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Comment by HorizonXP | Hacker News Reader

So here's a question for the HN community.

I'm running a small startup in an unsexy space. I definitely don't think it's a "startcrap." We have traction, revenue, and it's a great intersection of hardware, software, and customer service.

I need to build the team. My goal for the next few months is to do exactly that, and raise funding as well to pay the team.

How do you find folks willing to work on something that isn't immediately fun or sexy? How do you convince them not to go work for Google/Facebook/Apple/Twitter, or some "fun" startup?

I have some ideas about how to do this, but I'm interested in hearing the opinions of others.

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Don't bullshit us. Don't go on and on about "changing the world" when you're obviously not.

Be up-front: "We sell widgets. They're not exciting, but they're pretty solid widgets, and we're always trying to make our customers happy and look for smart ways to get better at widget-selling."

Offer ownership: Both in the sense of literal equity, and in the sense of autonomy and control over technical decisions and (where appropriate) product direction. If you want to hire people with expertise, you have to respect them to use their judgement.

Offer work-life balance: Not everyone wants to spent 60 hours a week at work. Maybe Google offers free dinners at the office, but you offer the chance to leave the office and have dinner with their significant other.

Heh, it could be world-changing, but yeah, that's somewhat BS at this point.

I like your points about ownership, and how you distinguish the different forms of it. Both are definitely important.

Consider recruiting older engineers. Locate somewhere other than SV. In other words, plug into a more mainstream talent market. There are plenty of people willing to do "good" work that isn't sexy.

On top of this, consider allowing remote workers - it seems to be working well for Github and others, and honestly some people really like where they live.

I'm trying my best to create a culture that fosters this. Right now, the team's small enough that I can do this.

Contact info?

My e-mail should be visible in my profile, right?

xpatel at pulsecode [ca]

If calgaryeng = living in Calgary, e-mail me, I might have work for you in the near future.

your profile is empty.

Fixed.

So I left SV to come back to Canada/East Coast. I came here for a variety of reasons, but namely, our customers are here.

My previous gig was at Instagram, so I was in an environment where at 28 years old, I was amongst the oldest.

My target market is an area where the experience of older engineers will be extremely beneficial. I'm the first to admit that I am not clear on: a) Where to find these people. b) How to create a culture that is inclusive of everyone and is not ageist (or any other 'ist' ideally).

Is it really as easy as ignoring it, and addressing them as I would anyone else?

It is a sad state of affairs in the job market when this is great advice for something new to try, rather than what ought to be completely obvious standard practice.

Pick a state, and determine the best public school system in it. Within that area, find an "unsexy" office building with vacant space. Stick a pin in your map there. Now open up a real estate site and search for 4 bedroom/3 bathroom homes within X miles of that spot, both purchases and rentals. The rentals are easy. Multiply those numbers by 4, and that is what you want your developers' take home pay to be. For purchases, assume a 10% down payment and 4% interest rate on an online mortgage payment calculator, then multiply whatever you get by 5. Work backwards through benefits (assuming employee+spouse+kids options) and taxes to get the median gross pay.

For this sort of thing, you can assume that your employee will be the majority or sole earner of a household, you will provide better benefits than the spouse's job, and you can skip all the stupid perks like foosball tables and catered lunches.

Compare your bar-napkin math with current Silicon Valley prices.

What you will be offering with those numbers is a low-stress job that supports an upper middle class lifestyle. All you need to do then is to make sure that your candidates can actually do the job.

State the "perks" up front (salary, equity) - so that people who are not willing to work at that price can avoid wasting their and your time.

If looking for programmers: write a hard, challenging (but not unnecessarily complicated) coding test - you don't want to waste their time, but to excite them (and, at the same time, filter them). Like Matasano does.

I like the coding challenge idea. I have a few "real-world" problems that I could put together that could be interesting to people. The only worry I have is that I don't want people to feel like they're coding for "free."

You can't please everyone. Some people will look at a sufficiently interesting "Code Kata" type problem as a fun challenge and others will turn up their noses. Some of the former won't be a good fit, and some of the latter will be perfectly good engineers to work with. Your signaling will never be perfect. Just keep filling and vetting the funnel regardless. It's just not worth trying to please everyone all the time.

For another opinion, I would never do a "coding challenge" for any company unless I really wanted to work there. A few years ago that list included: Github because they're awesome, and Facebook for the money. I doubt your company would qualify. Also, if you're targeting older employees like someone else mentioned, many won't have time for such tomfoolery.

