Building a Good Engineering Team In a Competitive Market

Nerval's Lobster writes It's a pretty good market out there for tech professionals, at least on a statistical level. That can make it difficult for companies (both large ones and startups) to find good talent for their developer and engineering ranks. According to Ron Pragides, who rode the wave of IPOs at Salesforce and Twitter before joining Bigcommerce, the trick to hiring good tech people isn't necessarily a matter of offering the best perks, or the most money, or even an office with all sorts of fun stuff (although those can help). Instead, it's often a matter of selling them on a vision of the company's future. "It is about presenting the opportunity and the potential of what it could be if we have the right attitude, the right focus, the right work ethic," he said in an interview, "It's about making people feel like this is your company and making them understand they are going to help the culture and will have a big direction in how the office develops. I tell them, 'This is your company, this is your startup.'" But even that might not be enough in places like Silicon Valley, where lots of companies offer that "vision thing." So what does it take to pull in good people to work on your projects? Or does it really just come down to money in the end?

Comments

Re:"This is your company, this is your startup"

[Grishnakh]

Just show them that they will have a job for more than six months, they will be paid industry rates, won't be working 80 hours a week, and will be financially successful if the company is successful. That doesn't mean a millionaire. It means a great benefits package and decent profit sharing.

You've got to be fucking kidding me. No companies do this shit any more, and haven't for a long time; they're happy to can your ass as soon as the project is over and they can save a little money (and get a bigger bonus) by not having to pay that team any more. They're also happy to hold down your salary if you don't job-hop every year or two, and pressure you to work 80 hours a week so they don't have to hire as many people.

These companies might as well just give up, because engineers aren't going to buy their bullshit for another generation.