I've been experiencing some problems with my founding engineer and wanted some candid advice.<p>Context: He's pedigreed from a great CS school and worked at multiple well known big-tech companies, so have assumed that he's a high performing, action orientated programmer prior to start up life.<p>I'm also technical, but have always been passionate because I'm always working on my own projects, so maybe need a reality check on dev attitudes.<p>Current Problem: We started a company and have been getting various sales meetings where multiple large buyers have expressed interest in what we're doing. I mean huge enterprises, with multiple million ARR chances.<p>So, we've been sprinting towards building a MVP over the past 2 months, but he seems to be struggling - he's constantly asking for my help to architect the solution, refuses to read documentation or latest developments in our space, and doesn't test his solutions so our product is breaking on live demos.<p>Most worryingly, he's showing a lack of initiative in actually building "new product" - he only wants to chain existing solutions, rather than trying to imagine how we can make things better.<p>I've tried talking to him, and he brings up that I have unrealistic expectations for devs and that he's always been a 10x engineer. Am I being unreasonable in my expectations for him?<p>Please let me know if I'm being unrealistic on employee motivation
> He's pedigreed from a great CS school and worked at multiple well known big-tech companies, so have assumed that he's a high performing, action orientated programmer prior to start up life.<p>This is often a formula for being very competent at execution within given rules. Top school has a formula for getting in. Big tech companies have product people to guide you on what to do. My team has UX people to design the buttons, product to tell us the inputs and outputs, operations to define those inputs and outputs in detail, QA to ensure it is correct, devops to run all the tests, etc. I really do just write code to execute a vision.<p>I went to a well recognized school. I work for a big tech firm as one of my jobs (haven't done multiple yet). Nowhere in there was I really making open ended decisions and frankly I would be a bit terrified of decision making as I haven't made a non code related one for years. It is my job to build the dream, not define it. There are a whole pile of automated guardrails present from devops to QA to product that prevent bugs, so while I do my best, it is hardly the same as having to be completely responsible.<p>I couldn't even demo the product I have contributed to for the past two years even, simply because as a backend engineer I never open the whole thing so have no idea where the buttons are on frontend (teams have both).<p>I once joined a much smaller team without those guardrails and I was considered an underperformer on that team for not redesigning the form to be more user friendly. I was given a sketch and I just built it, despite knowing that it probably wasn't great. But with my current employer, that is what you are supposed to do. With that employer, they were unhappy I didn't change things to improve it.<p>I don't think you are being unreasonable, but you picked up on some wacky signals that I don't think signal what you believe they do.<p>You need someone who regularly hacks projects in their spare time and has built something from scratch on their own before, ideally multiple things. You want a product engineering person, which I suspect this guy has never done.
> he only wants to chain existing solutions, rather than trying to imagine how we can make things better.<p>You have to meet in the middle. Nobody wants to reinvent the wheel - it's not good faith to accuse someone of laziness for trying to suggest a realistic product roadmap. If you're more caught up on the current SOTA in your field and feel that there's a better solution, the onus is on you to write that code. Your employee could still be a 10x engineer if you delegate meaningful work to them, but right now it sounds like you do have unrealistic expectations for them.<p>You shouldn't expect to find anyone more passionate about your product than you are. I'm not sure if you can focus on "other projects" while paying someone to invent your Magnum Opus for you.
> we've been sprinting towards building a MVP<p>Have you got a firm target ideal scoped out yet .. or are you still flopping about changing spec on what should be achieved as a first plateau?