Startups How to hire developers, from a Software Manager with 10 years of experience. |
- How to hire developers, from a Software Manager with 10 years of experience.
- From Founder to Employee
- Looking for advice selling company
- Buyer subscribed with Stripe. Paid. Is looking to dispute that charge mistakenly. As a merchant, how do I protect myself from chargebacks?
- How to leverage well known client base when most if not all require confidentiality?
- How do I convince people to join my Startup?
- Should I take the offer?
- International Payment Processing: A final appeal
- For B2C Churn calculation, do you typically include users who join, and then immediately cancel subsequent payments? (aka Users who are just trialing for 1 month)
- Using your employers' open-source software for a startup
- Feedback on developing the product features
- CPO joining after a year of work, how much equity and yes/no co-founder?
- What is the point of doing an interview when you know the interviewer is going to sabotage you?
| How to hire developers, from a Software Manager with 10 years of experience. Posted: 05 Dec 2017 07:20 AM PST Hi! I want to be as transparent as possible here. I picked this text (2500 words) from our software house's blog to show you. Talking with our startup clients, we often hear how difficult it is to hire good developers. I hope this will be helpful to you in solving your recruitment pains. It's a text I wrote based on my conversation with our Head of Service Delivery, Wojciech Lichota. He has 10 years of experience hunting for developers on our competitive market. As per the subreddit rules, the full body of the blog post is below - minus some CTAs and links so that it reads better. Hope you find it useful! The Ultimate Guide to Hiring High-Impact Software Developers, Part One Who doesn't need software developers these days? Startups are always looking for fresh talent to get their idea off the ground. But before you can start working on your software project, you need the people who can actually do the coding. You need skilled programmers who can bring real value. And those are notoriously hard to get. Read on for an inside look at the challenges of hiring software developers - and how you can meet those challenges head on using outbound tactics like LinkedIn, workshops and hackathons. Why is it hard to find software developers? The Number One Problem with hiring software developers is competition. The bigger the city you're in, the fiercer the fight to hire the best. You might think that a larger market could provide a more healthy stream of devs, but in reality it's almost impossible to hire good developers in places such as London or the Silicon Valley. Top talent gets sucked up by the major players in the blink of an eye, leaving you straining to find anyone to work on your project. Hiring software engineers is especially tricky for companies without a well established, prestigious brand. If you fall under this category, you may find that developers either don't want to join you or will leave you as soon as the project stops exciting them. The market is very much skewed towards the developers themselves, who can pick and choose the companies that will provide the best benefits and compensation. All is not lost, however. While the competition may be fierce and high-impact developers are ever harder to recruit, the task is not impossible. I know this because I recently sat down with Wojciech Lichota, Head of Service Delivery at the Gdańsk branch of STX Next. I asked him to share his process for finding developers you can be proud of. Here's what you need to know to start hiring great software engineers. What are your options? When you set out on the search for software developers, you have two main courses of attack. Option One: Hire a headhunting agency A potentially effective solution, albeit a costly one. If you decide to hire a headhunting agency to fulfill your recruitment needs, you're looking at paying the equivalent of 1 or 2 monthly paychecks of the new hire as remuneration for the agency. This amounts to around 15,000 PLN in Poland. In the UK or US, on the other hand, you may pay as much as 25% of the hire's yearly salary. On average, that's £30,651 in the UK and $69,083 in the US. Investing such amounts in new hires may pay off in the future, but the initial cost will delay the moment when you start seeing a return on your investment. Option Two: Recruit by yourself The alternative to headhunters is to take the recruitment effort upon yourself, which is a significant challenge. However, depending on the size of your company, this solution may prove more cost-effective. One of the obstacles with 'insourcing' your software engineer recruitment is that you may not have the right skillset onboard to find good hires. For example, your HR department may find it challenging to identify and entice quality candidates. On the other hand, your project managers may try to tackle the task themselves; they may know their way around software development, but are they comfortable enough in the recruiter role to get the job done? Such challenges were the inspiration for our series of articles. We're here to share the best practices that, in our experiences, lead to valuable software development hires. Let's see what you can do to give yourself a fighting chance in this competitive