don't.

------
tptacek
So much interesting stuff here. For the past couple years, this has been most
of my (non-billable) role at Matasano, and we've gotten steadily better at
this stuff. So, my thoughts:

›››››› _Spend more time_

›››››› _Have a mission_

›››››› _Always be recruiting_

These three are of a kind for me.

I recommend that you think about hiring the way Patrick McKenzie things about
conversion optimization: as a form of marketing that is amenable to
engineering. In particular: start tracking it as soon as you possibly can, so
you'll have data to pull trends out of. Every effective hiring organization
I've talked to has a process for this.

"Have a mission" sounds fuzzy but I don't think that it is. What we've learned
is to think a lot about what's good for the candidate about the roles we hire
for. We've gotten good enough at this that people on our team can write snappy
job descriptions for us:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5640441](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5640441)
\--- Sean's a good writer, which helps, but there's also a notion across the
team of what we think is great about the work. Having this "through line" for
all your recruiting conversations makes it easier not just to sell the job to
candidates but also, like any serious sales effort, to qualify prospects.

Being serious about qualifying also gives you another piece of data to track:
how well your qualifiers predict how far people get into the funnel. That's
been helpful for us too.

›››››› _Don 't hire_

›››››› _Get your hands dirty_

This times 1000; I think this is the most important piece of advice he has.
Jason Fried has been talking about this for years with "The Importance of
Hiring Late"; the 37signals motto was "don't hire until you've done the job
yourself".

›››››› _Focus on the right way to source candidates_

I agree in general with the idea here.

I think in particular that "blind" job ads of any sort do poorly. Every venue
for ads that has significant visibility is both oversold and also low
signal/noise ratio. We don't take job ads seriously anymore.

There's a lot to think about w/r/t poaching employees, particularly from
peers. It's important to remember that the ethics of poaching from another
company have to be weighed against the best interests of candidates; refusing
to talk to someone because they work for a friend's company is probably a
fraught decision. On the other hand, remember that you're likely to be at a
different company in 2 years, and your long-term relationships with people are
important; I wouldn't use inside information I have from peers to poach
employees.

I wouldn't work with a recruiter. They also irritate candidates and set up
weird incentives.

›››››› _Don 't compromise_

›››››› _Look for red flags_

This is some of the oldest hiring advice in the industry, for a reason.

Be careful with the "default-to-no" posture if your hiring signals come from
employee-driven interviews. Your whole team is rarely on the same exact page
about what you're hiring for.

I take specific issue with the "red flag" of people being title-conscious,
because there are good reasons some people think about titles: they are
(sensibly) concerned about their own career trajectory. The absolute cheapest
benefit you can offer an employee is their title, and if they have a rational
reason for wanting a better title, why on earth would you refuse to give up
some title to get a good candidate on board?

›››››› _Have a set of cultural values you hire for_

This scares me because I think people don't have a good idea of what a
"cultural value" really is, or have aspirational cultural values, like "we'll
work as hard as it takes to make our milestones!".

You discover real cultural values bottom-up, by observing what is good and
effective about your team. You don't have the value until you've established
it in your existing team.

It's obviously important that you build your team out of people who will work
well with your team. But it's equally important not to cast too small a net.
Among other reasons: it can make you especially susceptible to drama, in a
monocultural kind of way.

›››››› _Hire people you like_

Don't try to do this.

You will be surprised by what you end up liking about people who didn't seem
like an immediate "hang out on weekends" fit with your social culture.

When you hire, try to make sure you're hiring on objectively important
criteria. Don't kid yourself about how much it matters that a candidate wants
to go bar hopping with you after work.

›››››› _Fire fast_

This is so hard to do. If you haven't actually run a "fire-fast" culture at
size yet, I recommend you not assume you'll have this capability. Hire as if
it's the life-or-death decision it probably is.

›››››› _Put a little bit of rigor around the hiring process._

Put a _lot_ of rigor around the hiring process.

We've steadily standardized every part of our recruiting process and to date
we've never looked back at something we standardized or measured and said "you
know, this wasn't worth the effort or the cost in flexibility".

We have a funnel with specific objectives at each stage of the funnel. For
instance, in 2013, I think it's impossible to interview with us without
knowing what our whole hiring process is, and without having the phone number
of a company principal to call with questions. It is remarkable how often we
hear how much better our process is than the typical company's process,
because the things that make us outwardly easier to talk to are so easy. And
yet, until a couple years ago, we weren't doing them either.

›››››› _Have people audition for roles instead of interviewing for them._

There's nothing I can say about this that hasn't already been said a million
times, but I'll make the simplest point against it that I can: the best
candidates generally aren't available to "audition" for you, because they're
already working full time jobs.

~~~
sgustard
Regarding the "hang out" test. Imagine you're a person who only likes to hang
out with certain people, namely people already somewhat like you, by way of
gender, race, age range, grew up like you in the USA watching sports and 80s
sitcoms, and so on. Now your hiring process is probably not only unfair but
illegal. But your company will act as a great echo chamber to reinforce your
own preconceptions, so you have that going for you.

