
How to hire your first employees - harryzhang
http://blog.lob.com/post/66380101969/how-to-hire-your-first-employees
======
chollida1
This is pretty messed up. You make the potential employee do a one week trial
run and then you make an offer?

Maybe I'm missing something but if you quit your job to do a one week trial
run you've lost a great deal of your negotiating power.

Its also been pointed out many times that many employment agreements would
forbid this work with another company while employed meaning that you'd have
to quit to do the trial period.

Please, please,

1) never do a one week trial run unless you are really desperate for a job. I
won't tell someone never to do something as individual situations are always
different.

2) if you do a trial run, make sure the employment agreement is finalized
before you do it. If you negotiate salary and benefits after you quite your
previous job then you've got a much better chance of losing this negotiation.

A question to pose to companies that do this.

I've said a few times now that this type of policy means that you won't be
hiring the top 10-20% of developers as I don't believe that they'd put up with
this type of behaviour.

Do you disagree?? or do you agree and realize that your company doesn't need
the very best developers but you want to make sure you are dead right on the
developers that you do hire?

I've phrased the above to sound as neutral as I could, I'm trying to get some
honest feedback not start a flame war:)

> As such, we make sure to let them know where we stand in terms of funding,
> cash, revenue, and other important metrics.

This on the other hand impresses me a great deal. To me transparency is the
sign of good management.

~~~
rfnslyr
Trial runs are fine if you get paid for that week regardless. I'd never give
up a week for free.

~~~
philsnow
> > Its also been pointed out many times that many employment agreements would
> forbid this work with another company while employed meaning that you'd have
> to quit to do the trial period.

> Trial runs are fine if you get paid for that week regardless. I'd never give
> up a week for free.

But you would violate an employment agreement (and possibly state/local law,
but the whole "doing something that violates an explicit agreement I've made
with my current employer" part is what grabs me) ?

~~~
levosmetalo
Well, if you are a consultant or freelancer, you can do this one week trial
run in case it's paid. You can always decline job offer afterwards if it
doesn't meet your rates for a long term project.

~~~
vonmoltke
And for the vast majority of the programming world that is neither, well, we
didn't want to hire them anyway?

------
harryzhang
Hi all - sorry it was unclear. Our trial runs are not necessarily one week. In
most cases candidates have full time jobs and can't commit that much time.
It's usually 2 days (over weekend) or late afternoon for a couple hours.

Post has been updated to reflect this. Most our candidates actually appreciate
the personal experience and we don't just bring anybody into a trial run
unless we're already mostly sure we're ready to make an offer. I think that
everyone who has gone through the process thus far can speak positively on it.
It isn't just a one sided street, candidates can get a sense for whether THEY
will like the job, team, and culture at the company as well.

Other people have done similar things (longer timeframes even) with good
success. See David w/Weebly:
[http://www.sequoiacap.com/grove/posts/akzj/trial-week-our-
hi...](http://www.sequoiacap.com/grove/posts/akzj/trial-week-our-hiring-
secret)

~~~
nostrademons
How do you handle IP issues with candidates that already have full-time jobs?
If it were me, for example, I don't mind hacking on something for a weekend
(it's frequently what I do anyway), but Google owns any code I write. If you
try to incorporate that into a real project you are in for a hell of a legal
mess.

~~~
seiji
Why would you agree to such an unequal arrangement? If that is true, the
entire output of your brain is literally owned by a corporation.

(You probably have a "own time/own materials" exception if you're in
California or if they are non-pathological in their employment agreements.)

~~~
nostrademons
Because the entire _input_ to my brain is owned by me, once it's recombined
with all the stuff that's already there. And that input is significantly
higher than it would be if I were contracting or working for a small startup.
There is value in working in a really big pond, with some of the best in the
world, on a variety of projects that are all pushing the cutting edge of
what's possible in their fields. If I ever leave Google, I'll have this
toolbox of techniques that'll make me much more effective than the other folks
in the startup melting pot. Think of it as a very practical grad school
education where they pay me a bunch of money and I get hands-on experience
instead of boring classwork.

I do have a "own time/own materials/not along the lines of business"
exception, but the problem is that Google is in so many lines of business that
that could be construed to apply to everything.

------
cia_plant
A one-week trial run seems like a very bad idea to me. I wouldn't even
consider going through such a long interview process. It's basically a low-
pass filter on your candidate pool - maybe that's the goal?

~~~
rahimiali
a low-pass filter? it attenuates high frequencies from the candidate pool?

~~~
hackinthebochs
i.e. people that are desperate enough to submit to it aren't going to be your
"rockstars".

~~~
JaakkoP
The idea of a "trial week" can probably upset some applicants, but that's not
necessarily always the case. An applicant who feels confident about the
culture fit and his/her skills may very well think that there's little to no
downside risk starting through a trial.

In addition, the trial week also works the other way around, where applicants
can determine if their initial gut feeling about the company is right. If not,
there's an easy way out, and the worst case scenario is a loss of a vacation
week - not unemployment.

~~~
hackinthebochs
Sure it's reasonable in _one instance_. But what if every company started
instituting these trial week scenarios? Then it quickly becomes untenable.
There's just no rational basis for an applicant to "feel confident" in
anything that isn't in writing. This scenario is designed specifically to give
the employer even more power and leverage in a hiring transaction. The only
people who would be willing to jump through such hoops are kids fresh out of
college or otherwise desperate folks. It certainly isn't going to bias your
hiring process towards "rockstars".

------
dkasper
> As such, we make sure to let them know where we stand in terms of funding,
> cash, revenue, and other important metrics.

As someone who has interviewed with a number of companies in recent days I
really appreciate this. One company I interviewed with went as far as to tell
me how much runway they have in an initial phone screen. That's taking things
pretty far, but for an early stage (ie pre-series A) company everyone knows
your runway is measured in months anyway (unless you have significant revenue)
so it's nice to know how soon the company is going to be getting into
fundraising.

------
occupybourbonst
Considering the company is run by first time founders with virtually no hiring
experience, I don't understand why they were compelled to write a post on how
to hire.

~~~
benologist
It's an increasingly popular form of advertising for startups that would
otherwise not be very relevant to HN, they were compelled by the easy traffic,
the tiny sliver of 'growth' and the backlinks.

------
naftaliharris
Harry, do you pay the prospective employees during the trial run? The blog
post implies that it's a week long, ("We’ve been able to spot problems during
the week..."). While the information gained by both parties during a week of
working together is no doubt very valuable for them both, a week is a long
time to work for no pay.

EDIT: Oh, I see your edit, these trials runs typically aren't a full week
long. But in any case, if someone is going to give up a substantial amount of
time, I hope you pay them for it.

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reillyse
got it, you are hiring.

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gailees
Young hackers love Lob. These guys will have no problem hiring.

------
mkramlich
> The first 2 employees we hired were people that we have previously
> lived/worked with

 _lived_ with

at this moment, this early, I can predict I'm reading "wise"
career/entrepreneurial advice by a 20-something, at best, most likely

I stop reading

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phonetapgap
Good stuff. I'm going to try these.

