How to find a developer in a garage startup: from personal experience
Are you an entrepreneurial enthusiast, and you have an idea that will change the world? Congratulations! And now here's your first challenge, which will quickly bring you down from heaven to earth. Unless you are a lone genius, you will need a development team. And if you really want to realize your idea, they must be professionals. Or at least one of them, the most important one - again, if you yourself have not been a professional service station since 1978. And now the question is: how to attract into the garage start-up without an investment a seasoned developer who weekly tries to entice multi-million corporations, each of which is willing to pay him n thousand dollars?
Initially, our project team consisted of three people - a project manager, a journalist and a financier. Everything is fine, but there was no one to code. So we had to search.
')
It is believed that the main goal of a start-up is to raise investments, mold a product version that works for good (albeit on many crutches) and sell it to Google for a fortune. Based on this, we can assume that for the members of the startup team the financial component - read salary - should be very important. And immediately and preferably more.
But the garage start-up is a cashless default, since there is no product yet, investments are not raised, and all the money goes to pay for the services necessary for the work. And to compete for employees with a large development company, where salaries start at $ 2 thousand, a startup is often not able to do.
At one time, we solved this problem simply: we went to the regions. Found a wonderful developer-downshiftera, escaped from the capital to the next area, and invited him to his. He liked our idea, and he agreed to work for the minimum bid. In his sleepy town, it was still boring and nothing to do.
However, as soon as he began work on the project, the town suddenly stopped being sleepy. When it turned out two weeks later, he was able to complete only one-fifth of the tasks assigned to him, we had to seriously talk. He explained that he was invited to take Java courses, and he was embarrassed to refuse. In addition, he received an extremely interesting offer, which he simply could not refuse, and he only had about two hours left for our project. The problem was that about two or three weeks he worked in this mode, while we thought that he wrote our service all day and night. His recognition and report on the work performed were an unpleasant surprise for us. We parted.
So we realized that you can't buy motivation with money, because there will always be someone who will give more money, especially if you are in the garage.
Two days after breaking up with the first developer, we found a new one. This new most of all resembled electrobroom. For a start, he proposed to organize a four-day hackathon, during which we had to fully implement the basic functionality of the service. Hackathon failed, but we still agreed.
This developer did not need money. He wanted fame and share in the company. And considerable - a third. For this, he had to write the engine for our web service alone and take almost all of his support for the first time. We gritted our teeth, but agreed. The deadlines were tight - by the end of the month we planned to make a presentation at the largest meeting of psychologists. Where we, of course, did not have time.
It so happened that we actually ran into the same rake. The last place of work of our developer was an IT company with foggy Ukrainian owners in gold chains and managers who formulated their desires roughly as “well, so that here, it means the button was, well, such that the screen blinked, and something else from above stick it on. " As a result, a huge development team actively chaos every day from ten to six. And this, obviously, has become a habit with our developer.
Taking on the role of the future service station, he immediately brought a lot of rustling. He could call in the middle of the night asking how best to implement this or that feature. Or convene those same hackathons, which, however, the case stopped soon enough.
But three weeks before the scheduled conference, friends from his hometown came to visit him, and for a week he turned off the process.
And immediately after leaving friends, he fell ill. Sick one and a half weeks. At the same time, it turned out that in the previous time, in spite of the active demonstration actions and dozens of tasks initiated in the task tracker, almost nothing was done. We called him to account, but he announced that he was dying from angina. After his recovery, we met, he was really pale, but at the end of the conversation he blurted out that the cause of pallor was not a disease, but a hangover. The next day he had to start working on a new section of the service. But not started. He didn’t answer our calls anymore, although in certain places someone was constantly seeing him.
So we realized that motivated enthusiasm does not mean real interest. Our developer perceived the project as a hobby, a passing hobby, because he was old and wise, and had certain notions about how to work: not to get a result, but to satisfy (or imitate satisfaction) the authorities. It was definitely not what we needed.
Moreover, obviously, the financial and personal interest that made him claim a share of 30% was in the too distant future to motivate a fairly practical person every day.
After all that happened, we decided to go the other way. We did it:
Yes, this is a paper ad. And yes, this is a paper ad, with the help of which an Internet startup developing a web service using the latest technologies decided to find developers.
And you know what? It worked.
We hung the announcement in the hostel of the largest technical university of the country.
After several rejected candidates, one of whom said: “I can’t do anything, but you probably will teach me. True, I want a normal salary and a share in the company, ”we found our current developer. Meet this Denis:
He claims that he came to us for a long time. Let's try to figure out why.
Denis is not an experienced IT specialist at all. He graduated from university and part-time kodit in a small Kiev company. At the same time, he still perceives his work as something new, interesting and surprising, unlike the majority of experienced developers who have long lost track of their former employers. And of course, he is interested in the experience of creating solutions that real people will use, since this is exactly what he lacks.
Another important feature of a developer in a startup is his willingness to learn quickly and flexibility in solutions. In the IT field, in principle, there are no people who are not ready to learn, but for some it is easier, and for some it is harder. And of course, since the rhythm of a startup’s life is several times faster than the rhythm of established companies, all decisions need to be made quickly.
Another well-known truth that has been confirmed: the main engine of a startup is people who are ready to devote all their time to it. People for whom there is no concept of “overtime” or the phrase “I have been working for five hours today are tired”. And, no matter how trite, but the main motivation here is the belief in the only idea that lies at the heart of a startup.