~~~
theorique
Certainly if a person is not willing to have his assumptions challenged, then
the "hang out" test will tend to attract and replicate more of the same. But
it's still an important question for reducing conflict and confusion in hard-
working teams who will be spending a lot of time together.

The "hang out" test (or "Sunday test" or "airport test") has its
imperfections, certainly. I'm wondering, what would be a better assessment of
cultural fit?

~~~
tptacek
Not assessing cultural fit in that sense at all.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
I feel like I agree with your aversion to the "hang out test" because it's
just wrong to do that, but I also know that for me personally, work is far
more motivating when I'm friends with my coworkers. _Especially_ when travel
is involved.

I can't be the only one who feels this way, so it would be hard not to factor
this in when hiring, especially with a small startup.

Do you really think that the added motivation from working with "friends" is
insignificant?

~~~
tptacek
I agree, I "like liking" my coworkers too. I guess I'd just encourage hiring
managers to consider that:

(a) it's hard to predict who people are going to be friends with; we have 9-5
people with kids, 20- somethings that live in the hipster hotspots, board game
geeks, people who drink beer, people who hate beer, people who don't drink at
all, and a variety of ages, and everyone seems to get along and enjoy having
lunch together.

(b) monocultures are risky in social environments too; for instance, they
become incestuous and breed drama; one team member leaves in a huff and your
whole team's morale can get seriously screwed up.

(c) if you're getting a company culture by literally hiring everyone's
friends, that team is going to be hard to manage top-down. If you don't have a
top-down management culture, that might be fine. But a lot of companies that
think they're not top down really are; most companies are managed top-down.

------
RougeFemme
Overall, I thought this was a great post, but. . .I've always been kind of
hesitant about the "hire someone you'd want to hang out with on Sunday" bit.
Well, not when I first heard it. . .but over the years, I've come to believe
that so many people hire or want to hire people just like them that it weeds
out a lot of otherwise qualified people. Yes, I know you want people who share
your company's cultural values. . .and that in a small group it's important
that people like each other or least don't dislike each other. I guess it
depends on how tightly you draw your box. . .and how "boxy" your box is. .
.and the alignment between your comapany's values and your personal values.

------
RK
_Don’t limit your search to candidates in your area. This is especially true
if you’re in the bay area; lots of people want to move here._

At first I thought I misread this paragraph, because I'm so used to people
advocating remote hires at this point. I was expecting it to say "Don’t limit
your search...lots of people _don 't_ want to move here."

~~~
badman_ting
No, the author explicitly recommends against remote work. It's with a caveat
of "early on", but in most places that will harden into a general unwritten
"no remote workers" policy, as the organization grows and people are afraid to
try something different than what has worked so far.

This post is pretty heavy on the "company culture" stuff -- more or less, the
idea that you should want to go drinking with your co-workers. People who
believe in this don't tend to believe in remote work. I should mention I
completely disagree with all this, but I am biased.

------
cjbarber
Recruiting is a very hot industry right now, but be warned - I've talked to
companies that are hiring fast, and they get 20+ offers a day from recruiting
startups trying to offer their services.

Recruiting is needed because there is a signal vs noise for developers.

But there is also a signal vs noise for recruiters - it's a very hard industry
to crack into. (AngelList is one company doing a great job here - talking to
companies, it seems like AngelList talent is a fantastic resource - also Naval
has talked multiple times about hiring/recruiting being a far bigger market
than crowd-investing.)

Regarding the personal network hiring tool: I actually started working on this
recently - it looks at Facebook connections currently, so that the person who
is incentivized to be hiring can just allow an employee to Auth their FB
profile, and then go and browse away.

A friend of mine is working on 'Tinder for Startup Jobs' \- he's very close to
done (iOS app, meteor.js web app is also almost ready), so if you would like
to be swiping companies left and right and want to know when he pushes that
and when I push this hiring tool, I whipped up a Google Form (as is all the
rage these days). [1]

[1]:
[https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1xijiSr7QsQ0d-fcg_fXm9dLgOXe...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1xijiSr7QsQ0d-fcg_fXm9dLgOXebPhLu9mmIP7D2Nbc/viewform)

------
CraigJPerry
I'd love if more companies adopted auditioning over the traditional interview
process.

It was counter intuitive to me at first but it's potentially a cheaper way to
hire. There's less downtime for the hiring team - everyone can more or less
continue what they're working on.

It's a better quality of interview too - candidates have a more realistic
platform to show their worth.

~~~
Scorponok
For candidates who already have jobs, how would "auditioning" work? Is it
assumed that they'd take time off from their current job to do it?

~~~
mkramlich
An audition can be a small paid contract that you can work on in your
otherwise free time hours, here and there, on your own premises, then just do
whatever interaction or delivery is necessary to show results and demonstrate
value. And you get paid for it. It doesn't have to be a MF/office-day/on-site
thing. The goal is just to test out two-way fit under as realistic of
circumstances as possible, testing for the things you care about most, and,
really, have it be reciprocal: the applicant/candidate gets paid. The details
are choosable by both parties and should be mutually agreeable. Sprinkle to
taste. And you can iterate.

------
nawitus
Yet another article on hiring without empirical data. And as everyone knows,
"gut feeling" doesn't actually turn out to be correct that often in recruiting
(otherwise we would have solved the problem already).

