The Engineer Crunch - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samaltman.com/the-engineer-crunch <comment><USER2> I'm starting to be a bit disillusioned with this whole "we can't find great people" spiel that a lot of startups put up.

I have friends who are extremely good engineers (i.e., a mix of: contributors to major open source projects used by a lot of SV startups, have given talks at large conferences, published papers at ACM conferences, great portfolio of side/student projects, have worked at great companies previously, frequently write high quality tech articles on their blog, have high reputations on sites like Stack Overflow, etc.) and who have been rejected at interviews from those same companies who say that they can't find talent. (it also certainly doesn't help that the standard answer is "we're sorry, we feel like there isn't a match right now" rather than something constructive. "No match" can mean anything on the spectrum that starts at "you're a terrible engineer and we don't want you" and ends at "one of our interviewers felt threatened by you because you're more knowledgeable so he veto'd you").

Seriously, if you're really desperate for engineering talent, I can give you contact info for a dozen or so of friends who are ready to work for you RIGHT NOW (provided your startup isn't an awful place with awful people, of course) and probably another dozen or two who would work for you given enough convincing.

I'm honestly starting to believe that it isn't hard to hire, but that there's some psychological effect at play that leads companies to make it harder on themselves out of misplaced pride or sense of elitism.

Unless everyone wants to hire Guido Van Rossum or Donald Knuth, but then a) statistically speaking, you're just setting yourself up for failure and b) you need to realize that those kind of people wouldn't want to do the glorified web dev/sys admin'ing that a lot of SV jobs are.

<comment><USER3> "I'm honestly starting to believe that it isn't hard to hire"

If this were true, then engineer salaries would not be rising so much. The demand for good engineers vastly outstrips supply.

Also, any explanation that requires you to posit mass irrationality is usually a bad one.

<comment><USER4> Do you have any data to back up the engineering salaries rising "so much"?

From where I am standing engineering salaries have stagnated for the last 5 years, possibly even 10.

<comment><USER5> You're correct. Source: [http://www.epi.org/publication/pm195-stem-labor- shortages-mi...](http://www.epi.org/publication/pm195-stem-labor-shortages- microsoft-report-distorts/)

<comment><USER6> My observation has been that while average compensation isn't trending upward that much, variance is increasing a lot. I've seen market research which bears this out. Especially among top candidates straight out of school, salaries have gone up a lot in the last few years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "I have never seen a startup regret being generous with equity for their early employees."

Same here. I always advise startups to err on the side of generosity with equity.

<comment><USER8> Can you put a number (or range) on what is generous for the first engineering hire? 2%? 3%? 5%?

<comment><USER9> This is a great post by Fred Wilson about this subject.

[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/how-to-allocate-founder- and-...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/how-to-allocate-founder-and-employee- equity.html)

Essentially, figure out what market rate is for their salary. Since you'll likely pay a discount rate, the equity should bring them at or above market.

So if Market is 105k, and I'm going to pay 55k, I will give you 50k in equity (based on a reasonable valuation--assuming you don't have an actual valuation).

Using a flat rate percent can get tricky, and you can easily end up unnecessarily diluting yourself.

I also think it's important to think of your first 1-3 hires as Key hires, the same way a new CEO or VP of Sales would be a key hire post Series-B. You want them to get a big chunk of money if there is a positive liquidation event.

<comment><USER10> A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

If market rate is $105k and you're paying me $55k in cash, then I'd want $100k in equity, not $50k. This is something many startups get wrong. It isn't a one-to-one swap.

Even if you have some sort of reasonable valuation, equity is worthless until there's someone to sell it to. There needs to be an uncertainty/illiquidity multiple applied. Otherwise, I'll take the cash. That has literally always worked out to my benefit throughout my 15 year career in software development (even working for companies that got acquired for 9 digits).

<comment><USER9> Fair enough. I was paraphrasing the actual formula.

That said, if you think equity is worthless, why are you considering being employee 1 at a startup?

<comment><USER10> I never said I thought equity is worthless. I said I would choose cash over equity if the equity is not weighted heavier than cash to account for the risk and illiquidity inherent in startup equity.

I am engineer #1 at a startup right now. The equity was very generous and weighted appropriately vs cash.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, I mistook your earlier statement to believe that you thought equity is worthless, when you were just saying there is no cash value for equity.

And yes, you're correct, the equity should be setup in a way that offers early hires significant upside.

Curious, did your founders use a flat %, or did they figure out some weighted amount?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > if people are going to turn down the certainty of a huge salary at Google, > they should get a reward for taking that risk.

I often see a disconnect between perceptions of expected success of founders and engineers. I've observed this is particularly pointed for non-technical founders. To generalize, a young entrepreneur with some success under his belt is starting a company. As far as he's concerned his company is all but guaranteed to succeed: he's got the experience and sophistication necessary to make this happen, the team he's hired to his point is top-notch, he's got the attention of some investors, the product is well thought out, etc. He approaches an exceptional engineer and extends an impassioned invitation and... the engineer balks.

What happened? Is he delusional about the company's prospects, thinking he's got a sure fire hit when he's actually in for a nasty surprise once his hubris collides with reality? Is the engineer a square who would rather work a boring job at a big company than live his life, and wouldn't be a good fit for the team anyway?

I propose a different resolution: our confident businessman is certain about the success of _the company_ , not the success of the _engineer as part of the company_. He knows the company's success is going to rocket him into an elite circle of Startup Entrepreneurs. The engineer, on the other hand, doesn't see the correlation between the company's success and his own: even if the company takes off to the tune of eight to nine digits, his little dribble of equity is just barely breaking even over the comfortable stable position he's in now.

</comment><comment><USER12> This post, I think, makes 2 mistakes.

First, sf and the valley simply don't pay engineers well enough. This is the second, striving to become the first, most expensive housing market in the united states. $150k sounds great here until you look at that as a fraction of your housing cost and compare to _anywhere_ else in the country, including manhattan (because unlike here, nyc isn't run by morons so they have functioning transportation systems). I don't want to just quote myself, but all this still applies: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7195118](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7195118)

Second, immigration is a crutch to get around paying domestic employees enough. I see net emigration from the valley amongst experienced engineers in their 30s who start having families and can find better financial lives elsewhere. If companies paid well enough that moving to the bay area wasn't horrid financially, they'd find plenty of software engineering talent already in the united states. But consider my friend above: $165 total income in the midwest is (compared solely to housing cost) equivalent to approx $450k here, when holding (housing costs / post tax income) constant.

edit: not to mention, companies _still_ don't want flexible employment arrangements or remote work. I'm a data scientist and I'm good at my job (proof: employment history, employers haven't wanted me to leave, track record of accomplishments.) I'd rather live elsewhere. 66 data scientist posts on craigslist (obv w/ some duplication, but just a quick count) [1]; jobs that mention machine learning fill search results with > 100 answers [2]. Now check either of the above for telecommute or part time. Zero responses for remote or part time workers. So again, employers want their perfect employee -- skilled at his or her job, wants to move to the valley enough to take a big hit to net life living standards, doesn't have kids, and doesn't want them (cause daycare or a nanny or an SO who doesn't work is all very expensive.)

[1] [http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/jjj?zoomToPosting=&catAbb...](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/jjj?zoomToPosting=&catAbb=jjj&query=data+scientist&excats=)

[2] [http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/jjj?zoomToPosting=&catAbb...](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/jjj?zoomToPosting=&catAbb=jjj&query=machine+learning&excats=)

<comment><USER13> Living in a high cost of living area is a FANTASTIC way to get your retirement plans going. Putting 10% of your SF income into your 401k is way better than putting 10% of your Austin, TX salary into your 401k. So while you're young and single you bank away lots of cash. Then you move and start a family elsewhere and retire comfortably. The problem is that I don't think enough people life-hack in this way.

<comment><USER14> This is true, but 401K contributions are capped at around $17K. You can do that with the Austin salary just as well, usually. In Austin you have no state income tax, and the price of everything else is much lower (in general).

The absolute cheapest home near my work with 2 bedrooms is a condo at $700K (source: realtor.com). (edit: that is an outlier, most are considerably more expensive, and these days the 'ask' is the lowball figure - people will bid several hundred thousand over the ask to buy, because they are competing against other twitter millionaires buying for cash and nonchalant about the housing bubble because they can't be really hurt if it crashes)

To get a home equal to the home I moved from in CO (which I bought for $425K) would be, I don't know, nothing is listed to compare. Over $3M I would think. My friend recently sold his house north of that, and his yard was tiny and the house was smaller. My CO house is comparable to a $4-5M Tahoe mountain home - a few acres, awesome views, wooden beam interior, huge open space interior plan, full basement, multiple decks, and so on. (edit: okay, cabinets are Home Depot, not custom built, etc, but it's still a close comp otherwise)

So, yes, if you want to live in a cramped condo, see your money evaporate to taxes, driving to work, private schools, and so on, you can 'life hack' here. Or, you can live elsewhere, own a few acres, have a big garage, a rec room, work normal hours, have half the commute, and still save plenty of money.

<comment><USER15> > So, yes, if you want to live in a cramped condo, see your money evaporate to > taxes, driving to work, private schools, and so on, you can 'life hack' > here. Or, you can live elsewhere, own a few acres, have a big garage, a rec > room, work normal hours, have half the commute, and still save plenty of > money.

While you aren't going to be living on a few acres working at a tech job in the Bay Ara (barring long commutes), you are exaggerating a bit here.

