Ask HN: First hire offered to work part-time – what should I do? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: First hire offered to work part-time – what should I do?

69 pointsbluestreak100 comments

We are a startup making our first hires. We are three founders, who respect each other hugely, help each other and forgive mistakes. We've been thru a lot together.

We raised money and are looking for core hires. Given our personal bond, we would like the core team (first 3-4 hires) to share our passion to some degree. Perhaps naively we'd like them to become pillars of our company and help us inspire future employees.

A former colleague of mine came forward, very bright and capable guy. Exactly the technical talent we need. He likes the project, but he offered to work three days a week for us because he would like to continue working on personal projects in parallel. While I appreciate his honesty, I cannot easily decide if he is the right kind of first hire. Had he joined us a year later, I would hire him in a heartbeat. But right now I feel like lack of commitment from him could possibly influence our culture in a negative way. Is this a right way to think about first hires? What would you do?

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Controversial opinion but learned through experience the hard way here, repeatedly proven, anyone that you feel "like lack of commitment from him could possibly influence our culture in a negative way", just pass (at least until you have product market fit or a repeatable business running). As soon as shit hits the fan, they will either leave or drop performance, and you will have to let them go.

In your case, I think the issue is not about part time, but the commitment itself. If it's your first hire, you need them to be on-board, and contrary to what most people say, have more expectations than people would for a "normal" employee. The truth is, that person is not a normal employee, it's the first hire in a very early stage business. If you treat that hire as a regular employee, you will build expectations and won't be able to live up to it, and it will backfire for both of you 6-8 months down the road. That will hurt your ability to build a core team, and you will have to start from scratch.

Do not give up on that, no matter what the popular opinion tells you. Most people are not founders, and you should trust the guts that you have about building your core team.

Fellow founder here. I think I agree with the gist of what you write, but I disagree that a part-time commitment is a good indicator of the level of emotional commitment.

Passion is important, and there's a huge spectrum between "passion as an excuse to get people to work many hours without compensating them" and the bill-by-the-hour contractor attitude. You don't want your first employees to be anywhere near the right of that spectrum. Basically, you want them to proudly wear the company logo t-shirt. But this is perfectly possible without driving yourself into a burnout.

While I agree with many commenters here that way too many startups work their team too hard for absolutely no benefit to anybody, I do think that employees of small startups can be expected to have said startup at top thing on their minds, bordering family etc.

This information is missing from the OP's question. There's a world of difference between an applicant going "oh, hm yeah I can do some work for you but only 3 days a week because I'm actually focused on my side project and I hope it becomes a proper startup someday" and "woa that sounds awesome, I'm all in! but I don't want to work more than 3 days because I've a couple of hobbies / open source projects / whatever that I like to keep time for". In the first scenario, the engineer might be writing hours for you, but actually thinking about their other thing at the same time. They won't be super productive, and they'd especially not be all too creative.

Like you, I'd never recommend that a startup hire someone who doesn't have the success of said startup at top of their mind (again, possibly bordering family matters). But I disagree with your suggestion that the amount of hours/days committed is a good indicator of that. Part-time is the future, folks, accept it, embrace it.

100% agreed, that's what I meant by "I think the issue is not about part time, but the commitment itself". We very often try to rationalize things that are more "felt" (sense of commitment) to more tangible things.

In this case, the author might feel that the person is not committed, and might attribute it to the part time as way to reason/explain that feeling that the other person isn't committed. Chances are, they would most likely feel the same if the person was full time. If the person was highly committed, they wouldn't even start to rationalize this way about part time, and it'd be a no-brainer decision to hire them and make it work.

> Part-time is the future, folks, accept it, embrace it.

I don't have problems with having part-time employees, but quite difficult to see it being "the future". There are some people who want part-time possibilities, but in my experience majority prefer full-time employment. Also usually full-time employment is also desirable for employer.

However often those who want part-time deals, are quite talented etc, so it makes sense to make arrangements with them. Also sometimes part-time is good match for the employer as well, if the workload matches that for some reason.

> I do think that employees of small startups can be expected to have said startup at top thing on their minds, bordering family etc.

They won't be credited like founders, compensated at-the-time remotely near market, will be overworked to the bone if they don't actively fight it, and in the event of success will be hilariously undercompensated, if not actively screwed.

So--why?

> will be overworked to the bone if they don't actively fight it

Says who? Srsly stop working for shitty startups.

And stop assuming all founders are exploitative psychopaths. We're not. Many of us just want to build an awesome company that's an awesome place to work at.

You don't need to overwork the team for that. But you also won't get there with a bunch of disinterested contractors who just do their assigned tasks.

