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Comment by username_my1 | Hacker News Reader

One thing I would say from personal experience (because I've been hiring on budget for 6 years now).

Don't go for the big names / nba level, don't even go for the second league candidates, go for 3rd and 4th and find people who're looking to do a great job (there is a lot of them) and give them the environment to do so.

I think Microsoft had a study about creating effective teams from ordinary people, and I've seen it a lot at my company. make sure that you have a good engineering culture and people who want to learn and do a good job, you will end up with superstars.

also, there is loads of engineers doing shit jobs and dying to work on something a bit more interesting or more rewarding.

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At least rationally this should be obvious.

Extraordinary people are extremely limited. The recruitment process is not perfect. The performance equation consists of far more than just the individual's capabilities. Every variable is subject to diminishing returns upon investment.

Microsoft study aside (I couldn't find it either, mostly redirects to Teams), there are tons of studies coming out over and over pointing out how capable the ordinary person is when put in the right environment. We see this every day too, a complete "nobody" rises to fame within a year of dedicated work, to levels most people would claim "you need 5-10 years to be at that level", if not more. And these people aren't doing it in unimpressive ways like making a meme game or a joke website or whatever, no; they are making things which put companies with millions of dollars in budget to shame. If individuals can do this on their own accord, so too can a team with a specialist open to teach others, in work far less glamorous and difficult.

I don't think many people at VC backed companies or FAANG are 'extraordinary' it's not like Zillow or robinhood app developers or whatever are unique people I would argue that they are usually people who ether went to great schools (money) or connected or learned to ace the interview process.

I've yet to see open source code from FAANG or other big players that looks like it was done by a genius. it's just professionals who know how to read documentations, and know how to write clean code and know how to work in a good engineering process.

also when you're building an app (web, mobile, SAAS ...) I really really doubt you need or want 'extraordinary' people ..

Yeah, I was kinda alluding to that. If ordinary people can do amazing things in a single year with almost no prior skill, it shouldn't be difficult to rationalize why/how a company could find ordinary people to do their much-less-glamorous work given just a few basic background checks and a single specialist in a primarily supportive rather than developing role, instead of the complete charade going on right now. And studies keep coming backing this up (or at the very least unable to refute this).

Then you add on top of that, companies tend to give pretty strong incentives to do their work anyway (you know, survival and luxuries). Even "cash-strapped" ones tend to pay well over median.

> Microsoft study aside (I couldn't find it either, mostly redirects to Teams), there are tons of studies coming out over and over pointing out how capable the ordinary person is when put in the right environment.

I'm skeptical of what Microsoft considers an "average contributor" considering they were known to have a pretty high bar for recruiting (they were notorious for rigorous algorithmic interviews even back in the 90's). And the comp was also pretty strong especially considering stock performance back then.

[0] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-guid...

You sounds really like the two founders I'm friends/neighbors with. I love the way they hire, train them, while still expecting few will still leave them for "better opportunities".

For those interested, Zoho[1] is doing this in a pretty big way. I had been lucky to be one of those very few outside-people that Zoho had agreed worked with. I even visited one of their location in a very remote corner of India and love what they are doing. They can practically change the landscape, education, and family wellbeing of an entire village/town.

1. https://www.zoho.com

Interested in the study if you have it, but yes I agree totally. Superstars can be very tough to steer.

unfortunately I couldn't find it. but I hope someone else will share it.

Fairly certain it wasn't but was it this Google study instead? https://rework.withgoogle.com/print/guides/5721312655835136/

but do you lowball them though?

no ... we pay market salary ... but we can't pay VC money, every 3 months company retreat, spa ... and we can't pay FANG

> we can't pay VC money

> we can't pay FANG

So you're not paying market salary.

lots of people think that vc money rates are market rates.

Do they also think that Lamborghinis are “market cars?”

They’re not paying the top of market salary. They are paying a market salary.

People who want the full FAANG experience are welcome to chase/choose that. This article and comment thread is about a hypothesis that there are very good developers who don’t want that full FAANG experience and how employers might meet them at another point on the multi-dimensional frontier defined by (company, interesting problems, pay, colleagues, BS, on-call, work conditions, tech approach, remote, etc.).

Different points in that space have different market rates. The rate to work 3 days/week, full remote, with three other great colleagues on a project personally meaningful to you is different than a 5-day per week job on-site in an open bullpen pushing software to wring more value from a warehouse worker or target ads 0.0001% better.

If you think FANG is market salary you understand neither what the FANG acronym represents (the very top companies in the industry) nor what market salary means (average salaries - NOT what top companies can pay in SF).

It turns out supply and demand are both curves, not points. A "market salary" is the entire graph--and even that is vastly oversimplified.

Personally, company retreats are generally a big turn-off for me. I prefer traveling with my family. And if I have to travel for work, I prefer it to be about the actual work and not about going someplace with the rest of the company to stand in a conference room chanting weird slogans or what not. If the work is interesting, I'd rather keep doing that and if it isn't, a company retreat is _not_ going to help.

Company retreats have nothing to do with traveling on your own during your pto…

With remote work it’s going to be extremely common for teams to “get together” a couple of times per year in person. This doesn’t seem like a bad thing? It’s fine not to like it but it seems valuable.

Sure, but they have a lot to do with spending time away from my family. If I'm to spend time away from my family I want that time to feel worth-while. I have yet to go on a company retreat that felt worth it.

The biggest boon to a company retreat has always been to come and see a new place but then I've always wished I could share that experience with my family instead.

How much?

Have you tried raising more? What went wrong?

that’s not a good question

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