\- If you live in SF, you generally don't need to drive to work. Your commute will be short (<25 minutes). You can get quite livable single-family homes (3 bedrooms, 1400 square feet) for $750k. You may want to consider private schools.

\- If you live in areas where you want to get good public schools, prices may surge to $900k for homes that size.

tl;dr If you want a huge home with huge lots, yes, very difficult in the Bay Area. But if you just want a typical suburban lfiestyle, it is pretty easy to do on a tech salary.

<comment><USER16> > \- If you live in SF, you generally don't need to drive to work. Your > commute will be short (<25 minutes). You can get quite livable single-family > homes (3 bedrooms, 1400 square feet) for $750k. You may want to consider > private schools.

I live in Dallas, have a driving commute well under 25 minutes, and have a 3 bedroom, 2300 sqft house I paid $175k for with the same stipulation on the schools. Your scenario would be a major cost increase for me. In fact, I could probably max out my 401k here with just the housing cost delta. Austin is more expensive than Dallas[1], but I wouldn't expect to pay more than about $250k - $300k for my house there (for reference, my house is worth about $190k now). I could downsize to your SF-sized house here for under $100k. Since I would realistically only get about a 70% pay raise max over my Dallas salary for moving to SF, it doesn't make any sense.

[1] And my house was a good deal even for Dallas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "The only thing you need to do is fix immigration for founders and engineers. This will likely have far more of an impact than all of the government innovation programs put together." - this is so darn true it's not even funny.

Conversely, and I know this is pretty out there, this is what I think will be the killer app of virtual reality. If I can ship a $5K "pod" to a developer somewhere in the world which allows us to work together 90% as well as we can in person, then you're damn right I'm going to do that.

I believe VR tech will get good enough (3-5 years) before immigration issues will be sorted out (10-20).

<comment><USER18> Taxing that is going to be _fun_.

<comment><USER19> Why? It's no more complicated from a tax perspective that remote work is today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Broken record: startups are also probably rejecting a _lot_ of engineering candidates that would perform as well or better than anyone on their existing team, because tech industry hiring processes are folkloric and irrational.

I co-manage a consultancy. We operate in the valley. We're in a very specialized niche that is especially demanding of software development skills. Our skills needs also track the market, because we have to play on our clients turf. Consultancies running in steady state have an especially direct relationship between recruiting and revenue.

A few years ago, we found ourselves crunched. We turned a lot of different knobs to try to solve the problem. For a while, Hacker News was our #1 recruiting vehicle. We ran ads. We went to events at schools. We shook down our networks and those of our team (by offering larger and larger recruiting bonuses, among other things).

We have since resolved this problem. My current perspective is that we have little trouble filling slots as we add them, in _any_ market --- we operate in Chicago (where it is trivially easy to recruit), SFBA (harder), and NYC (hardest). We've been in a comfortable place with recruiting for almost a year now (ie, about half the lifetime of a typical startup).

I attribute our success to just a few things:

* We created long-running outreach events (the Watsi-pledging crypto challenges, the joint Square MSP CTF) that are graded so that large numbers of people can engage and get value from them, but people who are especially interested in them can self-select their way to talking to us about a job. Worth mentioning: the crypto challenges, which are currently by far our most successful recruiting vehicle (followed by Stripe's CTF #2) are just a series of emails we send; they're essentially a blog post that we weaponized instead of wasting on a blog.

* We totally overhauled our interview process, with three main goals: (1) we over-communicate and sell our roles before we ever get selective with candidates, (2) we use quantifiable work-sample tests as the most important weighted component in selecting candidates, and (3) we standardize interviews so we can track what is and isn't predictive of success.

Both of these approaches have paid off, but improving interviews has been the more important of the two. Compare the first 2/3rds of Matasano's lifetime to the last 1/3rd. The typical candidate we've hired lately would never have gotten hired at early Matasano, because (a) they wouldn't have had the resume for it, and (b) we over-weighted intangibles like how convincing candidates were in face-to-face interviews. But the candidates we've hired lately compare extremely well to our earlier teams! It's actually kind of magical: we interview people whose only prior work experience is "Line of Business .NET Developer", and they end up showing us how to write exploits for elliptic curve partial nonce bias attacks that involve Fourier transforms and BKZ lattice reduction steps that take 6 hours to run.

How? By running an outreach program that attracts people who are interested in crypto, and building an interview process that doesn't care what your resume says or how slick you are in an interview.

Call it the "Moneyball" strategy.

 _Later: if I 've hijacked the thread here, let me know; I've said all this before and am happy to delete the comment._

<comment><USER21> > we use quantifiable work-sample tests as the most important weighted > component in selecting candidates

Can you speak to that a little? I'm reading it as either programming challenges in a real environment, or analysis of previous code snippets submitted. In either case, I'm happy to see more companies doing this.

I'm always looking for ways to improve my interview skills, but I want to do it honestly. Studying to the test isn't fun for me, I would rather hack on something.

<comment><USER20> Most programming puzzles aren't real work-sample tests. A work-sample test has to be representative of the actual stuff you'd do on the job.

The trick is, to work in a recruiting context, you also want those tests to be standardized and repeatable. A lot of companies fall down on this. They have candidates do "real work", often in a pair-programming context. There a bunch of problems with this:

(1) "Real work" usually isn't standardizable, so you can't compare candidates

(2) Signal quality from the test is intensely dependent on who is doing the work with the candidate

(3) Two different candidates might end up getting "tests" that are wildly different in terms of predictive power

I have a bunch of ideas for pure software development work-sample tests, but I'm not ready to share them. The idea is simple, though:

* It's a realistic exercise that approximates actual day-to-day work as much as possible

* Every candidate gets the same exercises

* The exercises have objective (preferably gradable) outcomes

<comment><USER22> So accurate. I'm a grad student who studied security deeply during my time in school.

I want to keep my hands on a keyboard and I don't like airplanes (which rules out consulting) so I've applied at a lot of companies to be a ``security engineer''.

I can't tell you how many well-respected companies ask me to write min-heaps, depth-first searches, etc. I don't understand what they are asking me this for...It isn't even close to a realistic representation of what my day-to-day responsibilities would be. It is also an immediate turn-off....

<comment><USER23> I don't understand how there can be a good hacker that does not, at least on some intuitive level, get such basic data structures or algorithms. I don't mind if someone doesn't know what depth-first search is, but I should be able to explain it quickly and they should be able to come up with at least pseudo code. The relevance of this to software engineering roles just seems too great.

Cramming these questions online does not work. I don't know what Facebook/Google et al are doing but I can spot a candidate who studied interview questions from a mile away. They may bang out a DFS by rote but that's just warmup; they should be able to talk about details, deal with changing requirements, discuss the algorithm/efficiency/design of their solution, be able to talk about underlying data structure primitives, etc.

To be fair the grandparent was talking about a specialized position in security engineering for which the generic coding interviews could be a bad match.

<comment><USER22> You're right it isn't well suited for security people.... But is it well suited for software engineering types? Most code people write is not a search sort insert etc. Most of the details of using these data structures are invisible in oop and the difference is only what class was instantiated.

I'm not saying it isn't important to know, but I think there are better indicators for someone who will perform well on the job

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Given the offers I've heard people getting from early stage startups (engineer 2-5), I don't really get why someone _would_ join them. Below market rate salary? 0.1% of a company that's going to exit at $80M with a 10% chance and $0 with a 90% chance? That comes out to $80k over four years of work, before taxes, in the typical _successful_ case, which is itself atypical. And for what amounts to a relatively small bonus, I'd be expected to work 50-70 hour weeks? Sign me up!

<comment><USER25> You forgot to include the probability of success in your calculation, for Expected Value:

EV = $80M exit x 0.1% equity x 10% success rate / 4 years = $2K

That awesome 0.1% equity is worth $2,000 a year. Less, because of time value of money, and the fact that you won't be cashing out yearly.

<comment><USER24> Thanks for the correction, but I did not forget it. I explicitly called out that the $80k total was only in the successful case, which is atypical, and had not been divided by time yet. That could have been worded better, I admit, but you and I are in violent agreement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is the most insightful thing I've read about the engineer crunch in a while. The market needs to realize that good engineers have lots of options and that 0.1% is just not a meaningful amount. I'd like to see 5-8% for key engineering hires, even as companies approach Series A.

Does the founder really want to get greedy and keep that extra few percent when so much depends upon solid engineering execution? Also, don't forget that 4 year vesting with a 1 year cliff is standard, so it's not as if the worth of a meaningful equity offer isn't fully obvious before the shares are "spent" on a key hire (also, before vesting, the risk is totally borne by the employee).

I think the ideal situation for engineers would be to earn a solid equity offer and then have a secondary market to use to trade some of it (once it's vested) for fractional ISOs of other promising startups.

<comment><USER27> > Does the founder really want to get greedy and keep that extra few percent > when so much depends upon solid engineering execution?

Yes, some of them do. I got forced out of a startup here in London - I was the _only_ full time engineer in the IT dept. (basically was acting CTO) and one part time guy in Russia for some period of time. The company had two sales guys as well, not sure of their compensation but they were making more than me... We all quit within a period of two months due to A) the CEO flat out lying to a customer about the nature of the data they were being sold, in order to secure the sale - the customer later made threats to sue after their patience had been exhausted due to one founder trying for a month to gaslight their board about the technical nature of the data B) lies about the "cash flow problem" which I was told was preventing another person to be hired to help me (the founders were skimming profit before paying everyone, months late) The CEO's wife, who liked to play lawyer, then dragged out paying us for what they owed, trying to arbitrarily reinterpret the language of the contracts, claiming utter nonsense as logic and being over the top abusive in contract negotiations. It was all too much for everyone.