> with a bunch of disinterested contractors

Contractor here who was a first tech hire for a startup once. I've seen more disinterested employees than contractors in the UK. Employees tend to leave at 1700 sharp, while contractors often the last one who shuts the lights off. You can't let go employees with a 2-week notice, so guess who's going to work around the clock when the project is behind schedule?

> Says who? Srsly stop working for shitty startups.

I don't work for "shitty startups"--it's rare that I work for "startups" at all. But, then again, my skillset is in demand in a way that accentuates the seller's market, and so I also don't have to. I'm very fortunate.

> And stop assuming all founders are exploitative psychopaths. We're not. ... You don't need to overwork the team for that.

You don't have to. But, as a matter of course, it happens. Even to those with the best of intentions.

Causes and passions are charity work or open-source work. Tying your day job--and by extension your health and your well-being--to them is not wise. As a founder, you both have an incentive to tie your own to such--but you have an even stronger incentive to tie others' to it, and so you literally can't be trusted.

It's nothing personal to state that founders are not to be trusted. It is, in a very real and literal sense, just business. Cash on the barrelhead and an absolute intolerance for fuckery are the only ways an employee has to protect themselves from exploitation.

> "Causes and passions are charity work or open-source work."

That's one point of view. Personally, I'd say I'm passionate about technology itself and I only choose employers who work with technologies I find interesting (generally nothing that involves web stuff) whenever I can. I'm sure I'd probably have been paid better if I weren't as particular but I'd also almost certainly have quit the profession long before now as well.

We'd probably agree, though, that being passionate about one's employer itself being unwise.

I agree with this take. You can prioritize things other than money, and that's some derived value for you. But fully agreed that your employer is not a good outlet for that passion. "Believing the dream" gets you screwed when you aren't paying attention.

(And even those pure-hearted, kind founders can lose control of their company after a bad raise.)

> Srsly stop working for shitty startups.

I guess 99.9% of all startups are "shitty" then.

> we would like the core team (first 3-4 hires) to share our passion to some degree. Perhaps naively we'd like them to become pillars of our company and help us inspire future employees.

It sound like they don't want workers, so much as worshipers. Call me pessimistic.

The truth is, that person is not a normal employee, it's the first hire in a very early stage business. If you treat that hire as a regular employee, you will build expectations and won't be able to live up to it, and it will backfire for both of you 6-8 months down the road.

If that's true, then I hope that person gets compensation that is consistent with that status. I wouldn't have a problem with that... what gets me is when people want somebody to basically act like a founder in terms of commitment, but the compensation is just "regular employee". F that.

Part time doesn't automatically mean "lack of commitment".

I am a big supporter of reducing working hours in general. 40 hour work-week is not a law of nature. It's about time we rethink what full-time means.

Go for it. Work less yourself. Heck, make "part-time" a standard at your company. You will get super motivated employees and you'll have much easier time attracting talent. It's one of the best perks one can have. And one of you could spend more time with the twins.

I am a big supporter of part time too. I can't overstate the importance of work-life balance. Work less, work better, and don't forget yourself nor your family.

However reading the description, I can't tell whether the potential hire fits this category.

Are they looking to have 2 jobs in parallel? What would their side thing be, is it different enough that they wouldn't be working on both concurrently?

If they want to be away from writing software 2 days a week to fulfill a hobby (e.g restore a boat, paint or whatever) then it makes a lot of sense. They will be happy, grateful, and the culture will be great.

If they are seeking part time in order to work for 2 startups or setup their own side business, then I'm not so sure.

It is the latter. I appreciate their honesty though, which makes the call that much harder. Their side projects are bitcoin related, far more than just a hobby.

Consider that allowing this perk may enable you to hire someone you'd never be able to get otherwise.

I -- and I'm not the only founder I know who has had this experience -- had to compromise technically on early hires because they were what we could get.

Just a quick thought, since I thoroughly recognize myself in your former workfriend. You may have negociated his pay below the level where he can comfortably cover mortgage and current expenses.

Like many others commented, asking for an employee to be passionate is a real problem.

You mentioned thinking with heads over hearts. Very good idea, I would say follow through on it and ask for professionalism instead of passion. Offer a higher hourly rate during the first 2-3 weeks, on condition that the person work full-time and that everything should be automated to the hilt and documented thoroughly. Starting on the fourth week, show your new potential hires how tight of a ship you are running, some will be excited to join and at that point you can better negociate their pay because you have something to offer that most developers want.

As a side note, the way I have solved on my end the problem your former workfriend is having, was by making the hourly rate a sliding scale (145 in exchange for working 45 hours a week, 125 when working 25 hrs/wk, you get the idea). I am personally convinced this kind of system will work for you as well since is makes transparent the tradeoff between high development velocity and judicious budgeting.