So, the answer to the question asked at the end of the first paragraph is extremely simple: no way. If you are in the garage and you are not a top-class developer yourself, do not try to entice the best to yourself. If they were ready to risk leaving a large corporation to a startup, they would have already founded their own. So they still will not lead. At least right away. Find a novice programmer who has not had time to become disillusioned with a profession that would be interested in getting a new experience, and go ahead.
Initially, our project team consisted of three people - a project manager, a journalist and a financier. Everything is fine, but there was no one to code. So we had to search.
Money
')
It is believed that the main goal of a start-up is to raise investments, mold a product version that works for good (albeit on many crutches) and sell it to Google for a fortune. Based on this, we can assume that for the members of the startup team the financial component - read salary - should be very important. And immediately and preferably more.
But the garage start-up is a cashless default, since there is no product yet, investments are not raised, and all the money goes to pay for the services necessary for the work. And to compete for employees with a large development company, where salaries start at $ 2 thousand, a startup is often not able to do.
At one time, we solved this problem simply: we went to the regions. Found a wonderful developer-downshiftera, escaped from the capital to the next area, and invited him to his. He liked our idea, and he agreed to work for the minimum bid. In his sleepy town, it was still boring and nothing to do.
However, as soon as he began work on the project, the town suddenly stopped being sleepy. When it turned out two weeks later, he was able to complete only one-fifth of the tasks assigned to him, we had to seriously talk. He explained that he was invited to take Java courses, and he was embarrassed to refuse. In addition, he received an extremely interesting offer, which he simply could not refuse, and he only had about two hours left for our project. The problem was that about two or three weeks he worked in this mode, while we thought that he wrote our service all day and night. His recognition and report on the work performed were an unpleasant surprise for us. We parted.
So we realized that you can't buy motivation with money, because there will always be someone who will give more money, especially if you are in the garage.
Share in the company
Two days after breaking up with the first developer, we found a new one. This new most of all resembled electrobroom. For a start, he proposed to organize a four-day hackathon, during which we had to fully implement the basic functionality of the service. Hackathon failed, but we still agreed.
This developer did not need money. He wanted fame and share in the company. And considerable - a third. For this, he had to write the engine for our web service alone and take almost all of his support for the first time. We gritted our teeth, but agreed. The deadlines were tight - by the end of the month we planned to make a presentation at the largest meeting of psychologists. Where we, of course, did not have time.
It so happened that we actually ran into the same rake. The last place of work of our developer was an IT company with foggy Ukrainian owners in gold chains and managers who formulated their desires roughly as “well, so that here, it means the button was, well, such that the screen blinked, and something else from above stick it on. " As a result, a huge development team actively chaos every day from ten to six. And this, obviously, has become a habit with our developer.
Taking on the role of the future service station, he immediately brought a lot of rustling. He could call in the middle of the night asking how best to implement this or that feature. Or convene those same hackathons, which, however, the case stopped soon enough.
But three weeks before the scheduled conference, friends from his hometown came to visit him, and for a week he turned off the process.
And immediately after leaving friends, he fell ill. Sick one and a half weeks. At the same time, it turned out that in the previous time, in spite of the active demonstration actions and dozens of tasks initiated in the task tracker, almost nothing was done. We called him to account, but he announced that he was dying from angina. After his recovery, we met, he was really pale, but at the end of the conversation he blurted out that the cause of pallor was not a disease, but a hangover. The next day he had to start working on a new section of the service. But not started. He didn’t answer our calls anymore, although in certain places someone was constantly seeing him.
So we realized that motivated enthusiasm does not mean real interest. Our developer perceived the project as a hobby, a passing hobby, because he was old and wise, and had certain notions about how to work: not to get a result, but to satisfy (or imitate satisfaction) the authorities. It was definitely not what we needed.
Moreover, obviously, the financial and personal interest that made him claim a share of 30% was in the too distant future to motivate a fairly practical person every day.
Experience
After all that happened, we decided to go the other way. We did it:
Yes, this is a paper ad. And yes, this is a paper ad, with the help of which an Internet startup developing a web service using the latest technologies decided to find developers.
And you know what? It worked.
We hung the announcement in the hostel of the largest technical university of the country.
After several rejected candidates, one of whom said: “I can’t do anything, but you probably will teach me. True, I want a normal salary and a share in the company, ”we found our current developer. Meet this Denis:
He claims that he came to us for a long time. Let's try to figure out why.
Denis is not an experienced IT specialist at all. He graduated from university and part-time kodit in a small Kiev company. At the same time, he still perceives his work as something new, interesting and surprising, unlike the majority of experienced developers who have long lost track of their former employers. And of course, he is interested in the experience of creating solutions that real people will use, since this is exactly what he lacks.
Another important feature of a developer in a startup is his willingness to learn quickly and flexibility in solutions. In the IT field, in principle, there are no people who are not ready to learn, but for some it is easier, and for some it is harder. And of course, since the rhythm of a startup’s life is several times faster than the rhythm of established companies, all decisions need to be made quickly.
Another well-known truth that has been confirmed: the main engine of a startup is people who are ready to devote all their time to it. People for whom there is no concept of “overtime” or the phrase “I have been working for five hours today are tired”. And, no matter how trite, but the main motivation here is the belief in the only idea that lies at the heart of a startup.
So, the answer to the question asked at the end of the first paragraph is extremely simple: no way. If you are in the garage and you are not a top-class developer yourself, do not try to entice the best to yourself. If they were ready to risk leaving a large corporation to a startup, they would have already founded their own. So they still will not lead. At least right away. Find a novice programmer who has not had time to become disillusioned with a profession that would be interested in getting a new experience, and go ahead.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/199102/
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