Later I found out a $5 mil offer had been made to buy the company from a 3rd party - not much but enough to show the company was certainly going to be viable. So it made perfect economic sense to these sociopaths to drive out everyone who might have some moral claim to profiting from the company's success (i.e. promises were made early about "equity"). The founders deemed I was completely unnecessary at this point due to having built something that could be maintained well enough by cheap labor from India and eLance - to heck with looking into the future and seeing how an experienced engineer might open up new markets, etc. This company lost every bit of technical knowledge they had when I left.

But that's sociopaths for you and how business is done anymore. I'm sure SF is full of amateur sociopaths these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wait, I thought we all agreed that there isn't an engineering crunch?

I am not sure what immigration has to do with this, we make plenty of STEM graduates each year, and we'd make more if the professions didn't look like they were under attack by every employer and politician. The smart kids you want to hire are smart enough to go into more protected professions, if they knew their jobs wouldn't be shipped over seas or their market flooded with foreign competition, then maybe we'd be able to attract them and keep them.

I worry that focusing on equity will just exacerbate the problem, because I think that a lot of people are becoming wise to the equity lottery and just don't see a difference between 0.1% and 5% of nothing. The problem will most certainly be solved by $$, but no doubt it is tough pill to swallow for a business to pay 150k now what was 100k a few years ago...

Keep in mind I am a software developer and self interested.

<comment><USER28> If you think your equity is worth zero you either work for the wrong company or do not understand how to use mathematics/probability theory.

<comment><USER29> One person can only play that particular lottery maybe half a dozen times (more likely 2-3). That isn't nearly enough for the law of averages to even things out, so if you don't have a lot of room for risk, the rational thing is to value the equity at 0 (in terms of long-term planning) and be pleasantly surprised if things turn out better than that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The other thing that is interesting to me is the ludicrously highbar, and "weed out" interview techniques that some these companies have for recruiting engineers.

They're looking for someone to work on a rails app but they won't hire them unless they have demonstrated Linus-Torvalds like ability and knowledge. But the question is, why would someone with that kind of skill level want to work for you?

What if you were able to grab smart engineers on their way to becoming engineering stars? Why not aim for getting a solid lead/architect and adding midlevel guys who you know are going to turn into superstars? Why not develop talent instead of competing all the way at the top of the market for the most expensive ones? Why not figure out an interview technique that can let you identify exactly these kinds of people?

Its all about being resourceful and nimble enough to adjust, after all, isn't that what a startup is all about?

</comment><comment><USER31> _I have never seen a startup regret being generous with equity for their early employees._

A few years ago, Zynga told some early employees with lots of shares that they had to give back some of their stock or they'd be fired:

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57322150-17/zynga-to- emplo...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57322150-17/zynga-to-employees- give-back-our-stock-or-youll-be-fired/)

[http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/11/10/zynga-stock- scanda...](http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/11/10/zynga-stock-scandal/)

I'm not sure if that qualifies as "regret", or if it's just greed, but it's one very public example of a company deciding they've given too many options to early employees.

<comment><USER32> Everybody else fires, they were nice enough to say "if you like it here, you can stay".

Most of people involved came through acquisitions, not early hiring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> >There are great hackers all over the country, and many of them can be talked into moving to the valley.

For all this "we work remote" stuff that is flying around this seems to be a direct contradiction. Is moving to the valley really necessary? I can postulate coming for a face-to-face interview, but I would never want to move to California.

<comment><USER34> It's all about communication bandwidth. How well can I communicate with you face-to-face, via voice, or via text? Standard numbers are that 7% of the communication is in the words, 38% is in the tone of voice, and 55% is in the body language. If you're not face-to-face, your communication bandwidth drops dramatically.

But if you're both online at the same time, and you have videoconferencing or some equivalent, you can talk "face-to-face" without being on the same continent. I don't know how efficient that is compared to being in the same room, but I suspect it's somewhat less (you have to activate the app before you can have the conversation, and you never have a useful but accidental conversation because you ran into each other in the lunchroom).

<comment><USER35> >Standard numbers are that 7% of the communication is in the words, 38% is in the tone of voice, and 55% is in the body language.

Source? I'm pretty skeptical of these kinds of numbers. If you say 100 bits worth of words face-to-face, what is exactly the content of the remaining 1428 bits?

<comment><USER36> The claim (ascribed to Albert Mehrabian) is much more limited than that. Those are the alleged percentage influences on _how much we like a person_ on the basis of a conversation with them. See, e.g., [http://www.kaaj.com/psych/smorder.html](http://www.kaaj.com/psych/smorder.html) (which I think is Mehrabian's own site) which says "Total Liking = 7% Verbal Liking + 38% Vocal Liking + 55% Facial Liking" and adds: "Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable".

I'm frankly doubtful even about that much, but Mehrabian certainly never claimed that any such equation holds for more "contentful" communication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What's up with the cliff anyway? You're already asking me to take a much higher level of risk and a much lower level of liquidity than I'd like in my compensation, by giving me stock options. In addition to that you want me to take on 100% of the risk of our working arrangement not working out, and in fact you insist on giving yourself a strong incentive to fire me before the first year is out? It seems ridiculously exploitative.

<comment><USER38> I'm not sure of the details, but I think it's rooted in tax law -- that the options are classified differently if they're exercised within a year of their creation.

<comment><USER39> If that's the issue the options could vest monthly but just prohibit you from exercising them for a year.

(not a lawyer)

The standard reason for the cliff is that at first an employee slows everyone else down as they come up to speed, and then they start to help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This implies a somewhat one-way relationship between companies and their engineers: engineers give their time and talents, and in return companies give their money and equity. Under this system, why not be selective about who you hire? If you want great work, you need to hire a great engineer.

In actuality, the truth is great people aren't found, they're made. The role of a good leader isn't to squeeze great work out of his employees, but rather to develop within them the capability to do great work. Applied to hiring, this means having an understanding of the support and growth capabilities within your organization, and finding candidates who have the most potential to gain from it, rather than hiring those who are already well-developed. Applied to hiring rockstars, this makes them even _more_ valuable: not only would they be producing outstanding work on their own, they would actually be improving the quality of the work their peers produce.

</comment><comment><USER40> There isn't so much a shortage of engineers as a shortage of people willing to relocate to a stupidly expensive area and gamble what they have in the process. From the outside, but as a reasonably regular visitor, the Bay Area has lost the plot completely.

</comment><comment><USER41> The one part of the problem that the author missed is salary. Offering a small amount of equity is fine if you are offering an above-market salary, but it's the combination of below-market salary and minimal equity that causes the perceived crunch.

"You get what you pay for"

<comment><USER42> Agreed, unless you have some extremely appealing concept going you're not going to get interest with below-market salary offers even with average equity offering. I'd put it more brusquely: "You pay peanuts, you get monkeys".

When we have jobs - infrequently mind you - at slightly below-market salary we always offered a phased increase to slightly-above market salary over the 6 month trial period.

That being said, I'm seeing a lot of mentions of single week or single month trials. Is this a US trend? Across the pond here, in the UK, I've certainly not seen them.

<comment><USER43> The norm in the US is no trial period. You start with the assumption that it's going to be permanent and if it doesn't work out you get fired.

<comment><USER42> Crazy, we're used to probation periods here with a short notice time, that protects both sides. I assume you have to negotiate any notice period for being fired, or do you simply get no statutory notice period?

<comment><USER43> Usually, there is no notice required from either side except in the case of mass layoffs (two weeks are expected out of politeness, but aren't legally required). That can be changed by a contract, but that usually doesn't happen for anyone but high-level executives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> _What_ protects an equity-holder employee from being viciously or prematurely fired prior to the exit or cash out event?

<comment><USER45> Nothing. See: Mark Pincus & Zynga.

<comment><USER46> There are clauses in some agreements to prevent this from happening.

Presumably, Zynga employees just didn't get these kind of rights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> In my experience non-engineering roles are just as difficult to fill.

You can easily find a non-technical hire if you don't know what you want or don't care about quality. If you care about quality, you'll be stuck in the same crunch. For example, the skill of being able to write without run-on sentences eliminates 99.9% of the candidates in the pool, for _any_ role. Want candidates who can write reasonably well? Hiring just got 100x more difficult. In a modern environment, if you're non-technical and can't write well, what _can_ you do?

<comment> UK-AL Founder =P

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'm surprised that "get out of the valley" isn't an option for that. I mean, there are a lot of cities that produce lots of talented developers that cost a lot less than Silicon Valley rates.

<comment><USER49> Honestly I don't get why there isn't more push to have startups in areas such as the Washington DC metro area (for example).

<comment><USER50> And if you really need to have "an office," then build a remote office in a second-tier city and grab up all the candidates there. Fly people back and forth occasionally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> " _Finally, most founders are not willing to spend the time it takes to source engineering candidates and convince them to come interview. You can 't outsource this to a recruiter until the company is fairly well-established-- you have to do it yourself._"

This is very important. It needs to percolate into their immediate reports too. I've seen high tech companies lose great candidates because the first line managers were too busy to interview them right away. If the right talent is available, you have to maket he time.

