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A lot of the job postings to me from YC startups seem absurd, since a lot of them seem to be looking for "expert"-level roles. For example, a lot of them are looking for a "growth engineer." My interpretation is that they're basically saying, "We have a cool product and anyone that hears about us seems to like us, so we need someone that can write code that will help more people hear about us." Or, more generalized: "We have some huge thing we want to do, and can't do it ourselves, so we're looking for someone that can pretty much just come in and do it for us." And all the postings offer in terms of describing/selling why such a immensely talented individual would work for them is: "We're reinventing the future of everything, we work hard and play hard, we can offer competitive salary and equity." The OP seems to feel this is borne out of some sort of maliciousness, but I really think this is mostly just cluelessness. When you get a little bit of traction and you have a little bit of money in the bank, and you're trying to go even faster and you have 20 major initiatives you want to do and you can only work on like 2 at a time, it's easy to conclude, "We need to hire! We love our company, this is so much better than working at some corporate stuffy job, why wouldn't anyone think the same?" Most of these companies would probably just be better served forgetting about hiring and building out the core product until they have more product-market fit, so they have enough revenue/funding to compensate employees closer to their talent level, and have a "popular" brand that people would want to actively work for. Unfortunately this would mean delaying that 3rd party API, or porting your applcation to iOS, or started using SEO/SEM to drive some traffic, which all have huge learning curves that are tough to navigate while you have a ton of other things to do. But if they were THAT critical, I would suggest those startups prioritize them over those other things and doing it themselves. |
I agree with you there, but not necessarily on your second point (that they shouldn't be hiring).
I think the "work hard, play hard" line is so thoroughly seared into most founders' ideas of the "startup game" that it doesn't even occur to them that a normal working schedule is possible -- and for founders and CEOs, it often isn't. But if you're asking employees to work to their very core, then you either need to either pay them a crazy amount of money, or look for a another co-founder.
In terms of hiring positions like a "growth engineer" as a fifth employee, you're absolutely right. Often times, buzzwords can get the best of people: maybe what you actually need is just a marketing guy, but, you know, you've been reading all these Growth Hacks articles and maybe if you find a marketing guru who can code and also mock up your UI/UX and-- and then, all of a sudden, you're trying to hire some superman to do all of the things your organization needs. It's better to hire people in positions for which they're qualified and pay them well to work their 40 hour work-weeks than it is to try to find the one Super Expert Growth Hack Architect Team Lead Manager, try to bribe him or her with equity, and expect 120 hour work-weeks.