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Someone asked me this question recently and while I was giving him the answer, I thought this must be a common question for a lot of companies. I decided to write a post about it!

Question the person asked me:

One of the companies where I have recently invested in is finding it hard to find good engineering talent (1-2 years exp). Is there something that has worked well for you at Akto?

My answer:

Who do I want to hire?

Good devs have the capacity to take ownership, are curious to learn a lot, and possess decent programming skills. In a startup, they should also be prepared to take on any task, be willing to accept a lower salary for higher ESOPs, and take the initiative. I want to hire only 5 devs - really good devs.

You don’t know what problem is going to hit you, you don’t know when would a customer be blocked on a P0 bug and you don’t know which approach to take if there are 3 available. What you definitely know if you need the solution as fast as possible. You want to iterate fast and fail fast.

‍What do good devs want?

If our standards for good devs match, then it is important to understand what they want from the company.

1. They should be given ownership of a significant chunk of a product lane, with an experienced senior dev as guidance.
2. They should be presented with challenging tasks, such as scale, latency, and accuracy
3. They should be presented with a unique experience that they would not find in bigger companies.
4. They should be provided with a really good mentor.

Ambitions are very high when you are fresh out of college. Personally, I wanted to make significant impact in the company I joined as a developer 10 years ago. I wanted to learn more about the tech world and at the same time apply it too. I wanted a good mentor to help me and guide me. Most of such ambitious freshers and even senior devs find it hard to get a good developing environment around them.

‍What do I tell them during interview conversations?

1. When talking to them for the first time, I like to explain the problem we are solving, how existing solutions are inadequate, and how our solution can bring improvements and success to people's lives.
2. I encourage them to ask questions and try to ensure they learn something valuable in just 20 minutes.
3. I like to demonstrate our product and explain it in simple terms so they feel that we care and are invested in helping them understand.
4. This is when I try to really wow them. I let them know about our amazing tech, how they will have a hand in one of 5 product lanes, what clients are using our product, and the angels who have invested in us. I also mention familiar names to impress them. I tell them that they'll not just learn tech, but also the business side of things, and that their efforts will be reflected in the business. I make sure to mention the generous stock options that should make them feel like they don't want to miss out.
5. Lastly, I try to reassure them about their career growth. I tell them that the founders are putting a lot of effort into advancing their career, and if they ever leave the startup, they will be able to get a job that is much better than they could have imagined. I usually tell them the story of one of my interns who, despite only having a 6-pointer at BITS, was the first one from their class to get placed due to the amount of knowledge they had gained in just 4 months. They should keep building good tech and I build their career.

This seems like a VC pitch, but why shouldn’t it be? These devs are going to be the foundation of your product!

The result

After this 1 hr of call, it is time to tell them if they want to interview and schedule it for the coming weekend. Be prepared, but remain confident that they will be impressed, and they will refer good people to you and remember you when they are frustrated in their current jobs. This does sound like a lot of work, but I wanted to hire only 5 devs. I put in the effort and it paid off. I have 2 freshers, 2 senior devs (5-yrs exp) and 1 8-yr experienced dev. Each of them handle 1 lane out of 5 that we have today. It took me 1 month net-net to find out these 5 gems, and their notice period etc took 2 more months.

Please share what I have missed here! This was all to help early stage startups create an organic pipeline for a small scale hiring. If you have already tried a few ideas here, let me know how well they worked (or didn’t work!) for you. A few months later, I would want to hire more. Would love to learn from you 🙂