Budgeting for new team members
getrealordie.com
getrealordie.com
1) 2 biz dev guys, one UI guy, one dev doesn't sound right for an early stage company trying to build something
2) This post makes you look judgmental and emotional - two traits that don't really work well for a leader
3) Your post also shows that you're not listening - you insist that anyone who wants a better rate is greedy, and is the cause for the downfall of the American economy. Drawing this conclusion after the feedback received from Auston's previous post seems inflexible.
4) The team is hiring outside for a technical hire. This could be because a) you don't know any good people or b) good people don't want to work with you. Neither sounds great.
It looks like they really need another person on their core team - not just a regular employee. Somebody who's willing to be in the garage with you ( why do you even have an office at this point, by the way? ).
You don't recruit that person by posting on the Internet, you use your social network ( and I don't mean Facebook ) to do that. Do they not have any acquaintances, former coworkers?
This may well not be the case - and in fact, I'd imagine it isn't - but the situation screams "these people don't have a technical clue themselves and don't have anyone in their social network who believes strongly enough in them to take the risk and go into a garage with them".
Something screams poor execution: confused goals (they're talking about "getting real" - a 37 signals type philosophy of building a sustainable small business - but are acting like they're built with the intention of an exit, expecting people to work for equity), getting an office before they can truly afford, lack of the right connections to find the person I've mentioned the first paragraph (without resorting to the Internet equiv of newspaper's classifieds page)
They're also doing enterprise software/SaaS - yet it's not clear that their "biz-dev" guys have any "sales engineering" experience (that's what makes or breaks an enterprise product). Along this angle, what's even more ironic is that they're asking the prospective employees to sell themselves short! What's the guarantee that such an employee won't do the same to their software/service (and yes, an early stage engineer will be involved in the sales/support process)?
Youth rocks, but sometimes it rocks hard enough that you can end up hurting yourself in a very real way.
Very very few people in your network ultimately have the stones to make the leap into the uncertainly of an early stage startup (even a well-funded one). I imagine it gets MUCH harder in Boca Raton, FL and even harder in these particular economic times.
And, expanding a team does NOT equal technical incompetence. It could mean that they have an ambitious problem they are tackling. Or that they have a line of customers out the door and want to accelerate development.
Seriously-- they fucked up-- but at least they're trying. Cut 'em some slack and stop assuming the worst.
So now programmers are all overpaid eh? I don't want to open the whole debate again, but I see something really wrong with non tech people starting a company and then expecting to be able to hire a few code monkeys to build the product. The product should come first IMHO - team of hackers working day+night.
While I can understand wanting to be frugal, I still don't see how paying rates that most engineers would consider mediocre will attract the top candidate you presumably want as an early hire.
A job is a package-- money, equity, work/life balance, autonomy, authority, etc.
I personally agree that they might be a bit "penny wise, pound foolish" here - you have to spend money to succeed, and saving 10-40k on your first hire might be a really bad idea.
That being said, there are plenty of people out there (somewhere between naive and idealistic) who would happily dive into a startup for much lower cash compensation for the other benefits (whether they are equity or less tangible). There are also plenty of just-graduated wunderkind who might have the chops they are looking for but not the experience to command a monster salary.
And look hard at geography here: http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=php+javascript+css%0D%0A&l=... (check the salary estimate on the left)
At the end of the day, these guys clearly made some missteps. They should change their tune a bit. But try to treat them like you'd want to be treated when you (publicly) screw up with your venture.
If they stopped calling people greedy/entitled/trying to blame the U.S. society (vs. themselves) and simply stated "we're early stage, we're looking for a first employee to take on founder level risk with us".
When I evaluate a startup, the two things I care about are the idea and the team. If you're doing something world-changing (or even just "really cool") and I like & respect you, I don't care what the money is. I'll even work for free (well, for decent equity).
If you have a good team but a shitty idea, I'd work there if a.) I'm an employee, getting paid decently, and am likely to learn much or b.) I'm a cofounder, personal friends with you, and you're flexible about shifting the idea. This actually describes both my previous startup and my previous employer.
I only care about money if you have neither a good team nor a good idea - but in this case, I'm just putting in time, and you probably don't want me as an employee. Hell, I probably wouldn't want to be an employee in this situation - life's too short to waste it collecting paychecks.
Raganwald wrote a neat piece a while back about uncovering the "hidden objection" and responding to that, instead of answering the sales prospect's verbal objection. People here are objecting to the money issue because it's obvious.
But it wouldn't even be an issue if it weren't for other problems with the startup. This is lead-management software with 2 bizdev guys on the team. It's totally unsexy. We don't know anything about the technical cofounder and what he's previously accomplished. It's unlikely that there'll be hard technical problems that'll provide a good learning experience.
If there were indications that the rest of the package was kick-ass, nobody would care about the money. But all the discussion so far has been about the money, so that's all we have to go on.
Skip past the "it depends" dialogue (which granted is important), and describe some border cases:
1. founders are jerks/morons, no faith in idea 2. founders are cool, but morons, no faith in idea 3. founders are cool, smart, misguided idea that might be able to be changed to work 4. founders are good + good idea
in case 1, i suspect most people only work for money in case 4, i suspect some people will be willing to work for equity or money or some combination.
In case 1, the "compensation" including money probably has to be higher to put up with a crappy job.
In case 4, how much $ would it take in a "salary only" situation. In a split, how much equity and salary would you require?
2 and 3 are somewhere in between.
I've always been curious what people think fair compensation is for early stage startups.
The Raganwald article: http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/01/what-ive-learned-from-sa...
"This is the first part of “What I’ve Learned From Sales.” In this part, “Don’t Feed the Trolls,” I present my explanation for why people act like “trolls,” raising objection after objection to new ideas, and I suggest how to side-step this behaviour and deal directly with their concerns."
It isn't the money. It's the demands their listing puts on the new hire and the inadequate compensation they offer in return.
Get Real, Ordie
I kept thinking Ordie was a pretty neat name.
Anyway, this company is pretty amazing. Before today, I had never heard of them. Now I think they are arrogant, out-of touch, egotistical losers. Any publicity is good publicity, I guess.
"We don't want to blow through our limited capital, so we're looking for 2 junior developers to create our new game changing web property for us.
And praying that what they lack in technical expertise, they make up for in passion"
Seems the author is trading one extreme (too many, too much, too fast) for another (too little). He needs to find the middle ground. Hire a rockstar, pay him a bit more then scale, give him some equity. Let him lead development but be willing to make some product trade offs.
The correct response to the "bad" cover letter in the first place was "ignore it." That would have saved everybody a lot of time.
Guess you should have taken them up on the offer then? Sounds like you'd be rich.
P.S. I didn't down-vote you so I've got that going for me, right :P