Well, that's the point - they shouldn't be coding for "free" - it should not be a real-world problem, which is most likely solving a stupid bug in a framework you use, or a simple CRUD/statistics script. Instead, you want a puzzle that is a challenging as it's interesting - e.g. some Code Kata as another commenter suggested. Basically, it should be interesting enough that people who don't want to apply to your job would want to solve it, and after they solve it, you offer them to apply, which they would be likely to do, because you've proven yourself a cool guy/girl.

Any programmer who isn't deluded/arrogant enough to believe he or she shouldn't have to answer coding questions understands that...he or she will have to answer coding questions to substantiate claims about ability.

Instead, I'd just avoid "real-world" problems that your company has actually worked on unless it's clearly stated as such and you're compensating the candidate for his time.

I'd also avoid challenges that are actually "solve this math problem, and express your solution in the form of a program." You see these all over in places like codility. Perhaps it's just because I have extensive education in research and mathematics already, but I consider these things to be "numerical parlor tricks" more than they are a guage of whether a person can reason out a programmatic solution to an actual problem. They almost always seem to put the candidate in the mindset of "I have to solve a math problem" rather than, "I have to write a program." Contrary to what some mistakenly believe, the two aren't the same, and for all but the most research oriented CS work the latter skill can be entirely independent of mathematical reasoning ability.

Eh, there's plenty of boring people who will work on boring things. But you can also to make working for your company exceptional in other ways, such as a great work environment (flexible, not 9 to 5), perks, or high salaries.

Or recruit a foreign programmer to come live in your (presumably) western country, where they will be happy to live in a new exciting place.

This isn't the right visa, but I'm sure there's something similar I can take advantage of to entice foreign workers: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/business/start-up/ind...

Good points on the perks/benefits/environment. Definitely on my list of things to point out to candidates.

Recruit outside sfbay.

A suggestion: if you go to a destination area like Tahoe, there are a small group of people that really really want to live there. Not every engineer does, but a few do. And that's all you need! Tahoe is also conveniently drivable from sf, in case you need to visit, and it is well under half the cost of living compared to the bay area.

Offer private or semi-private offices. I'm way more productive.

No ping pong tables and no pool tables. The loud cracking sounds made playing those games is distracting beyond belief. They're fine in a game room, but in the open they suck.

Emphasize adult lives. Set an example by coming in to work, working hard while you're there, then leaving. I've worked at a startup that regularly had people in the office for 12+ hours with, my guess, perhaps 5 hours of actual work getting done.

It's a bit difficult without knowing exactly what you're doing. None of the advice you'll get in comments will mean much without elaboration on what you're doing and what your target labor market really is, in my opinion. The phrasing of your question implies something about your target labor market (younger, Bay Area startup single person with limited or no other obligations), but it's not explicit, so not useful to anybody who might consider giving advice, I think.

Fair enough.

We've built a real-time API for monitoring building systems in commercial high-rise "smart" properties. These systems are all IP-connected, and we aggregate the data and controls into a single API. We've built a web-based dashboard for property managers to use on a daily basis to keep tabs on the building. It lets them see how the HVAC, building automation, security, lighting, even the network itself, is operating, so they can see issues as they arise. We're deployed in 1 building in the downtown Toronto core, with 2 more being added at the year's end, and 5 more next year.

The API provides us a lot of capabilities, and one area we're going to leverage that is building tools and services for the property manager to make their job easier, allowing them to focus on providing better service to their tenants. We aim to actually make the building "smart" by allowing the property managers to offload many aspects of management to us. In essence, we aim to be the YourMechanic of smart buildings. We've signed up our current customer for this.

This space is dominated by big players like Honeywell, Siemens, Johnson Controls, etc. However, they focus on delivering large equipment and installs to properties. While they do make an appreciable amount of revenue from services, software isn't typically a large part of this equation. Our aim is to utilize our software expertise to provide better service in areas not touched by their systems (i.e. they focus on HVAC, whereas we can do it all).

Suffice it to say, there are plenty of "seasoned" engineers in this space. Enticing them to work for our company instead of their current ones is something I'm struggling with.

Many of the other commenters have provided great pointers, some of which I plan to incorporate. But before I can attempt to recruit these people, I need to get to them first.

How?

Speaking as a "seasoned" engineer (I've experienced everything from IBM mainframes to the advent of PCs to web-based systems) I wouldn't consider this to be an "unsexy space" at all. You're solving a useful and challenging problem, and the opportunity to work on interfacing hardware and software seems interesting. If I were currently looking for a job in the Toronto area, I'd consider this to be a very interesting opportunity.

My biggest reservation about working for a company that's struggling to get established would be the risk of having the company fail in a couple of years and then having to look for a new job as a middle-aged developer. I'd guess that a lot of older developers have this kind of inertia.

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