</comment><comment><USER52> The interview process is still something that hasn't been solved. A lot of companies make hiring decisions based almost entirely on how well someone does non-coding work under extreme social pressure, which is about the worst possible way to measure the prospects of a developer!

Personally I really like the interview process a previous empoyer used: shortly before the interview starts we had them look over a roughly CS 102-level programming project, then we ask them to design the architecture on a whiteboard while the interviewers ask questions/give guidance. What we're really looking for here is:

a.) how do they handle the social aspect of working with a superior who will often (gently) criticize your work and/or ask you to thoroughly explain why you're doing what. b.) that they have enough chops to architect a simple program.

If they can pass those test I'm confident they'll be an effective team member, because at the end of the day all you really want is someone who is competent enough to be useful, and fits into your culture/team. Everything else will shake itself out. You don't need some "superstar/rockstar/ninja" (unless you're solving a particularly hard domain-specific problem) so stop looking for them and excluding everyone else.

Instead start building an effective team.

</comment><comment><USER53> Talent crunch debate is an elusive one. No credible data is available and we interpret to make ourselves feel good- sour grapes. One thing I would say (in my capacity as having gone to high school in India) is that there are thousands of great engineers (I'm talking about my friends from IIT and IIT) who would die to work for a Dropbox or an Airbnb. I'm guessing its a similar situation in S.America, Europe, China (?) etc.

Now, as far as I know, these companies don't hire in most of these countries. But why don't they? I don't understand. Visa stuff is less of a concern actually.. its been thrashed more than it deserves. Indian consulting companies got like 30K H1Bs last year. 30,000 engineers moved from India to the US. Surely, Dropbox can get 20 good ones. And your startup could probably get a handful too.

These engineers grew up on hacker news - so culture is not the problem. They are moving seven seas - so they work hard and aren't dicks. Their options in India are limited - so the salary negotiation is less of a nightmare.

Not sure if there are any republicans here, so I'll not defend the "Indian developer taking away American job" phenomenon. Hopefully, HNers get why immigration makes sense.

We are trying at VenturePact.com to build a vetted international talent marketplace. We launched a couple of weeks ago in Delhi and a few tech hubs in India and got hundreds of apps from developers wanting to work in the valley or NY. Well, many applications were not suitable BUT many were.

Would love to read what people think of hiring internationally. And what would the preference be between getting them to work remotely vs relocate.

</comment><comment><USER54> tl;dr:

There's no engineering crunch, just companies that don't want to pay market rates.

The Free Market from startup/VC perspective: It works when we profit, but when we want to hire cheap labor it's because there's not enough people.

<comment><USER55> Even so called "market rates" are actually unrealistically low.

[http://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon- valley...](http://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valleys-most- celebrated-ceos-conspired-to-drive-down-100000-tech-engineers-wages)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> My approach to equity was to offer a range. We'd offer base equity and salary numbers, and then give them an ability to trade salary for equity. If I recall rightly, they got a modestly better deal than investors did.

In doing that, it became clear that not everybody even wants more equity. That was a little hard for us as founders to take, because we of course thought the equity was awesome, and wanted engineers to feel a real sense of ownership. But from the numbers, it was clear that some people would rather we sold more equity to investors and just gave them the cash.

I get that. If you've been around the industry for a while, you can accumulate quite a collection of expired startup lottery tickets. Landlords, mortgage- holders, and kids' orthodontists don't take options; they take cash.

<comment><USER57> Wouldn't it make more sense if I chose 0 equity and all salary, but then bought equity with my excess salary? Now there's no vesting period. I get it all now just like an investor.

<comment><USER56> You'd be paying with post-tax dollars rather than pre-tax dollars, and you have to be an accredited investor [1] for it to be legal.

If somebody really had said, "I want to bet my whole salary on the company," I'm sure we would have be happy to accommodate them with a deal that was fair. There'd still be a vesting period, of course, for the same reason you don't get your annual salary up front on the first day. The tricky question would be the cliff, but I'm sure something could be worked out.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accredited_investor#U.S._criter...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accredited_investor#U.S._criteria)

<comment><USER58> According to your link, you only need a $200K income to qualify, which you could reasonably expect in the midst of a real engineer crunch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> There is no engineer crunch. Only wannabe founders who can't do anything but talk big.

"Hey do you want to join my startup? We are reinventing analytics....again."

</comment><comment><USER60> As a teenager, I came to the conclusion that I would never get a job as a result of an interview. I'd be even less likely to get past HR and get an interview.

So I haven't interviewed for a single job for the last 18 years. Sometimes people ask me for my resume; I don't have one.

What I did instead is take a problem I was interested in, solve it on paper, and then approach a company to pay me to implement that solution for them (along with an estimate of the cost). That has worked out really, really well for me.

If you find that interviewers or HR aren't sizing you up correctly, this approach might be an option. Businesses, when it comes to tech, mostly just want problems solved. If you can do that, you'll get hired. Nothing shows you can do something like bringing them the (on paper) solution, and offering to built it.

</comment><comment><USER61> Also, a cliff is very unattractive because we know you're motivated to fire us before the cliff - probably even if we do a good job. Indeed, you openly admit it.

<comment><USER50> Does ERISA protect employees from that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER62>
      I frequently hear startups say [...] can't find
      a single great candidate for an engineering role
      no matter how hard they look.

While I agree that offering better compensation is a wise move for individual companies, if the market has 10 job openings and 9 engineers, regardless of how much pay they offer one of the companies won't be able to fill the opening.

Offering more money might fix hiring problems for one company, stopping one person complaining, but to stop _all_ people complaining the only solution is to increase the supply or reduce the demand.

(Increasing the supply doesn't have to mean immigration reform - it could mean training or lowering hiring standards or a bunch of other things)

<comment><USER63> If the market has 10 openings and 9 engineers the companies should fight over the 9 by increasing overall compensation, soon another intelligent hard working individual will be sufficiently incentivised to join the industry workforce.

<comment><USER62> Sure, but if you want to hire someone with nonzero industry experience, your options are more limited :) this is what I mean when I say companies will have to lower their standards - inexperienced people into experienced-person positions, people who've been coding since they were 18 instead of people who've been coding since they were 10, people without university degrees instead of with them, and so on.

No amount of demand can create people with two years of experience in less than two years, or people with four-year degrees in less than four years.

<comment><USER50> You can also stop engineers from leaving for finance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> "For most startups in the bay area"... time to move or be open to remote developers.

</comment><comment><USER5> > In fact, probably less than 5% of the best hackers are even in the United > States.

Startups clearly need to be basing more of their decisions on unfounded conjectures. I have to say that startups seem to have unreasonable expectations of what kinds of programmers they can hire. We have plenty of viable hackers in the US, but startups don't want to hire them because they're not the next Knuth or they're "not a good cultural fit".

[http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-truth-about-the- stem...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-truth-about-the-stem- shortage-that-americans-dont-want-to-hear-2013-5)

<comment><USER65> I would state that MAster with no time limit is not the same as those who cod under time limits..not knocking Knuth contributions but the requirements are somewhat different.

<comment><USER66> I'd rather have one Don Knuth than a hundred ninja rock stars.

<comment><USER67> BURNS

This is a thousand monkeys working at a thousand typewriters. Soon, they'll have written the greatest novel known to mankind. (reads one of the typewriters) "It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times"?! you stupid monkey! (monkey screeches)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> "Third, if you're going to recruit outside of your network (usually a mistake, but sometimes there are truly no other options), focus on recruiting outside of the valley. There are great hackers all over the country, and many of them can be talked into moving to the valley."

UPVOTE!! I'm shocked at how many companies are unwilling to pay for a $500 Southwest ticket to fly someone in for a day to interview from Texas or Georgia... relocation costs are easily offset by a slightly lower salary, and the person you're interviewing is unlikely to have 4 or 5 paper offers in hand.

</comment><comment><USER69> It's bogus. There is no shortage of engineers. But there are many badly managed corps that only H1 would work at.

</comment><comment><USER70> "Great hackers also want the opportunity to work with really smart people and the opportunity to work on interesting problems, and the nature of mission- oriented companies is such that they usually end up offering these as well."

Uh, I don't care if it's "saving the world and the whales" or "enhancing legal resolution outcomes through analytics". I care that I am granted enough latitude to design and implement a good solution, instead of being handed a software toolbox and told to "bang on nails" all day.

</comment><comment><USER71> We find it moderately difficult, but definitely possible to find great people. The secret is NOT looking in Silicon valley and the bay area where thousands of extremely well funded companies are looking for talented developers.

Totally agree with the last sentiments that if you're in the bay area why should you ONLY considering hiring in the same area? It shocks me that technology companies can be so parochial.

You can hire across the entire US, Canada is just nearby and then there is ... the rest of the planet!

</comment><comment><USER72> Regarding this:

"Sometimes this difficulty is self-inflicted."

I want to emphasize how strong this point is. In most ways, the computer programming industry is a shrinking industry in the USA. There are less computer programming jobs in the USA than there were 20 years ago.

Stats from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (USA):

[http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information- technology/c...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information- technology/computer-programmers.htm)

1990 Number of Jobs 565,000

2010 Number of Jobs 363,100

2012 Number of Jobs 343,700

There is a tiny subset of the industry that is growing, and we associate these with the startups in San Francisco and New York. But so far these startups have not created enough jobs to offset the jobs lost due to other factors.

This suggests that there must be a vast reservoir or programmers who would like programming jobs, but they can't work as programmers because the jobs have disappeared.

