outsourcingLet’s suppose US IT start-up receives round of financing, which is partially or mainly intended to cover costs of newly hired developers. What is typical way for such company to start (or expand) development of their product? How will they deal with absence (and/or high costs) of quality developers in start-up intensive areas. How important is price they pay for developers in such case?
I am asking these questions from perspective of eastern European IT development company, to better understand how to approach previously described start-up companies.
Initially there is a balance between the experience of the management team and the experience of the developers.
If you have a large amount of experience in managing people and projects then I think you can get away with hiring less experienced developers as they will have someone looking out for them, motivating them.
If you have little experience in management then you are better off hiring experienced developers who can be trusted to get the job done with little management and an understanding of the direction of the company. Of course these people come at a premium (in our case we paid our developers more than ourselves and had an options pool for staff - also, it was a cool project)
The worst case senario and one I see often is, inexperienced management team and inexperienced developers. Nothing gets done, money is wasted. Experience on either side of that is good and can go places for limited funding. Obviously experience on both sides is ideal but often comes after more funds are available. It depends where you initially set your priorities
I believe you need to identify the crucial aspects of your project that are required in order to secure next round of funding. At this stage you will have to make trade-offs between short and long term objectives.
The best product is the one which is available in market. Look out for developers who want to grow with you, really believe in the idea and are self-manageable. You will have to make strong decisions such that they take your through each iterations of funding until the business is capable of sustaining itself. Your strategies from there onwards can be different.
The parameters you are probably looking for in a developer as of now would be
When you have the problem of few or absent high-quality developers because of your start-up intensive location and you need a team of developers, then the first problem is finding a good lead developer that really wants the problems associated with building a team for a start-up. They need to recruit and lead junior developers while still being a “hands on” developer.
Your area will attract low level development talent. Your area will absorb that talent out of desperation. Finding someone with developed tech leadership will allow you to focus on the demands of a start-up business, while you reward your lead developer for providing critical development services and also spending time interviewing, training and developing lower level talent.
Focus on that first hire, to find a developer ready to be (or already in) in a lead/management role and still willing and able to do development. Be sure to communicate the expectations. Compensation is likely high, and based on salary and ownership percentage. Experience in your product space is very important if you want to move fast. Also, your candidate should already have team members in mind during an interview.
Avoid candidates that expect to only be a tech manager. Your ideal hire you should compensate like a manager but be clear it includes development/writing code along with their team. Your company isn’t big enough for tech managers. If you try to find a tech manager now, you risk hiring someone that won’t write code or develop the team, and will burn time and money “recruiting” talent to actually do work, while they send you reports and attend meetings.
Last, if you are under pressure then compromise based on this - if you know how to manage developers, then find someone that has less management experience that you think you can develop. If you have little or no tech management experience, find a more experience developer or even tech manager, and be sure they have a network of developers that they can recruit. Either way, if this is your situation, plan compensation and time so that you know you can replace them and give a new person a chance before you run out of money. You don’t want to leverage your whole company on a single hire..
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.