market. Outbound recruiting methods This article will focus on outbound methods of recruitment. Using the outbound approach, your strategy is to find viable candidates for your software engineering positions and entice them to apply for a job at your company. (This stands in contrast to developers finding you, which is the inbound approach. More on that in another post.) A tall order to be sure, but there are proven tactics you can use to increase your odds of swaying developers to your side, ranging from classic LinkedIn messages to more creative methods such as workshops and hackathons. Direct search via LinkedIn and other portals The classic way of reaching potential software development hires is to send them a message through LinkedIn or a similar medium. This method is classic for a reason - it's fundamental to your recruitment success. In our case, it's still the number one channel for finding new developers. The key difference between success and failure here is the way you compose your first message, or your 'outreach'. A good first contact message reflects the best practices found in the best sales emails. It must be interesting and effective. Ask yourself: what can I include in the message to make it impossible to ignore? Outreach tips:
If there are other aspects of your offer you'd like to highlight in the outreach, here's one simple rule to follow: choose the benefits that separate you from the competition. Those are your key selling points and you should point them out first. If your company has great employee benefits, you can add a few words about them. If it's a modern and exciting project, make sure the candidates know about that. However, make sure that the content of your outreach is all killer and no filler. The purpose of this message is to impress the candidate, not inform them of all the details. That comes later. Recruitment via knowledge sharing: conferences, workshops and hackathons A less straightforward but nonetheless effective recruitment method is sharing your organization's tech knowledge at conferences, workshops and hackathons. It's a win-win situation: you give the event attendants a chance to educate themselves while at the same time gaining an opportunity to grow your network and expose new people to your organization. The first issue to take into account here is location, location, location. Think small and local. You have a much higher chance of success if you address a more focused, more motivated group of candidates during a smaller event. Attending larger events may raise awareness and prestige, but the audience may be from all over the continent. There's not a lot of hope that you will find someone that fits your location. Second, keep in mind that this recruitment tactic requires technical knowledge. You may turn to your CTO to help you here. Their combination of technical and business savvy gives them the right skillset to ensure an interesting conference presentation or practical workshop content. Whenever you organize or participate in an event, you should think in terms of a recruitment funnel. You need enough people attending the event to sift out those that will be either uninterested or unqualified, and get the gems that you can hire. Let's dig a little deeper into how you can ensure success for each type of event. 2 tips for effective conference presentations When it comes to making an impact during a conference presentation, Wojciech shared with me two key nuggets of knowledge. His first piece of advice is simple: don't be selfish! When preparing your content, you should ask yourself: how will my audience benefit from attending my presentation? Keep in mind that this is very different from looking into how you will benefit from making the presentation. That goal should not be your main focus; the attendants will catch on to it. Wojciech's second tip is much more specific and relates to live coding at conferences. Again, his answer is blunt: just don't do it. Live demos during a presentation create a lot of problems for little to no benefit. Even if it's smooth, it takes up way too much of your precious time. The audience is just watching you type! Additionally, it's incredibly easy to make a mistake in your code and then waste even more time on debugging, hunting for that one mistyped line as your authority falters. For those reasons, it's much better to show ready-made code snippets and keep the show going smoothly. Depending on the target audience you choose, you should also choose appropriate content. Juniors seek basic knowledge. They don't want lectures or speeches; they're mostly looking for knowledge akin to a programming course. Advanced attendants will be more interested in case studies of interesting projects. Make sure to present something concrete and focused. The matter of junior vs advanced attendants also comes into play when you're looking to organize a workshop. Workshops: junior or advanced? Organizing a practical workshop yourself can be even more effective than attending a conference with your presentation. The downside, of course, is that it requires much more work and preparation involving many people in your organization. You are the host here, after all. The most pivotal decision to make here is whether to gear your event towards juniors or more advanced developers. It's easier to conduct workshops for junior attendees - but do you want to recruit junior developers? Ask yourself this question in advance before you end up with an unproductive event. On the other hand, you can conduct advanced workshops. Keep in mind, however, that they are much more time-consuming to organize. You could spend many hours of work - even a whole month - preparing to pull of just one short event. Moreover, you'll need to bring in experienced speakers and the audience will be harder to convince - both to attend and to take interest in your job offers. Filtering: when your workshop is a little too successful Another issue to tackle with junior workshops is how you filter potential attendants. Usually your workshops will require at least a minimum of starting knowledge, even if they're geared towards relative beginners. To process the influx of submissions and get worthwhile attendants, you need to establish an automatic skills test. Anything else will create too much work to process the event smoothly. As an example, our Has Power workshops include a short, 4-question quiz. Attendants are invited based on their quiz answers and their LinkedIn profile. The need for careful selection is very real for us, since we usually have 2-3 people for each spot at workshops such as Python Has Power. Hackathons: managing expectations Another idea that has been gaining prominence among software houses and tech companies is organizing hackathons to attract programming talent. The idea of a hackathon is quite simple. You book a venue. You order food and beverages for your attendants (beer is absolutely fine!). You invite potential candidates to participate in a fun coding project. Finally, you try to hire the ones that stand out the most. Hackathons work especially great if you're a startup. You can even establish a theme for your hackathon such as VR, IoT, Big Data, AI - anything that's exciting and fits your startup profile. Invite developers to come, code something, show off their idea and get prizes for the best projects. This way you can pre-select devs who have useful skills for your purposes. You should keep in mind, however, that while hackathons can be easier to organize than workshops, they are also more expensive. Without an appropriate budget for food, drinks and prizes, you might fail to meet expectations. Remember: your hackathon must be fun! This type of event is all about creativity, so leave a lot of room for the attendants to run with their ideas. Don't impose stiff limitations. Oh, and one last thing. Don't expect that people will come and create amazing software you can sell. The event shouldn't support your product; it should bolster your recruitment. We've seen hackathons that were all about 'cheap coding labor' and rest assured, they are the very opposite of fun. Summary One thing I can say for sure after my meeting with Wojciech is that recruiting developers is a deep subject. So deep, in fact, that it couldn't possibly fit into one post. Which is why you can look forward to more in the near future! And just because I know how busy you might be today, here's a short recap of what we've covered so far: LinkedIn:
Conference presentations:
Workshops:
Hackathons:
Wow, even the recap got pretty long. All the more reason to revisit the subject very soon. And that's the full body of the blog post (minus the obvious calls-to-action at the end). Hope you found it helpful. We ended up publishing a Part Two some time later, going into inbound recruitment methods. You can find a link in the original blog post here. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Dec 2017 11:31 PM PST Hey guys, I've been running my own business for the past five years - with personal finances in mind I'm considering what my next steps would be. Want to connect with people who have moved from being a founder into joining the workforce, keen to understand their experience and decision making process. Anyone done that on here? Quick intro about me: been in business since graduation, have had a few internships along the way prior to starting up. Built up a successful food tech company and exited. Have experimented with different projects for the past two years, nothing that looks scalable at the moment. [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for advice selling company Posted: 06 Dec 2017 12:40 AM PST Hi folks, not sure if this is the right place to ask such questions - apologies if violating any rules. Myself and my partner have been running a profitable vpn company for the past 5+ years. We did some pretty neat stuff that no one else did (at least at the time) and have built what I think is a great product. However, we have begun working on another project and it's getting to a point where we need to dedicate all of our effort to it. Due to this, we would like to sell our existing company. Does anyone know what the next steps are? Do we get a broker? Do we sign up somewhere and advertise the sale? Do we cold contact random companies in the same industry? Cold contact folks on LinkedIn? Would appreciate any advice. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Dec 2017 02:36 PM PST I have an app that runs on a subscription model. One user contacted me today saying that He got charged $9.5 when our Stripe Dashboard charge clearly says $9. So I have a feeling that he's seeing a charge that's not ours unless Stripe is charging more than what it says on my dashboard. That being said, he's threatening to dispute the charge. Whether it's ours or not is unclear and the user is difficult to communicate with because he's from another country. Should I just refund him right away if I don't want to bother with the hassle and potential chargeback? Otherwise if he does dispute, does the merchant have a way of making a case? Thanks Edit : Based on the advices here, I've refunded the customer and will follow up with him on what went screwy with his payment. Thanks for the advices. [link] [comments]  |