If the numbers were smaller, you could argue that the loss of jobs was due to inaccuracies in the way Bureau of Labor gathers statistics. But the drop from 565,000 jobs to 343,700 is too large to be a spurious blip.

This is a shrinking industry. Computer programming jobs are tied to manufacturing so as manufacturing leaves the USA, so to do the computer programming jobs. Don't get caught up in the hype about startups: look at the actual numbers. The government tracks these jobs. The numbers are shrinking.

Especially worth a look:

[http://americawhatwentwrong.org/story/programming-jobs- fall/](http://americawhatwentwrong.org/story/programming-jobs-fall/)

"In its 1990 Occupational Outlook Handbook, the U.S. Department of Labor was especially bullish: "The need for programmers will increase as businesses, government, schools and scientific organizations seek new applications for computers and improvements to the software already in use [and] further automation . . . will drive the growth of programmer employment." The report predicted that the greatest demand would be for programmers with four years of college who would earn above-average salaries.

When Labor made these projections in 1990, there were 565,000 computer programmers. With computer usage expanding, the department predicted that "employment of programmers is expected to grow much faster than the average for all occupations through the year 2005 . . ."

It didn't. Employment fluctuated in the years following the report, then settled into a slow downward pattern after 2000. By 2002, the number of programmers had slipped to 499,000. That was down 12 percent–not up–from 1990. Nonetheless, the Labor Department was still optimistic that the field would create jobs–not at the robust rate the agency had predicted, but at least at the same rate as the economy as a whole.

Wrong again. By 2006, with the actual number of programming jobs continuing to decline, even that illusion couldn't be maintained. With the number of jobs falling to 435,000, or 130,000 fewer than in 1990, Labor finally acknowledged that jobs in computer programming were "expected to decline slowly." "

<comment><USER73> You and/or your sources are not successfully interpreting the BLS data. You have overlooked the reorganization of the SOC.

Take a look at the computer occupations major grouping (which, n.b., does not include many people who you and I think of as programmers).

Here it is in 2000: [http://www.bls.gov/soc/2000/soc_c0a0.htm](http://www.bls.gov/soc/2000/soc_c0a0.htm)

Here it is in 2010: [http://www.bls.gov/soc/2010/soc150000.htm](http://www.bls.gov/soc/2010/soc150000.htm)

Note the addition of the Software Developers (Applications), Software Developers (Systems), and Web Programmers. This resulted from a recategorization of programmers and Computer System Engineers. Also, web programmers was simply disaggregated from Programmers generally.

I'll save you looking up the numbers: from memory, there are about 2 million of them. You can treat some portion of them as being "poached" from the computer programming category. Most are new to the field since 1990. Net employment across the previous and successor categories is up, by several hundred thousand jobs.

Your contention that the US has lost programming jobs flies in the face of material reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> There is a gold crunch as well - I can't find 999% gold at 1$ per kg.

<comment><USER75> Well said! If this doesn't convey the message I don't know what will.

Most of the "Founders" are nothing but facades that just want to make money in the Tech world. They don't give a damn about technology or improving the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Recruiting good web developers is tough, no question, but I remember trying to recruit good analog IC design engineers at my previous startup. That made hiring developers look like a cakewalk in comparison. There were maybe 100-200 worldwide who fit the bill, all of whom were already happily employed at very comfortable jobs.

<comment><USER16> > I remember trying to recruit good analog IC design engineers at my previous > startup ... There were maybe 100-200 worldwide who fit the bill

You have atrociously high standards for "good" if that is the size of your pool.

<comment><USER76> Nope.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Or, y'know, maybe locate outside of the Valley?

</comment><comment><USER78> >"Don't hire outside your network."

If nobody in your network has a track record of results, become a sycophant? What if all the hackers in your network are US as well? You got less than a 5% chance of a hope to do anything according to Altman.

<comment><USER79> ...Thats not how percentages work :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> As a non-us engineer, I've had 2 visa applications denied. I guess Europe wins :D

</comment><comment><USER14> I would like to share how inhuman a lot of the interview processes are. Some examples: * recruiter says a startup is interested, introduces me to the HR person via email. I get a 2 sentence email from HR, telling me that I have to schedule a phone technical interview in the next day or two, they need to onboard FAST.

Okay, I don't know what the job is, who the client is, and the last thing I want to do is be grilled over the phone. I'm certainly uninterested in your time crunch and am not going to rearrange my life to meet your schedule requirements (there were narrow stipulations on acceptable times).

* Talk with a company, and explain that I don't do whiteboard interviewing. Oh, a session is no problem, but the interview has to be as much letting me interview and question you. 'No problem, we just want to talk and see where you'll fit in'.

Come the day, and I barely get a 'hi', just nonstop whiteboard coding in an intense environment. Took the whole day off for that time waste. Two of the sessions had me solve essentially the identical problem - I waste my day, they don't take 5 minutes to plan out what I'll be asked. Then they call me back, and tell me I have to come in for another series a day later, which was entirely unexpected, and not communicated to me prior to agreeing to interview. And if my requests for how the interview is conducted can't be honored, fine, tell me, and either I'll change my mind or decide not to waste a day taken from work. The cap to all of that was the 'shoot the messenger' emails when I said I was not accepting due to how this all went down (and oh, I didn't respond quickly enough to that email, meaning it took me a few hours, so more grief for that).

* Just general, insistent demands as if I have nothing to do but interview with your company. If you have your resume out there, all you do is field phone calls and emails. I'm not going to pursue anything without knowing quite a bit about the job because I don't have to. There is always going to be better, low hanging fruit - cold emails with very accurate, detailed descriptions of a wickedly cool start up, recruiters that actually get to know your skill sets and desires, and so on.

* No exposure to what the work will be like. It's so secret they can't tell you, or there is a 'variety of work', or whatever. No work environment tour. No discussion of compensation, work hours, and so on until you've wasted a day or more in interviews.

* 'Go and study this book for a month, and then apply'. Um, I'm 47 and have a very successful career of inventions and products. Surely you don't have to quiz me on red-black tree implementation to access my abilities. If I need to know that, I'll open the book and learn it.

It was, by and large, very unpleasant. Perhaps it is not the best proxy, but I go in assuming the interview process is the time you are trying to impress and woo me the most, and judge you on that.

</comment><comment><USER81> "If someone performs and earns their grant over four years, they are likely to increase the value of the company far more than the 1% or whatever you give them."

This argument seems flawed. If I think someone is going to double the value of my company, should I be comfortable giving them up to 100% equity? Put another way: percentage growth of your company from an early stage to some point in the future most often exceeds 100%.

<comment><USER82> You need to add a factor for risk in there. If there is a 10% chance that they will double the value of your company, you can give them 5%. If there is a 100% chance that they will double the value of your company, you can give them 50% and make them a co-founder. Think in terms of marginal utility. Keep giving equity until it no longer raises your expected value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> There are two unmentioned issues in regards to stock grants and hiring:

1) Information asymmetry or just plain symmetric lack of information in regards to stock grants.

2) The price of a home in a decent school district within a "reasonable" (< 1 hour each way, i.e., no more than 2 hours a day total) commute to any cluster of software companies in Bay Area (whether SOMA, Peninsula, or South Bay).

The two are closely related. When startups are competing for people against Google or any of the young public (or pre-IPO) technology companies, the issue at stake isn't salary (post series-A, startups may pay a slightly below market salary, but not an egregiously low one) but RSUs ("restricted stock units" or essentially outright stock grants: while these are treated as income for the purpose of taxation, there's also no strike price and AMT trap to worry about).

The reasons why these grants (which are generally very far from the "retire on a yacht category") matter is that their ball-park value is known, they're often refreshed as part of the performance review cycle (as opposed to fixed during offer negotiation time), and if you plan on staying in Bay Area and having kids, you're relying upon them to either afford a house in a decent school district and with a reasonable commute, or to afford private school tuition.

Changing grant tactics can help with information asymmetry problem (transparency about finances and valuation is nowadays the rule rather than exception in early stage companies), but they can't help with mutual lack of information: neither the founders nor the investors know with certainty a general ballpark figure of what the value of the company price will be at a liquidity event, or if there will be a liquidity event in the first place.

What this means is that unless housing problems in Bay Area are addressed, in addition to the already well discussed negative externalities, startups will have an increasingly harder time hiring engineers that haven't yet experienced a liquidity event or spent four or more years at bigger companies. They would love to join a start-up, but not at the cost of their (future or existing) children's education.

\---

Unrelated to the above points, this paragraph is also as important as it should be obvious:

"Finally, most founders are not willing to spend the time it takes to source engineering candidates and convince them to come interview. You can't outsource this to a recruiter until the company is fairly well-established-- you have to do it yourself."

If I receive a message from an external recruiter, it's hard to tell whether they really reasonably believe there's a good match between my skills and interest and the company, or if they're just employing a shotgun approach. I usually disregard these messages, even when I may be open to a new opportunity. On the other hand, if I receive a message from a founder or a tech lead, I try to reply even if (as, e.g., now) I'm not interested in interviewing: at the very least, it's likely they did actually mean to approach me specifically (not just anyone who has "Hadoop" in their profile), and I've an obligation to let them know that I'm not available at the moment as not to string them along.

\---

Finally, to underscore something else said in the article, in general, best way to hire good people, is to work on something good people enjoy working on, whether it's a greater mission or a good technical challenge. If neither of the two is there, the most straight forward startup recruiting pitch -- "come work on something cool with other smart people" \-- fails.