~~~
j_baker
Do you have any empirical data to back your point up? Or are you basing your
thoughts about gut feelings on gut feelings?

~~~
nawitus
You don't need specific empirical data to back up the point of saying that
claims without empirical data are not reliable enough. We have the scientific
revolution to back that point up.

~~~
j_baker
I think it's worth noting the irony in that you seem to believe in solving
everything rationally _except_ for the value of rationality.

One thing that scientific research has elucidated is that gut feelings aren't
useless, and in fact can be very useful in evaluating people. The thing is
that we take in so much data via our senses and the conscious mind is only
capable of handling a very small amount of those signals. The unconscious mind
picks up on these things and surfaces them as intuitions.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuition_(psychology)#Studies...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuition_\(psychology\)#Studies_and_claims)

------
darrellsilver
This maps extraordinarily closely with what we've seen at Thinkful
([http://www.thinkful.com/](http://www.thinkful.com/)) with both our hiring as
a team and with the students we've helped get hired.

Our biggest breakthrough actually came last month when we started simply
hiring our students. Three of our last five hires have come from people taking
one of our classes.

It's a phenomenal way to get the voice of the user into our user experience,
and each has proven a great cultural fit.

We're not sure it'll work for every position, but perhaps when Thinkful starts
offering CTO-classes!

------
yannisp
"The absolute cheapest benefit you can offer an employee is their title, and
if they have a rational reason for wanting a better title, why on earth would
you refuse to give up some title to get a good candidate on board?"

If your role doesn't match your title, you may be in big trouble when/if your
company gets acquired. Also it might seem like the cheapest in one sense but
as the company grows you'll find yourself in an awkward situation when a
manager makes more than a VP you just hired. It's a sensitive subject that
should be approached more carefully than you'd expect.

------
megablast
> Whenever possible (and it’s almost always possible), have someone do a day
> or two of work with you before you hire her; you can do this at night or on
> the weekends.

Fuck off.

------
zeinology
Using "she" when talking about developers to be politically correct is really
getting old.

------
velik_m
I disagree with some of it agree on some of it, but i strongly disagree with
section on cultural values.

First of: "Spend a lot of time figuring out what you want your cultural values
to be (there are some good examples on the Internet)." Do spend time figuring
out what your cultural values are, but don't look for them on the Internet, or
to put it another way: don't have cultural values for the sake of having
cultural values.

"Treat your values as articles of faith" \- also don't do this. Don't take
anything as article of faith, you should have a reason for each value. If you
can't put a reason on value, how much value does it really have?

------
kfk
People that have a great job and have done great projects will ask you for
more and can easily leave you if they get bored. I think a great recruiter is
someone that gives a chance to people that show other signs of "success"
besides pure measurable performance. Especially, I think you are better off
sometimes hiring people willing to learn and adapt.

Of course, it is easy hiring the 1% when they are already in the 1%. Much more
difficult, and much more valuable, is hiring them when they are in the average
bucket or they are not even there yet (i.e. people looking to move into
programming).

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cyplo
Hi ! I agree on that investing time and just speaking with people is a right
thing to do. And I cannot stress enough the need for real-life exercises
during the interview and the need for just working with the people to be able
to judge their abilities. I was so annoyed by 'traditional' recruitment that I
wrote this post : [http://blog.cyplo.net/2011/07/24/how-to-hire-
people/](http://blog.cyplo.net/2011/07/24/how-to-hire-people/) ;)

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Michael_Murray
Just re-read and saw this: ".... if I were going to jump into....recruiting
startups, I would try to make it look as much like personal network hiring as
possible..."

Funny about that: I started exactly that with a friend at a Startup Weekend a
while ago... we didn't go anywhere with it:
[http://www.findexpert.co/](http://www.findexpert.co/)

We also found that these guys did the same thing:
[https://ooomf.com/](https://ooomf.com/)

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taude
Can startups stop thinking that giving me some meager equity of a company that
would be lucky to have a 10 million exit is worth paying me some -XYZ% of my
market value? Especially when there's so many companies fishing in the limited
talent sea?

It might also be a Boston thing, but I've seen some companies in the startup
scene here trying to offer like 60K for senior-level Python developers and
such....

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rhc2104
Is Sam saying that investors recommend that a first engineer gets 1.5% (and
that he recommends 3%), or that he recommends 1.5%?

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pdfcollect
And why does Stripe need top developers? To make a REST API for payments? What
am I missing?

~~~
nswanberg
Nope, you nailed it. There is nothing in payments that requires more dev work
than could fit in an Excel function. Patrick admitted as much with this
screenshot of the complete Stripe codebase earlier this week:
[https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/381779690567913472](https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/381779690567913472)

That said, the pingpong tables aren't going to play themselves...