| How to leverage well known client base when most if not all require confidentiality? Posted: 05 Dec 2017 01:20 PM PST Hey Everyone, I run a brand protection SaaS company that serves fortune 1000 companies, and others with "house-hold" brand names. It would be huge for us to have a list of our client's and their logos on our website, but most strike our request to include their name in promotional material from our contracts. Do you all have any recommendations on how to leverage these big name clients? We've considered:
Has anyone else encountered a similar situation? [link] [comments]  |
| How do I convince people to join my Startup? Posted: 05 Dec 2017 10:54 PM PST Everytime I talk to someone about my Startup they get seriously excited for one minute, then starts pitching me their own ideas for a Startup they had in mind the other minute. I know I may be a little selfish here, but all I want is for potential Future employees to come onboard to help me push this thing off the ground and maybe later their projects can be considered as an integration within the Startup or a full on new venture from the partnership. Can anyone help me with this problem... I'm really hoping I'm not being too selfish here? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Dec 2017 07:50 PM PST Hi! I'm a recent graduate interested in project management, but am currently employed at a large insurance company doing financial work. It's good money and career progression, but I feel young & am looking for challenges & it's not what I want to do long term so I turned to start ups to get more exposure and my foot in the door. I've received an offer from a company (software for a niche market, around 5 competitors), but am wondering if they are a safe risk as I'm not too familiar with startups. No equity for any new positions offered, just base salary and potential bonus. Here's what I know:
I guess my questions are:
Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| International Payment Processing: A final appeal Posted: 05 Dec 2017 07:29 PM PST I don't know where else to post this, and I'm at my wits end. I have an ecommerce platform that allows stores in Europe to list and sell items internationally. Collecting the inbound initial charge is easy, I can create the charge with stripe, braintree or a handful of other payment processors. The difficult / impossible part is transferring the money to the sellers. I've attempted to create Stripe connected accounts but if your account is not based in the US or Europe, they only allow transfers to comprise 10% of your accounts activity. I've tried braintree but they flat out mentioned that they don't offer this service any longer. I've tried hyperwallet but their fees are debilitating ($30 per transfer) and their support staff only acts to complicate the situation by suggesting middlemen like exigo who charge a starting rate of 5k/month. I'm at my wits end, I don't know where to go from here. I know that similar companies to mine with this identical business model exist, I just can't figure out how to process these outbound transfers. Does anyone have experience in this field? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Dec 2017 05:42 PM PST 2nd post in this subreddit today, but separate topic and discussion. I always like to get a feel for whatever reference there is and find a benchmark to see if the trajectory is generally right. I'm trying to get a feel for the norm of the situation here. I'm coming to 12th day of a B2C freemium launch. Currently at about a couple hundred signups. And I've had several cancellations so I'm trying to see if it's normal
My questions is - in a typical B2C SaaS scenario where you're calculating churn, do you include the 2.5% that canceled within minutes to just trial it for a month? In your experience, how many users do stuff like this? [link] [comments]  |
| Using your employers' open-source software for a startup Posted: 05 Dec 2017 05:20 PM PST Not sure if this is the best place to post this, but here is my question: I am employed at Company X, and Company X has two open-source software packages. Let's call them SP A and SP B. SP A is under a BSD 3-clause license and SP B is under a GNU GPLv2 license. As such, it appears my only practical legal restriction would be that I cannot distribute copies of the startup's software due to using a dependency licensed under GNU GPLv2 (SP B). However, since my startup would be a SaaS business, that would not be an issue. Is there any restriction on me using these packages for commercial purposes while being employed at the company? The thing I am worried about is that I do have access to other private software of the company and I am wondering if this can be construed as having an unfair advantage or somehow characterizing my application's general software architecture as akin to that of one of the company's private software package's architecture and therefore be accused of using the company's proprietary software? Should I be worried about this? The startup would not be in the same line of business as my employer, and in fact if it succeeds could potentially become a client of my employer. For hypothetical purposes, if for some reason the company found that my startup was in violation of their licenses, what would be the worst that could happen? Would I need to pay a hefty fine, or just take the site down? Thank you for any information! [link] [comments]  |