One last thing I want to point out that most developers intuitively recognize: having worked in a large number of environments, huge and small, with distinct engineering approaches / team dynamics is a huge boost to most developer profiles. Working on more than one project every week and being exposed to all that variety is worthwhile, for me at least, when I can't charge my full rate.

Had the some doubts for our first hire - he wanted to work 4 days a week. He seemed committed and enthusiastic about our mission, so we went ahead.

Best choice we ever made: any doubt about commitment, passion, etc were blown away after a few weeks. He is now a cornerstone of our team. He still works 4 days a week. Now several key team members work 2.5 to 4 days a week, and we're doing great.

Looking back: I should have asked myself: what is better, working 1 day a week more or passion and a good technical fit?

I know what you mean and I understand the general sentiment but you should expect an employee's level of "passion" to match the founder's only when their level of equity also matches yours.

You might get lucky and find a first hire who really is excited and passionate about the project, truly believes in it, and will go "above and beyond" (which, frankly, is what it sounds like you're looking for) but if that's one of your core requirements to fill the position, well, good luck.

Your friend made an offer that balances his level of "passion" for your project with his passion for his own projects and it sounds like (to me, a completely outside observer, obviously) he was trying to be unselfish and attempting to help you and your startup out.

Now, it's up to you, of course, to decide whether he would be beneficial to your startup -- but, to simply dismiss him altogether because he doesn't share your level of passion? Well, as I said, good luck finding someone who does.

It sounds to me like you're uncertain about whether to hire this guy or not. It's my own personal rule to only hire people when I am 100% certain.

Now I could give you all sorts of reasons why this guy will be an excellent hire. My personal gut feeling is that some people deliver more value in 3 days than others deliver in 3 years, so "bum in seat time" can be misleading in terms of the contribution someone will make. Engineers with side projects are often more goal-focused, because they purge their need to over-engineer and try new things outside your core production project. You hire employees for their talent, not their passion. But these are _my_ gut feelings, not _yours_, and you need to pay attention to _your_ gut feelings when you make such a critical hire because it's _your_ startup. Presumably, your gut feelings are pretty good which is how you're in a position to be running a startup in the first place.

Over the next few months, you will inevitably have problems. Things will be harder and take longer than you think. Then you'll be saying "it's because they're not committed enough, I should have listened to my gut feeling when we hired them".

I would express my thoughts fully and transparently to this guy. Perhaps you can explore a middle-ground - here's some ideas:

1. More hours with more pay in the short-term to help you scaffold things, scaling back once you're up and running.

2. Work part-time as an engineer, still be available for operational stuff outside those hours (with pay).

3. Help you hire somebody else ASAP, so you don't need the original guy full time.

If it was me, I would not hire someone PT as the first employee (or first couple of employees). Why? You are trying to transition from founders to a team and that is hard. You are going to have to build processes, watch other people mess up your baby, and generally have to transition power away from yourself. The emotions behind that process shouldn't be ignored.

In your case, the fact that you are already questioning this person's commitment is a big warning sign to me. Skip it and circle back later once you have a few people working there and see if you feel differently.

Culture - If you are going to build a culture around working differently than the current norms it could make sense though.

PT - I think long term as you build a structure and get to around 15 to 20 people PT is a great way to find amazing people.

He's hedging his bets because you are a very risky proposition.

No employee is going to drink the Kool-Aid like the founders until the project proves itself. If it's going well, he'll come on full-time. If not, he doesn't have a hole in his resume and his bank account.

If this person has the chops you need, do the deal and prove your worth by landing customers and investors.

This seems to be a lot of assumptions on what the "candidate" might feel like. TBH, We dont have enough information.

Why would the candidate hedge their bets on risky propositions by working part-time on TWO startups? Wouldn't it be more likely they need a side-gig (backup plan)?

Get over yourself and hire them.

I've worked part time for several companies and I'd argue strongly against the idea that part timers can't be committed and have an impact on the company.

In my last job, I worked part time and lead a project to migrate the whole company to Git and Ansible for deploys. I then lead another whole project to migrate all the developers from an old dev server with issues to a new shiny dev server using Docker. Actually, that project we took slowly, we migrated a handful of developers and let them try it first, work out any teething problems. Then I was away for a long weekend, I came back, turned out the old dev server had spectacularly fallen over and rather than try and fix it, they had just migrated all the developers straight away without me. It was fine.

With that in mind, another point: having part time workers is great for making sure things are well documented and you don't develop dependencies on key employees.

And I'd agree fully that "passion" is often a red flag. I'd think carefully before joining a company that went on about that. Employees will have a different relation to your company than founders will. You have to acknowledge that.

