Ask HN: How to hire if you don't believe in working for someone

On the other hand, just quit if you don't believe in the venture. You only live once, and in the cosmic scale of things it won't matter if you don't succeed.

I don't want to run my own company. I don't want the headaches. And I'm definitely in it for the money, but not because I don't want to work for someone. I'm in it for the money because my life is rather expensive. I can't take a gamble on a startup turning golden sometime down the road; you've got to pay me well, now, or I'm not interested.

But I'm also not interested in just showing up, putting in 8 hours a day coding something that will never ship, and cashing my checks. That's really cynical and depressing. I want to produce something that will matter to at least a few people, and that has a realistic chance of actually being shipped.

I want to work somewhere that has management that knows what its doing. I don't like working for incompetent management - they waste too much of my time and effort. Even if they pay me well, life is too short to merely sell my time for money.

So: You're not happy. It sounds to me like you may need to hire a technical manager or technical lead, to take the load that you hate. Or maybe even you need to replace yourself - hire someone to take your job, so that you can do things you enjoy more. You're probably going to need to stay available as a consultant, though, to give some continuity and guidance to the startup.

Is this to say they don't care about outcomes just do the hours and get paid?

Anyway it's fine to offer people the chance to exercise and apply abstract thought in return for a steady paycheck. Those with a mortgage and kids will definitely appreciate it.

I never want to be CEO. I am happy working for a great boss and with great colleagues. I'd be miserable working alone on a profitable solo business.

I have several other friends who explicitly like working at a big company for the stability, maturity, collaboration, and good pay check.

Are you paying well? Do you maintain contact?

Working remotely would make team building really hard but really important. More contact could help, regularly talking could help give your employees a better sense of the struggles your going through. As they see that they may take more ownership.

They dont do it, with feeling, for money. Money is just something they get.

Your attitude is coming across to me in this post as someone who would rather not be there doing that. If i'm getting it, how do YOU expect to get a reaction any better than your attitude?

Is there any aspect of this project that you love ? that you really want to see working? Focus on that, mentally.. get that feeling in your mind when you're interviewing... and also you need to find space in your head to actually care about the people (not their job) themselves. You'll be amazed how much a difference in attitude this will make to the people that look to you their leader.

My experience with developers is that you get what you pay for.

In my experience, the thing getting your goat is often kind of the dog you kick because you can't kick the real source of the problem. I imagine that burning money coming out of your pocket is a much bigger stresser driving your negative emotional reaction to the thought of hiring anyone. If it were me, I would be doing some brain storming with a trusted confident for how to address this issue.

1. Hiring people that are different than you. As others commented, there are many reasons to want a job. If it is just money, that's ok, but perhaps not what is best in a startup. Vision, opportunity to learn, team, personal connection, these are all other great reasons to work for a small company.

2. Whether this company and position is correct for you. You may be a great technical co-founder but a crappy VP of engineering. You may not be happy managing or building a team. If you have given it a good try (3-12 months) then I'd try to find someone else (in consultation with your co-founder, of course).

  - A concrete sense of accomplishment?
  - A medium through which to grow as a developer / leader / person?
  - Obligation / duty to a worthy cause?
  - Hanging out with people you like?
  - Recognition from people you respect?
  - A sense of your own value in society?
  - Accountability and structure?
  - A stepping stone to some future goal?

The first person I'd turn to is your cofounder. How does he see it, what are his expectations, is this something that he can take off your plate, etc.

After that, I'd schedule 1-on-1s with your remote employees - in person if you're close, video otherwise. What are their personal and professional goals? How can you position working for you as being directly in line with those?

By "in on it", I mean that you either have equity in the company, or a very large percent of your pay is related to the success of the company, or that you have some confidence that your career will rise with the fortunes of the company (rather than being dumped or hired-over as it grows), or there are career growth prospects in the case of larger corporations, or merely that you're accruing cutting-edge skills and experience that improve your future job prospects.

Or you're not "in on it", and stuck just swapping time for money.

In the former case people often willing to spill blood and sweat for the good of the company (and thus their own benefit).

In the later case, they will be out to get everything they can, regardless of the company's fortunes.

The money is coming out your pocket, and you're losing more money as time goes by. You're stressed out about that, and trying to save money. So you're trying to find the cheapest developers you can, and the candidates that are ok with you're low ball salary are those without a lot of options (ie: unqualified, inexperienced, etc). But the good developers, they want real money (which you've misinterpreted as "fuck you, pay me").

Look I run a self-funded startup too.. and people are expensive. I get it. But it's a market. Those good developers aren't refusing to work for you because they don't want to work for anyone. They're refusing because they can get other offers. Your low salary offer isn't interesting to them.

