What are the best places to look for engineers?

The top five places to look for engineers are personal networks, hiring marketplaces, LinkedIn/GitHub, job boards (like Stack Overflow Jobs and AngelList), and meetups. Personal networks are generally the best starting point.

How can startups effectively use LinkedIn for hiring?

Instead of a high-volume approach, startups should focus on personalized, targeted outreach. Research candidate profiles, emphasize why they'd be a good fit, and provide evidence of having read their profile. Emails tend to have higher response rates than messages.

When should a startup consider hiring a technical recruiter?

Wait until you have your first engineer, aim for a hiring cadence of about one engineer per month, and consider it if sourcing and initial calls take up more than 50% of your time. Start with contract recruiters for sourcing.

Why are traditional interviews so inconsistent?

Interviews suffer from inconsistency or 'noise' because interviewers often lack agreement on what skills matter most and tend to rely on intuition rather than structured criteria. This is statistically similar to how movie viewers rate films.

How can companies reduce noise in their interview process?

Reduce noise by defining essential skills, using structured interviews with consistent questions and criteria, employing better interview questions, hiding credentials from technical interviewers, considering false negatives, calibrating for maximum skill, and improving the candidate experience.

What are the most important skills for early hires in a startup?

For the first few hires, productivity and ownership are key. This means candidates who can take a project, figure out what needs to be built, and execute it, potentially at the expense of perfect code quality initially.

How can non-technical founders assess technical skills of candidates?

Non-technical founders can't directly assess technical skills but can ask candidates to explain their reasoning and solutions. Examining past work and portfolios is also crucial. Ideally, a technical co-founder or advisor should be involved.

What are key strategies for closing a candidate after extending an offer?

Be fast and responsive, ensure interviewers had a good experience, talk about company culture in detail (including trade-offs), involve your team and investors, and present full, transparent compensation details.

How can startups compete for engineers against large tech companies?

Startups can compete by emphasizing learning opportunities with real decision-making authority, career progression in a meritocratic environment, the unique opportunity cost of joining a specific startup, and mentorship for junior candidates.

What is the actual success rate of hired engineers?

Surveys show that about 5% of hires are typically fired, 30% are not top performers but stay, and only around 10% are considered top performers. The 95% success rate often cited refers to hires not being fired, not necessarily being top performers.

Key Moments

Building an Engineering Team by Ammon Bartram and Harj Taggar

Y Combinator

Science & Technology3 min read72 min video

Sep 26, 2018|76,447 views|1,420|22

YC Y Combinator Startup School Harj Taggar Ammon Bartram

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Key Moments

TL;DR

Startups need to hire engineers strategically: focus on personal networks first, optimize screening, and close quickly.

Key Insights

Hiring engineers is a painful but crucial process for startups, requiring time, repetitive effort, and resilience.

Prioritize sourcing from personal networks, then leverage hiring marketplaces, LinkedIn/GitHub, and job boards.

Implement structured interviews, define key skills, and use better questions to reduce noise and bias.

Speed is a major advantage for startups in the closing process; be fast and transparent with offers.

When competing with tech giants, emphasize learning opportunities, career progression, and unique startup experiences.

For non-technical founders, leverage technical co-founders, ask candidates to explain their reasoning, or use hiring platforms like Triplebyte.

THE PAINFUL REALITY OF HIRING ENGINEERS

Hiring engineers is arguably the most critical and challenging aspect of building a successful startup. Founders must be prepared for a process that is time-consuming, involves repetitive tasks akin to sales, and can be emotionally taxing due to inevitable rejections. This difficulty stems from the scarcity of time for founders, the need for persistent effort, and the emotional toll of seeking ideal candidates who may not ultimately join. Recognizing these challenges is the first step toward developing an effective hiring strategy.

STRATEGIC SOURCING FOR ENGINEERING TALENT

The initial focus for sourcing engineers should be on personal networks, leveraging trusted relationships to find candidates who are not only skilled but also a good cultural fit. As personal networks are exhausted, hiring marketplaces offer a quicker way to connect with actively searching engineers, though they can be competitive and costly. LinkedIn and GitHub provide vast directories, but require personalized outreach to cut through the noise. Job boards and meetups are generally lower priority, acting more as background pipelines for potential future hires.

OPTIMIZING TECHNICAL SKILL EVALUATION

Evaluating technical skills effectively requires moving beyond unstructured interviews and employing a structured approach. This involves defining the specific skills critical for the role and company, asking consistent questions across all candidates, and providing interviewers with defined criteria for evaluation. Utilizing better interview questions that have multiple steps and avoid requiring obscure leaps of insight, while also downplaying credentials during technical assessments, can lead to more accurate and less biased evaluations.

REDUCING NOISE AND BIAS IN INTERVIEWS

To mitigate the inherent noise and bias in the interview process, focus on specific strategies. Standardize the interview process to ensure consistency, provide clear evaluation criteria to interviewers, and unify decision-making to a central point. Avoid questions that rely on specific, easily discoverable facts; instead, use multi-step problems that allow for gradual problem-solving. It's also crucial to consider the false negative rate, ensuring that promising candidates aren't unfairly screened out, and to calibrate assessments on a candidate's maximum potential rather than just average performance.

