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Ask HN: How to find engineering talent for early startup?

1 points by navaed01 ↗ HN
Does anyone have advice on finding engineering talent for early start-ups on a contract basis?

I'm not looking for a co-founder at this point, i'd rather get the product to a predetermined point.

I know of sites like UpWork and toptal, but i'm wondering if this great community has any advice.

6 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 26.4 ms ] thread
david927
UpWork

But caveat emptor. The reason people have technical co-founders isn't because they hate having equity in their soon-to-be-unicorn startup; it's because if you're not technical to know exactly what to ask for, how to evaluate it and what is rational in terms of hours/rate, you stand a good chance of losing a lot of money and getting very, very little in return.

navaed01
Thanks for the advice. I agree with you about the value of a technical co-founder. My preference would be to have a technical co-founder. However, I've personally experienced that its 'easy' to find a technical co-founder, but its incredibly difficult to be 100% compatible and you only find that you are not compatible by 'dating'. And you do need to be very compatible for the partnership to benefit the start-up and not jeopardize the start-up either directly or by being a distraction if it starts to go sour. The 'dating' aspect wouldn't be an issue except for the fact that I'm under some element of time pressure, and 'serial dating' can be a death sentence. Perhaps there are some approaches along the spectrum of co-founder - hiring contractor that i'm should be exploring. Thanks again for your thoughts
aaronrobinson
Are you technical enough to validate their work and to maintain it when they leave? If not then spend the money hiring a technical co-founder.
navaed01
I am not technical enough to validate their work or maintain it- And to be honest this does concern me. I have done a lot of customer research to validate the need as well as wire framing with 'customer advocates'. The goal would be to get it to the point of MVP with a few clients, so its more proven out. At which point I would like to bring on a co-founder.
aaronrobinson
A technical co-founder would build this for you in a way that has both of your interests in mind. They will account for things like software repôs, that it’s designed and tested well, where and how it’s deployed and how it will be monitored and fixed once live. Who will get up at 3am when there are issues? There’s so much more to software development than paying some engineers to build something for you and as their interest is only financial you’ll have to pay them to do all those extra things too. If you take a co-founder on later they’ll probably want change things.
Doctor-R
Move to San Francisco, or Silicon Valley and start networking: subscribe to techstars silicon valley sf bay area newsletter.

Triplebyte had online tests and phone interviews, now owned by Karat.com

Put a notification in the monthly 'whos hiring' thread on HN.

Put a posting on LinkedIn, Indeed, SimplyHired, Glassdoor, Dice, etc.

If your concept has any tech, you need a technical co founder to get it right. VCs will be interested in the tech experience of the founding team.