Also, have you ever complained that's it hard to find good talent? A lot of companies do. They complain bitterly that they can't find the tech staff they need, yet when asked what they do to try and solve this they basically have no answer. Don't be like them.

Start thinking about how you can attract talent now - and supporting those that for whatever reason need flexible and part time work is a great way to attract people. Your current hires reasons are personal projects, but that won't always be the reason. At my current company we have several great workers who are part time - because they have child care needs. They are fantastic workers and contribute a lot. Do you really want to cut all those people out?

> Get over yourself

Please edit nasty swipes out of your comments here. Perhaps you didn't mean it that way, but that's the way it lands on the internet, and it evokes worse from others.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If this person is bright, capable, and has your trust, you’d likely do well to bring him on.

You may be surprised what someone can get done in 3 days a week. You’ll have a as well a grateful employee, who it sounds like has a range of interests (this May mean even more critical thinking and solution creativity for you).

Also, it’s at least been my experience, that when we grow out of really small teams, it can take a while to define really well what a role should look like. This is further then an opportunity to test this 4th employee role without paying for downtime during that definition phase.

And who knows, maybe he falls in love with your project even more after he starts and you can re-approach full time work in the heat future.

I would imagine that many top DEVs would love to work for a company that allows part-time work and be happy to take less money to do so.

It's very common in some countries, here in Switzerland I could literally reduce my work hours to 90 or 80% with a couple clicks on the company HR portal, and even further down with approval from my manager.

But even in the US, I know people at big companies that take one or two months of unpaid leave. Would it be a problem to take every Friday off as unpaid leave?

Talking about big companies is getting off on a tangent from startups, but the thing about asking for accommodations in general is that you never know what is really permitted. If you ask for too much, and nobody tells you because it's awkward or illegal to refuse, then down the line you may have consequences that you may or may not notice, with your job/career. Even if the consequences are in some sense reasonable and justified, it could be you're not thinking of them when you take the actions that cause them.

I think it's inevitable that the more formal your options and protections are, the more people work around that, so in a country like yours I would expect it to be an unspoken minefield.

Hire for professionalism. You've been working on this for a long time. It means it's intrinsically interesting for you, and you've gained quite a lot of internalized intuitive understanding of the field.

It's very unlikely that you find someone who is intrinsically interested of the same things as you. Or has as deep intuitive understanding of all the business variables. But it does not mean he can't provide great value.

Id's say it's a red flag if you hire for "passion" instead of "professionalism". True professionals want to do a good job and ship on time. You don't need "passion" for that.

I think it depends on the management team and on the hire. Just like some people can work remotely effectively and others cannot... some people can work part-time effectively and others cannot.

I've had this be very successful one time with a senior developer who was working in roughly the same stack across side projects as well as what I had hired him for. He was able to time-slice very well. He could come in and in a fraction of the time of the rest of the team make a meaningful impact in both pushing his own features as well as reviewing others' code/architecture.

I've found in running a consulting practice that if people need to split their time across projects that they generally do their best work when they can devote a consistent set of days to specifics projects/team (Project A on Mon-Wed, Project B on Thu, Project C on Fri). Trying to time-slice throughout the day of 4hr with Project A and 2hr with Project B and 2hr with Project C becomes too much context switching for most people.

One other thing to keep in mind: if people do not work enough on a single project, they will not achieve enough momentum to do great things. Or if the rest of the team is working full-time, it may be too much effort to keep them in the loop of everything that has changed since it is moving at a faster pace than what their time allows. You can try to overcome this by not working on critical parts of the product or having their features not be depended upon by others.

Can he get done in 3 days what someone else would do in 5?

Businesses are always selling products that claim to do be better and do more than their competitors. I’m sure the same is true for employees!

If so then let him work the 3.

Hire good people.

Are they good? Then hire them.

Are they not good? Don’t hire them.

Everything else is a distraction at this stage.

N days of good people is better than 0 days of no one.

Also, you’re the leader, you live the culture, others will follow your lead.

Agreed you're going to DRY yourselves into repeating the same naive mistakes as every trio of passionate and friendly guys who are looking to make their first hire and don't screen for whether they use the urinal without holding a cell phone

Then you'll build up all your institutional knowledge in some pillars of your company who will bounce the minute they get an opportunity offering better foosball tables and that's when you'll realize all your technical debt is baked so deeply into your processes you will have to hire a vice president to bail you out with a director in tow

Meanwhile as with most people you won't understand a gift horse as it's staring you in the mouth of a guy who's offering you a real break because you insist that work has to feel like a slog and you really want to be like the cool kids in the valley but you're not

You're just three regular stooges who don't know a corporation from a clambake and the next post is going to be about how you defaulted on your vision but you'll call it a pivot

Hire him if he has the skills you need. If three days a week are not enough for you you can always hire another person later on.

