Ask HN: Culture dilemma, customers r parents, should my team be all parents too?

[eytanlevit]

My company is building "WhatsApp for photos", our target audience is young parents and I'm a parent myself.

I'm looking to make my first hires(iOS and Android devs) and I'm considering hiring only parents, and to make it a company culture thing.

Pros:

- All employees use the product, makes product better.

- Makes my company better work place for parents as working times, atmosphere very parenting and kids friendly.

- Differentiate and make it easier to hire parents that are suitable for the job.

Cons:

- Missing out young, talented developers.

- Maybe too small talent pool(there is talent shortage for mobile devs anyhow, at least in Israel).

Would love to hear your thoughts.

[ArekDymalski]

Besides possible legal issues (depending on your location, there may be a problem of discrimination) I think it' not a best idea.The culture fit you have described is just one aspect of competencies you need (attitude, values etc.) which isn't neither the only nor the most critical requirement to get the job done right. And btw you can find non-parents who will have enough empathy and adequate mindset to fit to your culture and vision. Just look at other industries - Medical companies do not select the candidates by their diseases ;)

[seenuupadhya]

I'll take the opposite tack. If you're just starting out or hiring your core team, having people who empathize with your vision is much more valuable.

This is the stage where if you're following "lean" principles, you're listening to customers. Strictly from a cost perspective, having customers in the house (as part of your team) is cheaper and you can iterate faster.

Constituting your team this way will lead to a much bigger interest in dogfooding your app once you've built a prototype. And your team will deeply and personally care about the product it is building.

But what I'll point out is that your culture will grow organically based on your team - you can't impose a culture, even if it's something as benign as "family first" - in a company of your size, anything imposed is a (forced) process and not a culture.

[petervandijck]

Make your product people parents. For engineers (backend and such), it will matter less.