</comment><comment><USER84> Excellent essay. This really nails what I'd want in a dream job; knowing my effort influences my payout (via legitimately sized equity grants) and working on a mission I empathize with. Best article I've read in a while on hiring.

</comment><comment><USER85> Why not use oDesk and overseas developers? Today's teams communicate using remote tools even when in cubicles next door. Why severely limit yourself geographically in your search?

</comment><comment><USER69> Would you say there's not a shortage of lawyers, and why is that?

<comment><USER86> There's an overproduction of lawyers in USA, as evidenced by falling entry- level wages in that area and growing rate of law school graduates who are unpaid interns, unemployed or work less-than-their-education jobs.

<comment><USER69> That sounds like propaganda.

I am paying a lawyer in SV $600 /hr. Show me a link where I can get one for $65?

I'll also argue that software engineers train harder and maintain more than lawyers. If the market worked, the wages would raise till the supply catches up. But the market appears to be manipulated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> The beautiful girl crunch

For most guys in the bay area, the beautiful girl crunch is a bigger problem than the Series A crunch (this somewhat applies to designers as well). The difference in difficulty between dating a beautiful girl and an unattractive one is remarkable--I frequently hear guys say that for unattractive girls they can find multiple great candidates without really looking but can't find a single beautiful girl for a dating role no matter how hard they look.

First, of all the canonical terrible advice advisors give, being cheap is among the worst. I have never seen a hardup guy regret being generous.

For most beautiful girls, this is as much about fairness and feeling valued as it is about the money. And of course, if girls are going to turn down the certainty of dating a handsome, confident sales guy, they should get a reward for taking that risk.

If you're going to look outside of your network of friends from your Defense of the Ancients guild (usually a mistake, but sometimes there are truly no other options), focus on recruiting girls outside of the valley.

Finally, most engineers are not willing to spend the time it takes to develop a normal social life with regular non-technical people whereas they might develop normal personality traits and meet someone nice. You can't outsource this though--you have to do it yourself.

Footnote: * Every time someone from the government asks me what they can do to help hard-up engineers, I always say a version of "The only thing you need to do is fix immigration for beautiful girls." We need more beautiful, financially desperate girls from third world countries whose standards are not as high as American ones.

<comment><USER88> I once (sarcastically) argued in a student newspaper that attractive people should be favored in college admissions, since students would much rather share a campus with more attractive people. To me it made more sense in terms of promoting the desirability of attending the school than a whole lot of existing practices, such as favoring athletes or the children of alumni.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Pay 20% or more above the so called market rate and you'll sew there is no crunch. It's that easy.

</comment><comment><USER90> Double the equity. 9 month vesting cliff. Market salary.</comment>


Ask HN: Any good essay on midlife crisis? - <AUTHOR> Since early ages I have this recurring paranoiac feeling that somewhere in the future a grave is already prepared for me. (which is true for all of us). If you imagine your life like a movie and you scroll to the end then ..
Not sure if it's midlife crisis though. (couldn't find a better naming).
With ages this theme comes more often and more deep, previously I managed to force myself to ignore it. Tried to find some answers in philosophy books/essays, but it always leaves me with the feeling that I'm just building a house of cards that blows away as soon as I close the book. The last couple of time it came my body started to shake. Previously I was somehow convinced that it's just me imagining the wrong thing, it wasn't affecting me physically.
Do you have it? if so how do you handle it? any good reads on the subject? <comment><USER2> I too feel like this sometimes. I like to think death is just going to sleep from which you will never wake up. It makes it kind of a little bit easy to imagine it that way. This article helped me a lot to avoid this kind of thinking. [https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/11/11/dostoyevsky- dream/](https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/11/11/dostoyevsky-dream/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the link. It was a good read.</comment></comment>


How to Rebuild an Attention Span (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/09/how-to-rebuild-an-attention-span/279326/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> There is a millennium-old game "that works", which is called "meditation". There are many versions, some nonsensical (tantric) and some not (so-called Raja Yoga, Zendo, etc).

<comment><USER3> See also: "playing a musical instrument".

I suspect "reading an actual paper book" would also qualify.

<comment><USER4> Are there any Youtube videos that will walk me through how to read an actual book? it's been so long... I don't know if I'll remember how to do it without some internet star to show me the way.

<comment><USER5> There you go: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX- SjgQvQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My short attention span prevented me to read this article... It seems I crossed the no-return point, I am hopeless.

<comment><USER7> Ironically, it isn't helped by the modals popping up asking me to subscribe.

<comment><USER8> "Can you subscribe?" "Should you subscribe?" "You ought to subscribe."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've heard of a similar game, names "passionate software engineer [in a small team]".

</comment><comment><USER10> > "It's the first real attempt to meaningfully harness the power of games in a > dedicated cognitive enhancement tool," commented C. Shawn Green, a > neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and experts on brain > training

This statement is an exaggeration. Games based on N-Back and Dual N-Back were first introduced in 1958 and 2003, depending on how you count.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back)

</comment><comment><USER11> Would love to try if the game was in any way available. Are there similar options out there?

<comment><USER12> I found this info: [http://gazzaleylab.ucsf.edu/neuroscience- projects/neuroracer...](http://gazzaleylab.ucsf.edu/neuroscience- projects/neuroracer/)

> A company Adam Gazzaley co-founded, Akili Interactive Labs > ([http://www.akiliinteractive.com/](http://www.akiliinteractive.com/)), is > now developing a clinical product in the form of a mobile video game > ("Project: EVO") that is based on the technology behind NeuroRacer. The > company is currently running clinical trials which will validate the utility > of the new game for use in specific populations. Until those trials are > complete, the game will not be available to the general public. We suggest > that you go to the Akili website for further news or additional inquiries.

That leads me here: [http://www.brain.akiliinteractive.com/](http://www.brain.akiliinteractive.com/). A game has not yet been released but is available in some form for clinical trial.

<comment><USER11> Thanks :) I also found that, which was a bit disappointing, but maybe they come out with something soon.

I found "dual n-back" while looking around, which (controversially) claims some "fluid" and working intelligence boosting - I'll give that a try. It's over here: [http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/](http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/)

<comment><USER13> IIRC, gwern dabbles in dual n-back, and I think he's got some decent stuff written up about it. Worth taking a look for anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's also interesting to listen to the episode of The Tim Ferriss Show [1] where T. F. and Adam Gazzaley talk about this topic - how to enhance cognitive functions via games etc.

[1] [http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/06/22/adam- gazzaley/](http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/06/22/adam-gazzaley/)

</comment><comment><USER15> So.. Where can I play that game?

</comment><comment><USER16> This is stupid, I know, but I recommend playing one of those boring looking simulator games.

Focus for one hour doing nothing but driving a train from point A to point B. Fly a plane around. Plough a field. Very zen.

<comment><USER17> anyone up for some Desert Bus? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_%26_Teller%27s_Smoke_and_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_%26_Teller%27s_Smoke_and_Mirrors#Desert_Bus)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> One of my favorite books on the subject is Shunryu Suzuki's "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_Mind,_Beginner%27s_Mind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_Mind,_Beginner%27s_Mind)).

</comment><comment><USER19> The game itself sounds almost exactly like the new version of Outrun, or perhaps Afterburner Climax. Good news!

<comment><USER20> I was thinking RoadBlasters, myself. When "cars" appear on the screen, you "shoot" them while driving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So I need to break out my old Simon?

</comment><comment><USER22> tl;dr

</comment><comment><USER23> tl;dr

<comment><USER24> I sent this one straight to my Instapaper reading list. I'm sure I'll get to it eventually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> can't upvote enough... short attention span is the productivity killer of our times.</comment>


World of Warcraft Source Code Turns One Million - <AUTHOR> https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/wow-source-code-turns-one-million/603204 <comment><USER2> Meanwhile, back in the real world:

"Blizzard Workers Share Salaries in Revolt Over Wage Disparities"

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-03/blizzard-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-03/blizzard- workers-share-salaries-in-revolt-over-wage-disparities)

I agree with one of the commentators on the blizzard page - this feels like propaganda, and I'm saying this AS a long-term WoW player.

<comment><USER3> 1\. The WoW Engineering Team isn't the one deciding salaries, especially not company-wide.

2\. This originated from a tweet by one of the devs, and I guess they decided to share it with the wider community more officially.

3\. If they wanted to do some propaganda to distract from wage disparities, do you _really_ think they'd pick an SVN milestone of all things?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First comment from the forum thread:

> Good job! I can't imagine being the guy who has to keep track of that

How cute <3

</comment><comment><USER5> I think they just hit one megacommit, and the number they gave is how far away they are from one mebicommit.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Least its not yanderedev code. I don't understand a lot about coding yet I > can look at that guys work and go "oh no…"

Oh, WoW forums, your hubris knows no bounds.

</comment><comment><USER7> One comment:

>I can say as a Lead Devops Engineer...Also get your butts off of SVN… or at least consider git if you're on Perforce… just please… you'll thank me later.

You can smell his bullshit from far away :)

</comment><comment><USER8> A void celebration, since the source is not available.

</comment><comment><USER9> What SCM has sequential commit IDs, rather than hashes?

<comment><USER10> Basically any non-distributed one. In addition to the others that've been mentioned, there's CVS and Clearcase

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's averaging close to 200 commits per working day, which is higher than I would have expected for a single project (even WoW).

<comment><USER12> Some people don't squash

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't understand why we celebrate that. Shouldn't it be the other way around? I thought there was a consensus that loc are a bad metric at the best of times.