You cannot require potential employees to be passionate about your company.

It is your responsibility to make them passionate about your company. (If at all possible.)

> had cancer followed by twins. We reassigned the CEO title, thinking with heads over hearts.

This sounds like the person was punished for being sick and then having kids. Am I reading this wrong?

Depends what happened to their compensation and stake in the company (hopefully nothing); in that state it's harmful to both parties to keep the CEO responsibility on someone who's going through that much.

If your culture breaks because you hire a mercenary, it sounds like a shitty culture to me. Other employees will be more engaged than others, and it is a good idea to accept that from the start.

In my opinion it is good to have diverse people. Part-time people have more time-management costs and hassle, so it should be otherwise better price/quality ratio. However "lacking passion" is not a good reason to reject a candinate IMO. You should hire to get the job done.

> could possibly influence our culture in a negative way

Pretty sure you're supposed to ignore "culture" until your company has established itself

The big question here probably is regarding compensation. Are you offering sufficient compensation to "buy out" these personal projects? If you're offering half the compensation that he expects, then you can afford half of his time; This post does not have enough details to tell if that's the case here, but it's a possibility.

I think you are over-thinking it. A single part-time employee won't fail your start-up, a lot of other things will like not being able to deliver before your runway runs out. For great employees, it's a negligible loss if they want to take time off to do something else. Not everyone wants to toil away their lives slaving for somebody else.

But if you have other candidates who possibly wouldn't be part-time employees in your sights, you might want to try to hire them first. I know from employer's perspective part-time workers can be a little annoying as they get all the benefits with only eg 60% commitment. And they take as long vacations as the regular employees too.

Disclaimer: I have worked as a part-time employee, and I did deliver during my few work days as much as I would have done as a full-time employee. Moreover, it actually felt much nicer to me to do only a few days a week and being a full-timer at times was almost a bit depressing. Same old stuff, everyday, kinda bores you out.

Don't hire - there's nothing wrong with him, or with working part time, at all, but you already don't trust him. Unless you have the absolutely iron self-discipline to not sabotage his work by distrusting him, don't put either yourself or him through it. Unfortunately, the negative culture has already taken root.

You are correct to think about the implications to your company culture. IMO it’s going to be tough to reconcile expecting the others to grind hard with him being part time. Also, I think you’re basically providing runway for his other venture. The bottom line is, what kind of company do you all want?

Edit: someone once told me: hire slowly, fire quickly.

I think you shouldn't hire him, but your reasoning is somehow wrong. Early stage startups require decision-making on the spot, daily. If the guy isn't there, he'll be out out the loop and you'll be frustrated. So the reason not to hire lies in logistics.

Now, about passion and culture... I don't know if this is your first ride, but you probably know that business models and products change. I personally joined a startup which was building brain-training mobile app. Half a year later we were doing marketing automation for recruiters. I think few of the founders have passion for the product, they have passion for building things, or for making their equity worth millions. So you've got to look for employees who like building things, rather than excited about your product.

I can emphasize with you, as a first hire is always a tough decision. Having bad first hires can set a company back, make it harder to hire others in the future and be bad for moral (which makes it that much more important).

What an employee does outside of work should not matter in your decision (tons of people have side gigs, for example).

What should matter is the expectations and the output of the employee. If you feel that its important to have someone working full-time, in the office 5 days a week, then I think that's perfectly OK (in the same way that its OK if an organization cannot handle remote teams). This is a decision you would be making. If you wanted 5 days a week, that would disqualify this candidate (at least for now).

IMO (and experience), the lack of commitment is the `three days a week` instead of full-time.

Why so much drama? Hire him and keep or let go in a month or two depending if both of you are happy or not.

If you want someone who shares your "passion" then you are looking for a cofounder, not an employee.

And to change the subject: you've been in existence long enough for someone to battle cancer and have kids but no income has been generated? Is making some money on the radar?

I can understand why you guys are worried about this but what is the problem with trying it and seeing how it goes - you could also negotiate with him about different time schedules and maybe a small amount of time on his days off should it be necessary.

I have no problem with the word passionate but in the end will you be happy with this person's contribution for what you are paying them. If not you need to let them go during their probation/as soon as possible.

You really have nothing to lose and you probably get a well rested developer who can work hard for the 3 days. I would go for it but set boundaries and expectations - for example I would prefer to have him in full time for the first 3 weeks of every month say rather than this odd schedule.

I would hire him if he really is that capable.

Edit: misunderstood that the colleague actually isn’t currently working for OP. Still, I stand by that if he was good before and you trust him to do a good job, then he’d make a good hire.