It's as simple as that.

Beyond that, the issue of working for someone else is generally not the problem, it's getting taken advantage of by fast-talking business people that turns people off. As tech becomes the new finance, the number of wheeler dealers proliferates, and experienced talent develops a well-earned distrust of the typical below-market salary pitch. This is one reason so many companies feed on the fresh talent straight out of college rather than pursuing older engineers, because it's much easier to maintain the pie-in-the-sky dream mentality that experienced hands know rarely pans out.

The bottom line is if you want to get someone cheap, you need to take a risk on someone less experienced with something to prove, or else you need to bring in senior talent either by paying something approaching market or by giving them meaningful co-founder level equity instead of the pittance that is standard for engineering hire #1. I've also had some luck building teams from people outside the Bay Area with fewer opportunities and who, for whatever reason, did not fit the mold of the typical software developer.

As a formerly stressed & miserable former business owner who bootstrapped the entire operation in the beginning, I can tell you that to my stressed out past self everything I didn't like seemed disproportionately grey/weak-sauce/lame.

To directly answer your question, I used to wonder why everyone didn't care as much as I did. It's because they didn't. The work was kind of monotonous, they knew (I think) that the entire operation was hand to mouth (jobs could evaporate at any time), and for them it was just a job, even if it was a good job, it was just a job. I literally couldn't give away stock/shares to my employees, because they didn't understand or value them.

I later learned to appreciate I was too emotionally attached, and that my employees' "I don't care that much" attitudes was fine. They showed up, did a great job, and made me money. That's what they wanted to do, and I eventually learned to accept it. That made me sad in a way, as I understood I couldn't lean on my employees to constantly lead efforts grow, shift, and adapt to the chaos that comes with growing a business. I hadn't hired people that wanted drive the bus, but they were happy to go along for the ride.

Here's a few tricks I used to retain smart & cheap people to do work that, to me, was kind of boring:

- I sounded like I really cared about the business (it helped that I did)

- I said I could pay up to a certain amount in job ads & confirmed that in phone interviews

- I interviewed for skills & aptitude that reflected what people would need to do the job well, and then asked people to confirm they'd actually enjoy doing that kind of work

- I asked candidates "you seem bright & capable, so why do you want this job when you probably make twice what I can pay elsewhere?", and I accepted any answer that sounded legit as acceptable

- I only required people to do things I really needed them to do, and tried being flexible on everything else

After a couple years of doing the whole "I'm a boss with employees" thing, my business partner offered to buy me out. We worked out a deal, I took the money, and haven't spent a single minute missing the burden of running the show.

I encourage you to take steps to work towards being less miserable. Start by learning to articulate the bits related to "this is no way to live" in a manner that is thoughtful & without anger. I learned the hard way that when I shared my thoughts in a manner that was acute & emotional, the only thing I successfully communicated was acute emotional-ness.

I'd be happy to chat further if you like. My email is in my profile. If you need someone to yell at, I'll listen without taking it (too) personally.

Stay awesome, become awesome-r, and go conquer the world and/or retire.

First this - I'm paying.

The unfortunate consequence of paying out of pocket is that we tend to look for a perfect soludtion - decent cost, at least as per us, while being the best. But market is not like that. Good people need good pay.

Second this - I would quit this whole thing and would just retire writing code myself

I am sorry that comes across as you not really believing in the product and currently doing it only for your co-founder. And this is a vibe which you might be giving off to a developer.

If you can't convince yourself, how do you expect to convince a developer that the product is good and they should consider lower salaries with say a decent equity?

While not too rare, they often want to join the best tribe. Which is usually places like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs. Or places like Medium, Asana, Atlassian, Pivotal. These people want to find a good leader and follow them anywhere.

Rarer are the people who are joining a company to try to improve it or make a difference. They tend to go for rapidly rising startups, or startups with a solid core. They are good followers and also good leaders, but they are perhaps the pickiest of all.

You either have to prove to them that you are the best leader or that you're rising rapidly. Often you might have to entice them with a bit of equity to let them feel like part of the tribe.

But if you believe that working for people is bad, they might sense that and not feel like it's a cohesive tribe. So I would work on getting them to feel like they fit in and have some ownership in the company (or at least ownership of their code).

This, I think, is your biggest problem. Fix atleast 1 or 2 of the 3 and your stress will be mostly gone.

Ex:

profitable, not burning money, I'm paying

not profitable, burning money, co-founder is paying

not profitable, burning money, someone else is paying

profitable, burning money, co founder paying