​​Building an Engineering Team - YC SUS Notes
​​“Building an Engineering Team” by Ammon Bartram and Harj Taggar
​​You can find the lecture these notes have been taken on here: https://www.startupschool.org/videos/44
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​​Hiring sucks - it takes a lot of time, takes a lot of work, you will inevitably get rejected by many perfect candidates.
  • ​​Hiring is a funnel.
  • ​​Sourcing - finding people who are a good fit
  • ​​The five best places to source engineers are:
  • ​​Personal networks - the best place to hire at an early stage.
  • ​​Does this person have the skills to do this job?
  • ​​Can you work effectively with the person. Hiring the wrong person early on can be fatal. By hiring someone you know or trust, you are more likely to have a better relationship.
  • ​​The common mistakes are: they don’t use a process to exhaustively search through potential candidates; they don’t actually ask. Can result from worrying about your relationship with the person being ruined if things go wrong - but you should suck it up and do it.
  • ​​Make a list of every good engineer you know, meet up with every one, and commit to asking every one to work with you.
  • ​​If they say no, ask if they will come by the office and see what you are working on. Keep pushing until they understand your product. If they offer a definitive no, ask for some candidates they would hire if they were in your position, and repeat the process.
  • ​​Brainstorm with your employees as you grow (“sourcing party”). Get everyone together, send out a spreadsheet, and describe the role. Have everyone spend time going through their network and putting them onto the spreadsheet. Can offer referral bonuses to incentivize the process.
  • ​​Hiring marketplaces
  • ​​Work like dating sites: engineers create profiles, companies create profiles, you are introduced and message them, then meet in person.
  • ​​Companies reach out to the best candidates - engineers choose who they want to speak to.
  • ​​They can help you hire quickly - most candidates on the marketplace are actively looking for a job.
  • ​​They can be quite competitive - engineers are reached out to by multiple companies, so you need to be quick and effective.
  • ​​They can be expensive - fee per hire, a large cost for an early startup.
  • ​​TripleByte, Hired, Vettery
  • ​​Hiring is a funnel, you should always work to optimize your funnel. Pay attention to what percentage of candidates go through each hiring stage when you start to grow.
  • ​​LinkedIn/Github
  • ​​Used by most big companies who can have recruiters send out 100+ messages per day to people. Due to an increase in recruiters, people normally have slow response rates.
  • ​​It will require a lot of your time and energy. Don’t focus on mass hiring approaches, learn about candidates through GitHub, LinkedIn, etc, and send personalized targeted messages.
  • ​​Emphasize why somebody would be a good fit, and make it clear that you have read about them. Keep it short.
  • ​​Job boards
  • ​​Main ones: Stack Overflow Jobs, Angel List
  • ​​You don’t have to spend a huge amount of time posting on them, but most applicants will be mostly unqualified, so it will take a lot of time to find the best candidates. Quantity not quality.
  • ​​Create specific and interesting job descriptions - as a founder you can experiment a little and bring your personality into a listing.
  • ​​Write a personal story in 1st person, and why you are excited about your mission.
  • ​​Mention technical challenges or product challenges, as well as company culture
  • ​​In-person meetups
  • ​​Long-shot strategy and it is unlikely to find qualified, active candidates.
  • ​​You need to be effective at talking to strangers and convincing them to join you.
  • ​​Focus on technical meetups like local programming groups, rather than corporate meetups.
  • ​​Host meetups at your office - combine with personal network hiring and get a large amount of people together. Good opportunity to build a large network of engineers who may be of value to you in the future.
  • ​​Using recruiters
  • ​​When to use one:
  • ​​Wait until you have hired an engineer already. It’s good to do the job yourself for a bit so you can feel the pain and you understand what makes someone good at that role in your startup. Makes it easier to find the right recruiter to you when you are ready.
  • ​​It is like sales - it’s good to pitch to people so you can refine your pitch and understand how you can optimize your hiring approach which can help when hiring non-technical people.
  • ​​Build a good hiring cadence - hire an engineer once per month for the next six months otherwise future hires may run out of work in the future.
  • ​​If you are spending more than 50% of your time sourcing and conducting phone screening then you should hire a recruiter.
  • ​​Types of recruiters:
  • ​​Contract (per hour) - start with a contract recruiter, and get them to focus on sourcing so they can fill your calendar with promising leads who you will pitch.
  • ​​In-house - when the workload increases, hire someone in-house who will conduct sourcing, do screening calls, and setup on-site screening.
  • ​​Agency - charge 25%-30% of first year salary, high-touch and involved in helping you close an engineer, but they may share a candidate with other companies.
  • ​​Startup hiring plan:
  • ​​Exhaust personal networks - spend time taking people out to lunch etc and making the ask