Think of it this way: you cannot, in a million years, think that an employee is ever going to be as passionate about _your_ project as you are. It’ll never happen.

So deal with it. Remember that if push comes to shove and you lose money, you’d be firing him due to not being able to pay him. And the same would happen to you if the roles were reversed. You’ll never be part of a “family” in a company, despite what everyone out there says. Business is not family, it’s money.

If he’s putting in good work while part time, then that’s all you need from him.

I would definitely hire them. I don't see it as a lack of commitment, rather he/she just understands the value of their time. 24 hours of labour is NOT 60% of a full work week, especially for a knowledge worker.

It's a big green flag from my perspective.

Thank you all. We hired the guy. He came to our office, had a one2one with each of us and we clarified the reasons for 3 days and side projects. Everyone was happy and we shook hands the same day.

He is would still work three days, run side projects for fun and if he likes what we do he’d join full time - let’s see!

I don’t expect passion as a given from employees, even though we share good chunk of equity and our project is hugely challenging technically and open ended. Perhaps I should have used “enthusiasm”?

Being someone who was there, it sounds like this person is looking to 'hedge' their risk. He's placing two bets - on his own project and yours.

If you're afraid of this affecting your culture, don't treat him as a full timer. Instead, treat him as a contractor, with the option of going full time if you do well.

This is IMO the only sweet spot for contractors, when someone is brilliant but outside your budget. I'm not a fan of part-timers, but 3 days is a good commitment, as opposed to someone who only works nights. Depending on the type of person, a developer might even end up achieving as much in 3 days as they would in 5 days.

It all depends on your options. If you think you can find someone else equally capable, that fits your culture, then don't hire this guy. I think we work in a field where some guys can do in 1 day what others would do in a week or more. It's not only a matter of putting long hours. In my company, we have a guy working remote from around the world, I'm not even sure how many hours he's supposed to work for us but he's not full time. He has been extremely helpful in his own ways (fixing bugs, reviewing code...). I'm glad we've been flexible enough to accommodate his profile.

I'd be more dedicated to a project that allowed me part-time work than I am to my job. I would consider that flexibility to be as valuable to me as my financial compensation, and would fight to keep it. It would let my work/life balance shift more towards life, so that while my time is limited, my passion to keep that role would inspire me to be as productive and effective with that time as possible.

So I'd talk directly to this person about your concerns. Maybe they are like me, maybe not - but talk to them and find out, then make a decision.

I don't think you're giving enough neccessary information here. Is his role just chunk out the code, help with backlog and fix some bugs? Or he's going to be responsible for making strategic tech decisions and then communicating with entire future tech team about them? Obviously the latter is a much worse fit for a part-time, low-commitment employee.

What about these features he'll have to compete - are they well-defined? Has he done similar things dozens of times before, or will he have to research it as he goes together with everybody else?

I can offer a perspective from the developer's point of view:-

Great developers (like the one you mentioned) have significant opportunity costs.

Unrelated:- I am looking for opportunities in this space.

[Resume] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mzQHjxMlAi_LOrQwccnQUskjzjr...

Meh... In most cases, talking about "passion" in this context is just a roundabout way of saying "we want people to work harder for less compensation." Expecting founders to have "passion" is fine, since they (presumably) own equity stakes that will make them wealthy if the company is successful. But unless you're giving your early hires a large stake in the company, I'd suggest dropping the "passion" verbiage and treat them like mercenaries - like every other employee. Your vision, your dream, your passion, etc. are yours... there's very little reason to expect other people to share that, given that they likely already have things that they are passionate about, visions they care about, etc.

Hire the guy (or gal), scale their compensation to match the amount of work they actually do and call it good. If you're worried about them leaving too soon if their side project takes off, you can always try some "golden handcuffs" in the form of some perk that disappears if they leave before X months. And who knows, maybe that would make them decline the offer. In which case, honestly, everybody probably wins in the end.

Yeah, "passion" is a huge red flag word for me. In the same realm as "ninja" or "rockstar."

What do you all call the feeling around enjoying the work you do because of the mission and/or technical challenge and/or team? Or, the feeling of wanting to do high quality work wherever you are?

Generally, I've never worried about that being called passion.

Passion and having a problem with 3 days is probably the red flag

Personal dating ad: "person wanted for passionate relationship." What's wrong with this ad is that passion is a byproduct of chemistry, so you can't "bring" it to a work environment, but sometimes you+work+team click and it happens. You could have an inherent passion for a cause, but you would still be subject to chemistry.

I'd call it passion! But it's like mindcrime said, mostly a case of word inflation in this particular context.

So for me it's not what word I'd use instead of "passionate," but what word they're using "passionate" instead of. The most likely candidates I'd put forth: Naive, positivist, perfectionist, agreeable, friendly, excitable.

