Ask HN: What to do when a company's second engineering hire is horrible? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What to do when a company's second engineering hire is horrible?

13 pointsjourneyadv10 comments

First post here.

So there's this startup who made a good first engineering hire. The company's business side had since struggled to find a capable second engineer to do systems engineering. They interviewed a candidate who failed the first engineer's engineering test for basic knowledge, but the company hired him anyway without the engineer's "for sure" approval, because nothing was getting done on that side of things.

The work of this engineer is seriously flawed and discouraging to the first engineer, who is growing more and more concerned with the careless behavior and lack of thoughtful design that is going on. However, the business side sort of doesn't know what to do because they couldn't find anyone else, and now seem reluctant to bring anyone else on.

This situation is creating a toxic engineering environment with amateur mistakes and design choices that shouldn't be happening. And, while some milestones are being delivered (to the business team's surface-level satisfaction), the first engineer fears the worst in that the quality of the work is subpar and creates only a very weak foundation for the company and disorder in scheduling based on what appears to be done versus what is actually done and done well.

With competent and experienced people, this wouldn't be happening, but the company couldn't find one and now won't make an effort to find one.

Does anyone have any thoughts, advice, or stories to share from a similar situation?

You say they couldn't find anyone else, and I can think of only three possible reasons for this:

* You are using some very rare technology, so rare that there are literally no engineers that know it well. If that is the case, and the technology has been chosen for good reasons, there's no easy solution: you'll have to train people and it will take years.

* You are in a place with very few engineers, like some small village on the mountains or some Pacific island. If that's the case, just go remote! You'll find thousands of highly qualified people!

* The company pays very very little, so little that only unqualified people will show up. If that's the case, have the company pay much more, and to be sure that they will, ask a huge rise first: that will prove that they really understand that qualified people costs money. If they are not willing to pay more, leave them alone and go work elsewhere.

The first engineer has to understand that not every colleague will operate at the same level. Some people on the team will not be design or architecture wizards. Sooner everyone realizes that the better. Because, after that realization team members can focus on making things better.

In my experience, most of the successful teams are those in which team tries to grow together. So the first engineer should focus on how to get the best out of second engineer. If there are skill gaps, second engineer should be offered some courses. If there is lack of team cohesion, try some team building exercises.

Remember, life is not perfect, we have to play with the cards we are dealt with. We should try to put our egos aside, be positive and get things done.

IMHO, a startup should be purposefully focused on delivering fast results to prove its business value as quickly as possible. This goal often clashes with engineering-minded people, who would rather spend time on creating a stable, debt-free platform.

I think there are ways to achieve both goals to some extent. But technical people tend to be focused only on one of the goals (either quick results or a stable platform), and this is encoded pretty deep in their personality. It's then easy to dismiss the people on the other side.

Perhaps the startup's management believes that it's good to have both kinds of people onboard, and that they've found a balance?

The descriptions are not in terms of business value. The most horrible thing I see is that the first engineer holds the new hire in contempt.

I think make sure they know its not personal and is actually about the technical debt. Try to find a political solution. If not maybe you need a new job.

I may be completely wrong but to me this has played out and will play out like this:

1. First engineer is motivated an has great qualitative and quantitative output.

2. First engineer's opinion is being ignored when second engineer is being hired. Can't be good for motivation.

3. First engineer has to fix the work of second engineer. Qualitative and quantitative output suffers. Motivation of the first engineer decreases further.

4. Warnings to the management are being ignored. First engineer gets so frustrated that he quits.

5. Second Engineer has now free reign. Even if quantitative output is still the same, the quality totally tanks.

I don't recommend that the first engineer quits because that would be a pretty big decision to make without trying to fix the situation first. But if management makes such a severe error in this early stage of the startup, there may be some more "interesting times" ahead.

Since you are clearly the self-described "good" first engineer, you should quit.

tl;dr: You need a way to be able to convert these issues into a format that management can understand.

Tough situation. Onboarding new hires is always challenging and you're probably stuck with this new hire ("NH") for the next 3-6 months.

If you accept that NH is not going anywhere for at least the next 120 days, why not treat it as an opportunity to stress test some of the companies internal systems.

The goal at the end of the 120-day period is to have data and documentation that supports a business case that you can then bring to management.

Best case scenario you're able to create a framework that identifies and corrects NH’s shortcomings. This framework can be used for future new hires.

Second best case, you’re able to identify and show how bottlenecks are being formed in your department. You can then make the case that 1) chargebacks need to be increased to human resources ( or maybe business development) to account for the unscheduled work and the resources used to train NH; or 2) you need a raise to to cover the time you spend training NH.

Worst case, you have some material to talk about as you interview for other jobs.

Worked in a great engineering lab. CEO out of Hell's kitchen had a top notch chief engineer. Chief engineer vetted all hires in the department. Then the CEO's health started to fail. Human resources seemed to get more clout and placed less talented in the lab.

I'd like to talk to you about this. Care to email? I have an address in my profile.

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