

Hiring for startups: You're doing it wrong - dbg067
http://blog.zumper.com/2014/04/kissing-goodbye-to-the-ohare-test/

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birken
And if you are a prospective employee joining a company that is planning to
have "oh shit" moments, just make sure you are being compensated with a lot of
equity. There basically is no worse deal than joining a risky company at the
stage where they already have some funding and employees.

Assuming you are the resilient type who is capable of founding a startup,
you'd get a much better deal either founding your own company or just joining
a runaway success startup and get experience and build your network while
saving up dough.

~~~
Jormundir
I greatly second this. I'm doing a job search now and have already had to turn
down three offers from early stage startups, because the compensation is
delusionally low. I'm talking 40-60k below market rate, with pitiful stock
options to make up for it. I often wonder who would even let themselves be
taken advantage of so strongly? Why would any halfway decent engineer take
65-80k with 0.25-0.5% equity?

Either be a founding member, or join a larger already successful company who
will give you market compensation. Don't get caught in the middle soup of
being taken advantage of and often being part of a very poorly run companies.

~~~
tbrownaw
_I 'm talking 40-60k below market rate, with pitiful stock options to make up
for it. I often wonder who would even let themselves be taken advantage of so
strongly? Why would any halfway decent engineer take 65-80k with 0.25-0.5%
equity?_

    
    
        see news about $100M exits ==> 0.5% == $500k
        heard mention of a 10% success rate ==> $50k expected value
        $50k == (market_rate - salary) ==> sounds about right
    

Which of course misses that (1) the utility of large amounts of money isn't
linear (expected value doesn't work that way on single occurrences); (2)
future money should be discounted by some rate; and (3) your equity will get
diluted.

And that the slaray difference is _per year_ , and the equity is a one-time
thing. And whatever else I missed.

~~~
Jormundir
Yeah, though this is napkin calculations, 10% chance of $100M exit is wayyyy
too high. I would love for someone to cite a real figure, but I would guess
it's less than 0.5%.

Having been through a $50M acquisition with some options, it's really not
worth the risk at all. I keep with the opinion: anyone who sacrifices salary
for options is a fool. I also suspect the people getting ripped off here tend
to be younger people who don't really know what they're worth, don't know just
how much money they're giving up.

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kenster07
The article seems to subtly suggest that if you do not have an advanced degree
[1], you do not have "brains." As someone who has "brains" but has chosen not
to pursue and advanced degree, if I were working for the author, my reaction
would be to question this person's judgment on several levels: 1) Implicitly
putting down those who work with him who don't have advanced degrees. 2)
Susceptibility to autobiographically-based irrationality, aka too much
Koolaid.

Why is this an irrational viewpoint? Sure, someone who has an advanced degree
is unlikely to be dumb. But as any remotely educated person should know, it
does not follow that someone who does not have an advanced degree is not
smart.

I think the obsession with advanced degrees is fascinating though. Do people
_really_ believe that getting an advanced degree will make one a more
productive web developer? Are the years spent getting that advanced degree
remotely comparable to years of meaningful industry experience? Or comparable
to using the countless online resources to educate oneself in topics that are
directly applicable to web development?? Hint: no.

[1] "Brains don’t matter as much as resilience in your first couple of years
as a startup. I borrowed a lot of money to put myself through one
undergraduate and two masters programs so, yes, it hurts to write that."

------
lucisferre
Hire who's right for _your_ startup, not who someone (who may have really only
written this blogspam as a way to get eyeballs on job postings) tells you to
hire.

These "how to hire" posts are getting so tired. Not because its a bad subject
but because they are completely empty.

~~~
nmac
I agree. At the end of the day, it always comes back to personality types and
drives. Each startup needs different things in different phases. Maybe a
really smart coder is exactly what a non-technical co-founder might need,
whilst a resilient hustler is what a well groomed hacker needs. In general,
universal quantification over statements that are not law-like are doomed to
fail. (<\- yes there is an embedded pun there).

------
jmzbond
I like this concept, you're right that brains and resilience aren't always the
same. Some really smart people need stability and can't handle rapid change.

However, I do think culture-fit (which is way more important than personality)
is as important of a criteria, even more so for early stage start-ups. When
you're building an organization, you have a vision not only for what you want
that org to achieve, but what you want it to look like. In an early stage
company, even one person that goes against that culture could represent 25% of
the company. Their mere presence serves to undermine what you want to build,
and as they say... the one rotten apple rots the rest.

I'm not saying these are bad people, a culture-mismatch at one org is a
culture-fit at another org, but this is an important criteria. I recognize
also that this really drags down the recruiting process. There are some ways
to get around it (e.g., trial work weeks, part-time contractor positions), but
these have been discussed on HN before and are not immediately relevant.

Just more food for thought.

------
danielweber
Paul Graham talks about hiring people who aren't hapless:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/relres.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/relres.html)
(2009)

Which I agree with. I've worked with people who started crying at the first
sign of trouble. I've worked with people who wanted to make every single
encounter into a fight. Both of these are completely toxic to a start-up.

I really worry, though, about these hiring practices that are just
psychological tests designed by non-psychologists, like this:

 _Hire people who emailed you a dozen times before you had a chance to reply_

I usually stop emailing after 3 or 4 times, figuring that that 4th email
already made me look desperate.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: a lot of these "how to find good
employees" are as rigorous as dating advice in the latest issue of _Cosmo_.

~~~
zcarter
Coming from an investment management background, it has been hilarious to see
people espousing all manner of foolish nostrums about tech hiring, showcasing
biases that have proper names in the investment community,

My favorites are of the "never hire Xs" variety, as a manifestation of the
snake bite effect. Woah... what happened between you and someone with a dual
CS/Art History major?

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zcarter
I would reframe the suggestion as two ideas. 1) "hire for your culture" and 2)
conditioning on a cultural expectation of individuals putting up with lots of
problems on their own, "make sure new hires can cope."

The latter is an important point, but the idea that all startups have this
attitude towards employees and crisis management is not accurate.

How important is it for potential candidates to know if the culture at a
startup they are considering working for has these values? I'm guessing a blog
like this turns off a lot of people, but to the author's point, not anyone
they would hire. Effective :D

FD: back end dev at Mighty Spring, we do startup hiring. (mightyspring.com)

------
bruceb
Though one could argue if you higher smarter people you might have less "oh
shit" days?

~~~
kenrikm
Not everything is about code and servers, a lot of the "oh shit" stuff comes
from external factors that even a intelligent person would not be able to
foresee or avoid. I think the point is to hire smart resilient people, not
just smart people.

~~~
scobar
I agree with this comment as well as the overall theme of the article. Smart
people may be able to foresee potential "oh shit" moments, but realize that
multiple factors which contribute to those moments are outside of their
control. Therefore, smart and resilient people will be able to take the hits
and adapt as they dig themselves out of the lows.