I think teams with too many "passionate" (in their use) people run into serious problems.

There is a big difference between an employee feeling passionate about their work because of things like the team, etc and a boss telling an employee "YOU MUST BE PASSIONATE!"

> feeling of wanting to do high quality work wherever you are?

I guess that when you state that, you assume relevant compensation.

But often companies put that in job description when they search for „people who want to do high quality work wherever they are”, literally.

In worst cases they end up exploiting more naive or less experienced workers.

True, but you don't know which type of company it is until you talk to them or do some research right? I wouldn't want to just assume that when so many good companies use that word as well.

> I wouldn't want to just assume that when so many good companies use that word as well.

Name three.

I'm yet to see a single company expecting "passion" that would be doing something worthwhile, or even something one can actually be passionate about.

It is a bit relative to the person I would imagine. Some people might be passionate about working at Canva, some people might be passionate about working at Instagram, etc...

Depends a bit on what you enjoy doing and how you want to fill your day I guess.

My passion is to my family, my craft, and to my own personal projects and ventures. If you hire me for money you'll get my talent, my time, my undivided attention, my friendly demeanour, and you might mistake a display of excitement or passion here and there because a juicy problem was solved with elegance, to passion to your company but it's just the passion to my craft. Passion (and I agree - ninja and rockstar) should be removed from the hiring lexicon.

I would go even further - passion is the promise to stuff an employee's life with emotional bullshit.

Some people actually need this from work, in particular those who have very little interests outside work. That's why it works best for the young and restless.

> Or, the feeling of wanting to do high quality work wherever you are?

We have a word that literally translates as "professional pride." Now I'm not sure it has the right vibe in English, but it captures the idea that you do high quality work and you wouldn't do a sloppy job, even if the job sucks.

For example, I would like such a plumber, because I know they will be careful not to make a mess, and they will clean up after them, and they are careful and will double check their work to make sure it's fully done and solid and not going to leak.

I don't expect them to be passionate about working with clogged pipes full of literal shit. I'm OK with them not wanting to spend 16 hours a day doing plumbing; if they only do three days a week but perform a respectful job, that is perfectly fine. In fact I'd be a little concerned if they said they're passionate about plumbing..

> What do you all call the feeling around enjoying the work

Enjoying the work. That's it.

To me, passion is something much deeper and even intimate. If you devote your life to something and you'd do it even when it doesn't pay the bills, I could accept it as passion. Otherwise, it's just a job that you enjoy.

> We have a word that literally translates as "professional pride."

Where are you from and what is the word?

Finland. "Ammattiylpeys."

I love it! :-)

How do you pronounce that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOWSAJJ1xmM

Uh, with difficulty :D For starters, English doesn't have the /y/ vowel or the geminated /tt/ sound…

Sounds like "conscientious"

I learned that when I lived 6 months in an Ashram, they called it Karma Yoga. What it usually meant in practice was easy task, wrong tools. Like clearing the entire area around the building from solid ice using a shovel, or cleaning a thousand small potatoes with a tiny brush. The kind of tasks it's very difficult to feel anything like passion for. But it's still perfectly possible to enjoy doing a good job, even without expecting anything in return.

I always thought it was an American thing(the asking for passion part) and a culture gap between them and "us" foreigners/Europeans. But it sounds like it's not exclusive to foreigners working with Americans.

The way I see it, I bring a lot of experience to the table as well as my passion to solve problems. But it's extremely hard to be passionate for the "vision" of the 20th company trying to revolutionize log processing(when the founders never even did their due diligence) for example. I get that the founders may have had some personal experience that led them to be passionate about a certain problem.

But when they ask me to help them in a specific topic they lack experience in and then ask me to be passionate about working the next 2 years doing mundane work I personally think it's incredibly disrespectful towards me or anyone in my position.

I used to try to explain why I thought like that, but nowadays I mostly agree with the other people here and treat it as a red flag WRT how complicated it will be to get work done around these kinds of founders.

You can call that passion, but you can't demand passion. Passion doesn't work that way. You can certainly foster this passion in your employees by giving them real buy-in, making their contributions matter, and having them benefit from the success of the project.

I'm passionate about the project I currently work for, but it's probably the first professional project ever (in 20 years) where I feel this way. And I feel this way because I was involved right from the very early start, I've got tons of context, and saw this develop from the very first prototype that I wrote to its current state. I did the job interviews for most of the rest of the team. I may only be a freelancer working for a major bank, but man do I feel a lot of ownership for this project. I love this project, but I notice not all of my team mates do. You clearly can't force or demand this kind of passion. Certainly not up-front.

I still work only 4 days a week, by the way.