Edit: It's commits, not lines of code. Now I feel dumb.

<comment><USER14> They aren't talking about LoC, but their commit count. Helps to actually read the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of my buddy who provides data (free of charge) that's crawled and aggregated in a convenient fashion, available as a text file download. He at one point massively updated his code so it builds static text files faster for him, and is more efficient.

So he decided to plan a new version with the new code and add some revisions to the data. He releases a new version with his new under-the-hood improvements, and then proceeds to boast on the site about how much cleaner the code is and how much better it runs to build these static text files. And I try to remind him, _no one cares except you._ Your finished product looks the same regardless of how it was built. You can be happy, but it's rather meaningless to everyone else.

<comment><USER16> Why would you discourage someone from writing about stuff they find neat, that helps them provide a free and useful service to people?</comment></comment>


Pascal's Mugging: Tiny Probabilities of Vast Utilities - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilities_of_vast/ <comment><USER2> I once read another formulation of this problem, a PDF by Nick Bostrom: <http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/pascal.pdf>. It depicts this problem as a dialogue between the mugger and the mugged, which I found more entertaining to read than the HN link, and the PDF's description still preserves all the important attributes of the problem. If you find the HN link boring, try the PDF.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, I enjoyed that. I suppose the one issue with the dialogue is that as the mugger increases the payoff, it would only make sense to decrease the likelihood that he delivers on the promise.

Put differently, the expected value would be P(Keeps promise|Amount of promise)*(Amount of promise). However, both of the multiplicands in that are inversely proportional.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are two problems with this:

1) The mugger is obviously lying. 100% chance. The "you must admit there's a small probability, because anything is possible" is irrelevant because there is an equally small probability the opposite of what he says would happen.

2) There's no such thing as a 4 trillion trillion positive outcome, much less 3^^^^3. Just because you can say the number doesn't mean it's meaningful.

That said, this seems more like the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_paradox> which already has many explanations.

<comment><USER2> Some commenters in the link address your claim #1 that it is equally probable for the mugger to be telling the truth and lying.

[Why would we give even a small probability of the mugger going what he says?] "Because he said so, and people tend to be true to their word more often then dictated by chance." – [http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilitie...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilities_of_vast/2t7o)

[But the mugger isn't human, so our experience in proportions of truth-telling is irrelevant.] "They claim to not be a human. They're still a person, in the sense of a sapient being. As a larger class, you'd expect lower correlation, but it would still be above zero." – [http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilitie...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilities_of_vast/4o1w)

As for your claim #2, "There's no such thing as a 4 trillion trillion positive outcome", indeed there isn't – I can't imagine what that would mean – but I see no mention of "[number] positive outcome" in the link. The link just says the mugger will "run a Turing machine that simulates and kills 3^^^^3 people." What part of the link that you think is impossible did you paraphrase into "positive outcome"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Presumably the utility of anti-manipulation features is higher than that of exact computation of the payoff of events with sufficiently small probabilities. So there's some sort of filtering effect that drops all sufficiently low probabilities down to zero.

And yet a theist can use some variant of that argument to say that belief in their god is above this threshold while all others are below it, zeroing out the infinity of deities that no one can even name.

</comment><comment><USER6> You could take the first 2/3 of this, and title it "Why simple mathematical notation might turn you into an atheist"

</comment><comment><USER7> Can anyone explain this as if to a five year old? I'm not understanding it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Surely it would immediately fail the test because which is more likely: the guy is a nutter, or there exists _another_ universe with _another_ turing machine which includes its states and all the states required for ours and all the states required for the 3^^^3 people.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't matter which is more likely, only that there is some positive probability of the second option.

<comment><USER8> _It doesn't matter which is more likely, only that there is some positive probability of the second option._

No, it requires that the weighting (probability * consequence) is greater in the second case than the first.

FTA:

1\. _But, small as this probability is, it isn't anywhere near as small as 3^^^^3 is large._

2\. _If the probabilities of various scenarios considered did not exactly cancel out, the AI's action in the case of Pascal's Mugging would be overwhelmingly dominated by whatever tiny differentials existed in the various tiny probabilities under which 3^^^^3 units of expected utility were actually at stake._

I disagree with statement 1. If the author's definition of Occam's razor is believed by the AI, then the probability that the mugger is telling the truth is given by the inverse of the complexity of the system that incorporates our world, the other world and in addition the ability to simulate 3^^^^3 deaths. So it doesn't matter if X is 3^^^3 or 3^^^^^3, because the very probability of it being so is the inverse to the damage done.

      Our world: A
      Outer world only: B
      Temporary 3^^^3 death world: C

Complexity when mugger telling truth = ABC

Potential consequence: kC

Weighting for mugger telling truth: C/ABC = 1/AB

Complexity when mugger is lying = A.

Weighting for mugger lying: 1/A

Since A and B are staggeringly large numbers, the AI must choose 1/A over 1/AB.

Then there's a whole bunch of other stuff, such as, even if the AI was certain that the mugger could carry out its threat, should the AI yield to threats of violence? Another question: if life can so trivially be created and destroyed, what does it matter? Can we trust the mugger?

But the main issue, and this should be the response of anyone threatened with some claimed ability to cause harm and suffering in "the next world", is "prove it".</comment></comment></comment>


CDK: Python/TypeScript to Terraform HCL - <AUTHOR> https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/cdk-for-terraform-enabling-python-and-typescript-support/ <comment><AUTHOR> Curious what the community thinks about this. It feels like a step backwards, or at the very least, sideways. I have this opinion because it re-introduces imperative logic into declarative markup, in a way that is very easy to abuse/overuse. It also seems to remove the need for HCL altogether (why render to HCL when your language can call into a Terraform API?)</comment>


Ask HN: Intuitive explanation of proof [induction] – discrete math - <AUTHOR> I am self learning Discrete Math using MIT's video lectures and bunch of other resources. I am feeling like somebody took my brain out of my skull, put it in the blender and turned it on. I am loosing my mind.<p>Do you  know of any resources that explain  induction is a manner that is pallatable? <comment><USER2> What exactly are you having trouble understanding?</comment>


An IDA Pro Plugin for embedding an IPython Kernel - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/james91b/ida_ipython

<comment> TD-Linux Does anyone know of a good open-source alternative to IDA Pro? I really like the idea of this plugin but don't really like developing plugins for closed software.

<comment><USER2> A similar question was asked on the RE stack exchange.

[http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1817/i...](http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1817/is- there-any-disassembler-second-to-ida/)

My recommendation would be to check out radare2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've added another example using Cython to call API's that are not exposed via IDAPython.

[http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/james91b/ida_ipython/blob...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/james91b/ida_ipython/blob/master/notebook/examples/Cython%20and%20IDA.ipynb)</comment>


Firing tenured teachers can be a costly and tortuous task - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers3-2009may03,0,5765040,full.story

<comment><USER2> A remarkable finding of studies of teacher competency

[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JSD/is_5_52/ai_77196...](http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JSD/is_5_52/ai_77196075/)

[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_32_17/ai_7781...](http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_32_17/ai_77812352/)

is that incompetent teachers are the least likely to resign from their teaching jobs over time. They may or may not know they are incompetent teachers, but they can sense that they wouldn't be able to find any better job at their level of ability elsewhere in the job market. So schools tend to accumulate a larger percentage of incompetent teachers over time, as competent teachers seek work in other occupations while incompetent teachers hang on for dear life. I was fortunate to have some very experienced and very competent veteran teachers when I was young (in an era when women had fewer employment opportunities outside schoolteaching, which seems to be an important issue)

<http://econrsss.anu.edu.au/~aleigh/pdf/Teacher%20Quality.pdf>

but these days it seems harder than ever to find a teacher who has both high competence and long experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> Something I find simply disgusting is when I see teacher's unions claiming they represent the needs of students. I believe this lie is part of what gives them so much unfounded clout. They represent the desires of teachers: the needs of students are secondary and subordinate to that, if even a consideration. The worse the teachers, the more corrupted the union becomes to defend them.

What I hope people come to realize, especially with articles such as this one in the news, is this: not only do the desires of teachers rarely align with the needs of students, they quite often stand in direct opposition. Teacher's unions are self-seeking entities that are to always be examined with a cautious eye.</comment>


A 100-year-old engineering puzzle is solved - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ1YnXDUyd4 The innovation solves a 100-year-old electrical engineering puzzle and paves the way for a more efficient and reliable electricity supply system. <comment><USER2> The title could really stand to be more descriptive.

 _Claes Rytoft, head of technology in ABB's Power Systems division, discusses a breakthrough in the ability to interrupt direct current. The innovation solves a 100-year-old electrical engineering puzzle and paves the way for a more efficient and reliable electricity supply system._

</comment><comment><USER3> He says this allows a DC grid. He thinks DC is the "right solution" for a powergrid of the future. Interested to know more about why that is. I dont know much about the 'war of the currents'.</comment>


Steve Jobs – Thoughts on Music (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/20101007143742/http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/

<comment><USER2> I don't understand. Both Google and Amazon sell music completely DRM-free today, and their music selection is as big as the one on iTunes.

What's their excuse today?

<comment><USER3> All music on iTunes is DRM free and has been since 2009.