THE ART OF CLOSING OFFERS

Speed and transparency are paramount when extending offers to engineering candidates. Startups have a significant advantage over larger companies by moving quickly through the hiring process and delivering final offer details promptly. Ensure interviewers maintain a positive and professional demeanor, avoid arrogance, and be prepared to discuss company culture in detail, especially regarding diversity and openness. Involving the team and investors in the closing process can also be beneficial, and all offers must be presented fully and transparently, including detailed compensation packages.

COMPETING FOR TALENT AGAINST GIANTS

Startups can effectively compete for engineers against tech giants by highlighting unique advantages. Emphasize the unparalleled learning opportunities and real decision-making authority granted at startups, where mistakes can lead to rapid growth and experience. Discuss accelerated career progression and the unique, unrepeatable opportunity to build a company from the ground up. For junior candidates, offer strong mentorship from experienced engineers. By focusing on these aspects, startups can attract top talent even when they cannot match the compensation of larger corporations.

Mentioned in This Episode

●Software & Apps

●Companies

●Organizations

●Concepts

●People Referenced

Building Your Engineering Team: A Startup Guide

Practical takeaways from this episode

Do This

Prioritize personal networks for early hires.

Use a structured process for sourcing and interviewing.

Make personalized and targeted outreach on LinkedIn/GitHub.

Write unique and engaging job descriptions.

Train interviewers to have good 'bedside manners'.

Be prepared to discuss company culture in detail.

Get your team and investors involved in the closing process.

Present full, transparent offers with all compensation details.

Emphasize learning opportunities and ownership for candidates.

Highlight career progression and unique startup opportunities.

For junior candidates, emphasize mentorship.

Avoid This

Procrastinate on hiring – it's a scarce resource.

Rely solely on generic or spam messages for outreach.

Use generic boilerplate language in job descriptions.

Let interviewers rely on intuition; use structured interviews.

Ask interview questions that are easily 'gamed' or have single 'facts'.

Avoid specialized knowledge questions unless crucial for the role.

Downplay the time it takes to solve problems for candidates.

Let interviewers be biased by credentials; hide them during technical screens.

Focus only on false positives; consider the cost of false negatives.

Fail candidates based on a single poor performance in one interview section.

Engage in 'hazing' during interviews.

Engage in hypothetical offer discussions before presenting details.

Candidate Success Rates Post-Hiring

Data extracted from this episode

Category	Percentage
Fired within months	5%
Stick around but not top performers	30%
Best hires / Top performers	10%

Common Questions

Hiring engineers is a painful process because it takes significant time, involves repetitive tasks, and often results in rejection or 'heartbreak' when desired candidates decline offers. Founders need to be prepared for this difficulty.

Topics

Technology & Innovation Business & Entrepreneurship Startup Hiring Career & Skills Recruiting Strategies Engineering Recruitment Technical Interviews Hiring Funnel Candidate Assessment Offer Negotiation

Mentioned in this video

Companies

TripleByte

A hiring marketplace for engineers, co-founded by Ammon Bartram and Harj Taggar. It aims to help companies find and hire engineers more effectively.

Twitch

Harj Taggar was an early employee at Twitch before co-founding TripleByte.

Glassdoor

Mentioned in the context of interview questions that might be 'given away' if candidates can find answers on platforms like Glassdoor.

Y Combinator

Ammon Bartram was previously a partner at Y Combinator, and TripleByte is a YC alumnus. It's a startup accelerator program.

Mentioned as a key platform for sourcing engineers, both through direct outreach and as a source of information for personalized messaging.

Facebook

Mentioned alongside Google as a tech giant that startups must compete with for talent, particularly regarding compensation packages.

GitHub

Highlighted as a platform for sourcing engineers, particularly by reviewing candidates' code and contributions.

Google

Mentioned as a large tech company that competitors need to consider when hiring and as a benchmark for compensation and career progression.

Uber

Cited as an example of a company where focus on culture has increased, prompting candidates to think more about their desired work environment.

Concepts

Engineering Team

The specific focus of the discussion is on building and hiring for an engineering team within a company.

Cal Connect Four

Implied reference to the game Connect Four being used as an interview question.

Big Five personality traits

Mentioned as a more relevant framework for personality assessment than Myers-Briggs when considering personality for job performance.

Hiring

The central theme of the video, focusing on the challenges and strategies of hiring engineers, particularly for startups.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Mentioned as a less relevant framework for personality assessment compared to the Big Five traits for job performance.

Fibonacci sequence

The solution to a sample interview question about counting paths on stairs, used to illustrate a question that might have a 'giveaway' answer.

Software & Apps

Checker

A service that can be integrated with payroll to simplify background checks for startups.

Linux

Mentioned as an example of a deep technical knowledge area (internals, scheduling, real-time operating systems) that might be relevant for certain engineering roles.

Socialcam

Harj Taggar, co-founder of TripleByte, previously started Socialcam with Michael Seibel.

Products

Connect Four

Used as an example of a good interview question because it involves multiple steps and is harder to 'game' with a pre-learned answer.

People

Harj Taggar

Co-founder of TripleByte and speaker in the video, focusing on evaluating technical skills.

Michael Seibel

Co-founder of Socialcam with Harj Taggar.

Ammon Bartram

Co-founder of TripleByte and speaker in the video, focusing on sourcing engineers and making offers.