I have a passion for the work I do part time. It is because of the technical challenges though. I fill the non work time with other technical challenges most of the time.

I do not think passion and part time work are at odds at all.

Passion is good, but it should never be used to overwork or underpay people. Never shit on someone else for having a good work/life balance and accuse them of not being passionate or whatever. That's a toxic work culture and honestly, given how much money is going around in software development, it shouldn't be necessary.

Pay people if you need them to work overtime. In hard cash, not vague promises. And if you've burned through your VC money already, don't try and push through on debts; cut your losses, give your employees plenty of heads-up, and pay them before your money runs out.

I mean if you don't want to hire them part-time, someone else will.

That is passion, the issue is when the reason companies care about it is b/c they want to exploit it i.e. pay people less.

So, passion is a a good thing, assuming it doesn't (negatively) interfere with compensation. If you want passion, pay for it. If you don't want to pay for it, you don't want passion - you want leverage.

I would call that professionalism

> What do you all call the feeling around enjoying the work you do because of the mission and/or technical challenge and/or team? Or, the feeling of wanting to do high quality work wherever you are?

As someone who has this - I have a dedication to solving what I think the business's needs are over what my management thinks the business's needs are. It's sometimes actually quite useful and sometimes not.

This is something key that I feel most employers looking for “passion” don’t get.

I have a lot of passion for the small startup business I’m working for... I have a vision for their product, the ability to execute that vision, and a strong sense of ownership and desire to put out a great, premium product.

Problem is, my vision and the owner’s vision are not the same. He likes quick fixes and focusing on the daily grind, I want to work out big, longer term things. For as much as the owner wants people to share his passion in what he’s building, I know for certain he wants that passion to be “blindly working for whatever he says is important at the moment and not being too passionate beyond that”.

That kind of passion, IMO, is unrealistic and unfair, but I suspect it’s what most employers really want.

> "What do you all call the feeling around enjoying the work you do because of the mission and/or technical challenge and/or team?"

That's passion.

> "Or, the feeling of wanting to do high quality work wherever you are?"

That's professionalism, although one might also describe it as being passionate about behaving professionally.

Just to add a point to the parent comment: passion is a spark you fuel with CASH (and other incentives) to burn brightly, if at all. Also, if your guy can get the job done in 3 days whats the issue ? I'd interpret that to mean you hired a highly competent engineer.

> "If you're worried about them leaving too soon if their side project takes off, you can always try some "golden handcuffs" in the form of some perk that disappears if they leave before X months."

Seems to me the obvious choice here would be to give him equity that vests over time. Have it scale with how much he works. That rewards his "passion", if he has it or develops it over the course of the project, and it might tempt him to commit more. Vesting over time discourages him from leaving early.

I see both sides. Your "one year ten times" developer clearly shows no passion. But after 20 years in the industry (learing more than two years worth) I haven't got a lot of passion left in me.

so many words! such easy answer! pass. (with reluctance)

i also want to comment on shuffling the CEO role. that’s a mistake, in the abstract. the CEO role isn’t a dart you throw. would you say, i guess i’ll be CTO or CMO because of xyz extenuating circumstance? no. the role has to be filled with someone suited for it.

i don’t even know why you mentioned it. seems irrelevant to the question.

I think it makes a lot of sense to pay extra attention that the first hires have a passion for the mission. Passion could be driven by just a great product but also good equity package (with some flexibility of selling equity before an exit, IMO important for early employees. Maybe your former colleague could get passionate about your company under such terms?

If not, but the person is fairly senior and has excellent skills, I'd still consider hiring them but make it clear that's a different role and not the pillar shaping the company but rather a person laying a good technical foundation. That way you can hire another person that is more committed to the company but could benefit from that technical foundation.

But otherwise, I'd pass.

I've been working at startups for 10+ years and while I understand the negative association with 'passion' and saw that as excuse for bad compensation as well, I'm gonna assume you're not just looking for cheap labor but truly people who can grow with the company and and benefit from it success. In that case it would be a shame to hire a person for which it's just another job. (There are plenty of jobs if that's what one is looking for.)

If you are unable to hire elsewhere the skill-set that your ex-colleague brings to the table, what happens to your startup in the short to medium term ? i.e would that set your MVP back by x months ? I would try to frame the question in those terms and balance it against the commitment/culture fit concerns.

> I cannot easily decide if he is the right kind of first hire.

Do you have a NEED?

Understand that you only have bright, capable, technical talent for a brief time window. They don't offer their services to every Bozo.

These people grow, their needs change, interests evolve. The challenge for every employer is keeping them engaged.

> But right now I feel like lack of commitment from him...

At this point I realized that this post is appropriate for Reddit's AITA[0].

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole

Ah, the jail warden theory of management

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