| Feedback on developing the product features Posted: 05 Dec 2017 04:46 AM PST Background: We are an early stage start-up with a mobile app and we would like to evolve into a SAAS start-up with the Web portal for the product. Problem: The feature set for the web portal is different from the mobile app. We would like to get potential user's feedback to understand the pain point (feature set) that we would like to solve for them. We don't have a budget for the market survey. If there is any hack for this, we would really appreciate. We also have a plan of creating landing pages for each feature as product and run some ads to see the response to these ads. We are not sure how good is this idea. Any thoughts or comments are welcome. [link] [comments]  |
| CPO joining after a year of work, how much equity and yes/no co-founder? Posted: 05 Dec 2017 01:00 PM PST Hello all, With my co-founder, we founded our startup about a year ago. I am the CTO, he is the CEO. We had an MVP up by August, and started some initial sales. We have some (for standard equity) workers. We did not raise funds yet. More details below. Question: would you give 8% and a co-founder title to a Chief Product Officer joining you after 12 months, in a pre-funding startup? Could having a co-founder with low equity be a problem when raising funds in seed, round A, or further on? Our status: We currently have a few thousand dollars in MRR from 20-30 customers. Our business was growing quite a bit when we were not focused on fund raising. We now have 2 good developers working for equity, another outsourced one abroad, a sales person, a UI/UX guy who is also in for equity - our idea is one which people can really get behind, so it just happens. However, we failed to raise our pre-seed fund. We did not have a coherent product plan, sort of having "chapter names" but not much more. Our business plan was fairly detailed, but lost sync with our changing plan. And, our lack of experience eventually meant that after 3 months, and several "near calls", we ended up with no investment. Right now, we are all over worked. I am at 75% capacity, as I need to moonlight to keep afloat money wise. We have a great vision, but not enough "fuel" (=money, people) to implement fast enough. We don't have enough experience in product management to know what we are missing, and not enough time to learn and do it properly, hence the fundraising suffering (among other reasons). We already saw what the outputs of the CPO are like - stellar. He is a smart dude, good natured, and best of all - he balances our duo of co-founders. I want to focus on the technological vision and team building, and execute it. I am very grounded and careful. The CEO wants to focus on the vision, on sales, networking and company building. He is very optimistic and fast moving. The CPO is what we are missing - organized, detailed, experienced, with nice accolades under his belt (also of fund raising), and a middle-ground between grounded me and in-the-sky CEO. While the CEO and I see eye to eye on almost everything, I do enjoy the fact that we can have a "tie breaker" in the CPO, and he also knows how to disarm stress. All in all, I believe that with him - we can organize our product, improve our vision and mission, raise proper funds, all in good terms - and have better, calmer communications in-company. To be honest, I feel that without the CPO - there's a big chance we will die within 12 months. I believe his presence, his skills and talents and finally - his experience, will get us to the next level. This is why I believe 8% is fine. I am not sure about the co-founder title. The CEO, as expected, says the opposite of me - he says 8% is way too much, 5% would make more sense - and no way in hell to give the co-founder title. What do you think? [link] [comments]  |
| What is the point of doing an interview when you know the interviewer is going to sabotage you? Posted: 05 Dec 2017 12:38 PM PST I recently watched an interview my friend did about an article he wrote claiming that British women were fat and entitled and if you wanted to find quality women you should go to Eastern Europe. He did that interview on a UK TV show. Needless to say, they took every liberty, berating him at every turn and asking him questions like, "What if someone said that about your mother?" I asked him why the hell he did the interview and he said its going to help with his video game launch but I still don't get it. If its the attention, won't that bring in the wrong kind of attention? As someone trying to get a business off the ground why do you think it would be a good idea to go into a sabotage interview? [link] [comments]  |
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