If anything, this discussion from Steve Jobs remains relevant in regards to why _video_ on iTunes (and most other sites) remains DRM encumbered.</comment></comment>


Should we worry that Netflix is buying transit rights from Comcast? - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/02/should-we-worry-that-netflix-is-buying-transit-rights-from-comcast.html

<comment><USER2> Peering isn't a big deal. Paying for peering is madness. Netflix is saving Comcast a ton on interchange fees. Why are they paying Comcast for that?</comment>


Ask HN: How to run assembly code on AWS RedShift? - <AUTHOR> Last year a link was submitted on HN to an article by someone who figured out how to run assembler code on AWS RedShift. Anyone have that link handy? <comment><USER2> Absolutely: [http://www.michaelburge.us/2017/09/10/injecting-shellcode- to...](http://www.michaelburge.us/2017/09/10/injecting-shellcode-to-speed-up- amazon-redshift.html)</comment>


Introduction to Signal Processing - <AUTHOR> http://www.ece.rutgers.edu/~orfanidi/intro2sp/

<comment><USER2> On the topic of free e-books related to signal processing, I really love this book by Vivek Goyal, Martin Vetterli, and Jelena Kovacevic: www.fourierandwavelets.org

I think their treatment of the subject is more 'modern'. Classical signal processing is the stuff that you will find in Orfanidis's book in the OP and other classics such as Lyons, Oppenheim/Shafer, etc. Modern signal processing involves more harmonic analysis. There has been a lot of work, since the late 80s in the areas of wavelets, dictionary learning, etc. which you won't find in 'classical texts' on signal processing. In some universities these topics are taught in 'advanced' signal processing courses, at honors or graduate level. I hesitate to call this kind as 'advanced' signal processing, because I feel you need the same kind of prerequisites for 'classical' and 'modern' signal processing: linear algebra, Fourier analysis, basic probability, 'random processes', etc. In fact, I think 'modern' signal processing taught at the undergrad level also has the added benefit of being a gentle application- oriented introduction to real analysis for EE students.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's also "Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing" which free too and is pretty #swag as well [http://www.dspguide.com](http://www.dspguide.com)

<comment><USER4> +1 This one is really good, showcasing code, graphics and formula for each lesson. So even if you don't understand totally the mathematical notation you can still read the code. I managed to learn DSP without an EE degree mainly with this book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Understanding Digital Signal Processing" by Richard Lyons should also be mentioned. Not free, but probably the best text for grasping the concepts of DSP. As a mechanical engineer his style and illustrations really clicked with me.

<comment><USER6> Ditto that excellent book. I had the opportunity to take one his courses, which was also good, not to mention his interesting stories about motorcycle "clubs".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Recognised that cover right away - I remember paying a huge amount for a copy of this as a student back in 1996! Incredible really how the web has made such a large amount of educational material available for free.

</comment><comment><USER8> On the subject of free books from Rutgers professors, check out [http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~sontag/FTP_DIR/systems_biology_...](http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~sontag/FTP_DIR/systems_biology_notes.pdf) if you are interested in mathematical modeling in biology.

</comment><comment><USER9> Jose Unpingco has some nice articles on his blog that are excerpts from his book _Python for Signal Processing_. [http://python-for-signal- processing.blogspot.com/](http://python-for-signal-processing.blogspot.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: How can you avoid chaos in your startup? - <AUTHOR> Given how easy it is for a startup to descend into chaos, we've been working at my startup, Dotmesh, on how to avoid this happening.
Really interested to know what everyone else has tried, what worked and what didn't!
https://www.dotmesh.com/blog/edge-of-chaos/ is my blog post explaining more about what I mean. <comment><USER2> I have two answers. The first is rather snarky and the second is rather idealistic. My experience indicates the first is more accurate, but I'm a sample of one (and not a particularly successful sample of one to boot).

1.) By nature, startups are chaotic and if you try to remove all chaos, there is a very good chance that you will handcuff people to such a point that they can't handle chaos.

To accomplish this, I like to select early employees based on an aptitude or interest in chaos. I look for evidence that my early employees are self motivated and capable of both making decisions with imperfect information and learning new things quickly. In my role, I like to make sure that I write down as many of my decisions possible and the criteria that I used to arrive at those decisions. And, in a leadership role, I like to remind my team that things will be chaotic and that I'll document my decisions to show them general principles, but if things are chaotic and you don't know what to do, use your best judgment, use my principles and our mission to inform that best judgment and know that I'll support you.

2.) In startups, you have to learn how to separate useful chaos from company killing chaos. It's useful chaos if you release an early version and receive feedback from a majority of your users stating they'd happily pay $xxx a month if you had features a, b and c. It's company killing chaos if a senior engineer has to talk to fifteen people to get permission to spend $15 on a build tool that will save her five hours a week forever (I'm not exaggerating much).

The way around this one seems to be relentless delegation, which requires the same sorts of selection as in my snarkier answer. This path is also very complicated for first time founders who don't quite know what they don't know. It is very complicated to delegate something away, realize that it's a valuable task for you to perform and then try to take it back...

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, not snarky at all, I think the original question was maybe not phrased quite right. What I meant was "how do you successfully operate within a startup environment which is inherently more chaotic than an established business". But it's a bit long :)

I think you're smart to look for employees who are happy with a bit more chaos than usual. I think it's Simon Wardley that characterises such people as "pioneers" as opposed to "settlers" or "town planners".

I also really like the attitude of "use your judgement and I will support your decision", it's so valuable and often rare that people do this. Too many people are control freaks and believe only they can/should make the decisions, however small. Even worse when you let people make decisions and then undermine them!

Interested to know how you record and share your decisions - sounds like a really good practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I take a military analogy to it. War is probably the most chaotic situation anywhere. And to cater for it, they develop a lot of discipline, starting with formations and strict routine.

The key is to create a bubble of control. Once you control a zone, once you form a secure perimeter, it's much easier to control the rest.

This zone of security is most easily done with Agile. Agile lets you control that sprint. Agile lets you gain more control over a large project, sprint by sprint.

A lot of people abuse agile. They forget that it's a way of ensuring control. These people overextend and they lose it.

Routines and SOPs are also really good. A lot of companies trust their developers completely. After all, they hire the smartest people they know.

But just because they're smart, it doesn't mean they know what to do. A SOP keeps people moving in formation. If you know where everyone is, you can secure a huge perimeter. If people have full freedom, they will often break formation because they don't see the big picture.

Communication is absolutely vital. Whether in war or software, sometimes you don't even know where you are. Sometimes you don't know when someone is crossing into another person's zone. It's also important that these people don't simply communicate to one another, or just to their team leader. It creates a bottleneck, a point of failure. This is where project management apps like Jira and Slack come in.

It's also vital that you know your environment. You should know what you're getting into. This is where system analysts, business logic, and similar experts come in. They are there to scout things out before the grunts move in. The project manager may tell people where to go, but the system analysts tell them what is safe.

In general, I think that if you believe a project is completely safe, you simply don't know enough about it. You should be well aware of the chaos and have a plan for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> This analogy seems really strong. I don't know much about war though so I might miss some of the nuances!

The bubble of control sounds like a great way to visualise what you need focus on (reminds me of the "circle of control" from the book "Seven habits of highly effective people").

"develop a lot of discipline, starting with formations and strict routine". This makes a lot of sense and completely fits with the other analogies I use (like playing jazz, football and running an agile team). It reinforces my belief that you need to have well-practised skills for _how_ to do things so that all your focus can be placed on _what_ to do.

I also really agree with the point on communication. It's a key feedback loop and helps people to synchronise and keep their context up to date. I like to set this up via repeating events so that it's never too long between syncs.

I never thought before about having people separate from the direction-setter (leader, project manager) who would recce for safety purposes. I'll have to mull on that a while!

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> Oh yeah the recon and support teams are some of the best tools we've had for reducing risk.

At the very least it highlights high priority obstacles, like whether an API is running properly or able to do what it should. And system analysts are awesome for making sure a sales team doesn't overpromise.

Support teams are great too. Like if you have a huge, expensive, time constrained project involving a technology like Firebase, it would be worth it to have a Firebase expert sit around the office to ask questions to. It's often more cost effective than throwing more programmers at the problem. At some point, extra programmers just conflict with one another, but support won't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's a clickable version of the link BTW [https://www.dotmesh.com/blog/edge- of-chaos/](https://www.dotmesh.com/blog/edge-of-chaos/)

<comment><USER4> I'm curious what the purpose of your blog post is. Is it a message to potential employees, customers, investors, someone else?

I don't mean "what is that post talking about", more what was your intended ROI on it?

Would you be willing to inform on that point?

(Please don't take this as a critique, I'm curious and hoping to learn something)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Matt,

No worries, I always try to assume that people are well intentioned with their questions until there's undeniable evidence otherwise!

I didn't have any specific ROI in mind, I just wanted to get the thoughts out of my head and onto "paper", and hopefully help out anyone who finds they have the same challenges. Also, if I'm re-inventing the wheel or missing other obvious ways of doing things, that would be interesting too.

Sorry it's not any deeper than that! :)

Alice.

<comment><USER4> Hi Alice thanks for the reply.

<unsolicited advice from random internet person> You might wish to consider what message these types of postings give to your (potential) customers, investors, employees, etc. They can be used as a queue to them. I'm not saying your post is good or bad message. Just that everything under your company's banner sends a message. Some company leaders have separate personal and company blogs. </unsolicited advice from random internet person>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think establishing some basic business processes even if they are just checklists, would be a great start.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! Checklists are so lightweight and deliver a ton of value. I heard this advice somewhere else a long time ago and it's perennially useful.</comment></comment>