Ask HN: What should a seed stage startup do to attract engineers?
How do we get good talent when everyone's fighting for them?
Specifically, most startups want employees to work very long hours.
So if you want good talent, look for people other startups won't hire: people who want work/life balance.
Of course, the perception is that startups want you to work very long hours. So you'll need to _really_ explain why you're different.
If the answer is "But we need to work 80 hour workweeks to succeed!" then good luck, you're back to competing for all the same people (and, moreover, that is simply not true: https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/10/24/deadlines/).
It really depends on what type of seed round you raised. If it is a small friends and family round you are best looking at people who can contract as freelancers and are ok with the fact money may run out quickly. Attracting them is different then looking for FTE's which is why I mention it.
If you raised a proper seed round then hiring FTE's becomes more realistic but as you stated not an easy task. You can't fully compete on salary, options are not what they once were and competition for quality engineers is pretty solid.
My 2 cents if you want to recruit and find solid engineers. And how I do it personally:
1. Pay a fair wage, you may not be able to compete with FAANG, but offering a 10 year experienced engineer $60k and some tiny option % is a non-starter and shows you aren't serious which will get around quickly. Realize most experienced people know the stock will be worthless, or diluted to oblivion in reality so salary is the better carrot. Newer engineers haven't always learned this yet so YMMV with them.
2. Young engineers are awesome and bring lots of drive and ambition, find them, but hire them in a ratio to experienced engineers so your projects have a level of maturity early. This also lets you build a more mature team earlier and they will attract more like talent. Plus your architecture will carry forward less technical debt from day one (but it will still have tech debt no matter what).
3. Don't interview like all the other startup companies. Interview people, and treat them like people, don't ask useless algorithm questions, don't send them away with some task to do and tell them to get back to you. No, take your time, interview people, ask them meaningful questions, probe their ability to do the job and get them an answer within a week from the last in person ( or video) interview. From your first phone screen to the last person interviewing should not take more then 5 days for a small team, do it that fast and get an offer out, having your offer in hand versus waiting weeks to months for others is super powerful.
If you do those 3, you will beat most all the startups to hiring. Another key, don't be afraid to hire remote, but favor timezones near you if you do. I'd always favor hiring people local at first if possible, unless I was in CA, then I'd go remote first within the US just to control costs. Your dollars go a lot further outside of CA.