The Curious Story of the Smart Developer Who Couldn't Find a Job (he liked)

This post strikes me as pretty arrogant, and maybe even a little deluded. 3-4 high-level Microsoft engineers are asking to join your startup every week, and you're sending them emails like that? If you can't afford to pay them what Microsoft does, you shouldn't even be entertaining the idea of bringing them onto your company unless you're going to offset the decrease in salary with a generous equity stake.<p>Just "working at a startup" isn't worth much. In fact, it's a major sacrifice for an engineer like that to make. I checked out EveryMove and it seems to me that engineers like that would be pretty dramatically underutilized anyway. It seems like you should just tell people like this that they are overqualified and to stay at Microsoft.

&#62; <i>"Besides that, there are some mental hurdles you have to overcome by yourself about understanding the risk-reward of a startup. Taking a 30-40% salary cut is just one of those."</i><p>Uh... how about... <i>no</i>.<p>So very, very tired of founders trying to convince everyone that tiny stake as an employee in a startup is worth a giant haircut, or really, any haircut at all.<p>If you want me to take a huge haircut, <i>bring meaningful equity to the table</i>. It's laughable how some startups want you to take a $20-30K haircut in exchange for equity that, if the startup exits big after years of toil, might buy you a Smart car.<p>Sometimes recruiters cold call me and try to pitch me on some startup or another, and then ask if I'm amenable to taking a haircut in exchange for equity. At this point I'm tempted to just issue a blanket "hell no".

If Pete, the fictional character, did indeed work on the TCP/IP stack, Visual Studio and Bing ... it would be pretty easy to identify whom this person is, which would make Marcelo Calbucci an asshole for publishing this, as Pete could get into trouble.<p>On the other hand if these deliverables were made-up / picked at random, then the story holds no value, because the context of such anecdotes is everything. Like in this case we are led to believe that Pete doesn't have the chops to work for a startup because he supposedly hasn't worked on small and agile teams delivering products straight to customers.<p>But I've got news for you, even inside big corporations, there are small teams that struggle to innovate and appeal to customers without much support (or control) from their peers.<p>And if somebody can do it inside a corporation where they have to struggle not only for winning the hearts and minds of customers, but also with internal politics, then that somebody is a lot more valuable than people that worked in startups for their whole carrier doing yet another vertical social network or shopping cart.

Like many people deep inside the startup scene, the author completely forgets that much, if not most, developer jobs are with neither startups nor "big companies".<p>There are thousands of small to medium sized companies out there that can offer a decent balance between various aspects mentioned, including most of the stuff the author considers typical for a startup.<p>If you think your startup is competing for talent with the likes of Microsoft and Google, you may be looking in the wrong direction.

<i>"Pick a “side project”, a web product, and build it from beginning to end."</i><p>Maybe Marcelo's immediate concern is that this fictional developer doesn't know "HTTP, Razor, MVC 3, ASP.NET, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, jQuery, jQuery UI, Facebook Connect, Twitter API, SQL, service monitoring, and analytics" like the back of his hand, but to assume that he's <i>never</i> built something from beginning to end just because he works at a big company is a bit much.<p>Anybody that's done really hard work like this fictional developer (especially if they're feeling constrained by Microsoft culture) has probably built multiple tools from beginning to end in order to make his life easier. He may even have built tools (perhaps even web tools that use a lot of the buzzword technologies in his list) that were used internally by large numbers of users.<p>But did Marcelo ask? No, he just assumes the guy doesn't have the chops because he chose to work at the wrong place for the last ten years.<p>Also, one of the commenters says, <i>"Yeah let's be clear, once you hit L65 startups are not going to be interested in you. Ever."</i> Does this really matter to people that are running startups?

The one part that striked me:<p>My biggest concern about you joining a startup is that you don’t have enough breadth of expertise in building products.<p>This sort of runs counter to what my beliefs are and I thought the ethic in this country is: As long as you have that urge or passion in you (he mentions it himself), it doesn't matter what your "expertise" is. Sure, you need to have a baseline of "technical" skills, but this candidate clearly has it. Especially in these days where it is hard to find willing talent, I dont think you can afford to be picky, especially with such seemingly arrogant(right word?) demands

The tone among startup mavens is increasingly reminiscent of the odious arrogance of all the johnny-come-lately bandwagon jumpers that were crawling out of the woodwork in 1998, with the same lack of originality and hand-wavy business plans.<p>I think this is the fifth or six social health &#38; fitness startup I've discovered <i>this week</i>.

I would have to say that as a tech person in general, the blog post would have me avoiding looking for jobs there full stop. Sometimes you find good people who aren't perfect for you but you know will work out. I worked with an engineer who was an exceptional perl/systems developer. I bumped into a former colleague who asked how the other guy was doing and said that he would love to hire him despite the fact he had no experience with his new job's technology as he knew that he would be an asset. This is why saying "You need to have worked on product" or "You need experience in industry X" is very short sighted. In some roles, it's required, in other roles it's an added bonus. Founders, recruiters and hiring managers need to understand the difference.

The example he chose strikes me as odd. The guy worked on really varied projects - TCP/IP stack, the IDE and Bing. I would be really really impressed if someone managed to work on such varied fields at such a high level at a company like MS. It would mean he's got a wonderful drive and motivation. The OP would be lucky to have him apply.

This is scary to me because of the similarity to HR drone-speak.<p>"oh, we need a candidate who has written blub on corporate blub platform X instead of corporate blub platform Y. thanks for your interest."<p>The worst part is that this hypothetical candidate has worked on and been successful at wildly different tech pieces.<p>If I was this candidate, I would expect to come to an interview at a startup and talk about each of those different experiences. I would frame the discussion around each different project and what aspects of these projects translated to how I could contribute to the startup. Did I have to learn new approaches? Did I create an API? Did I mentor and train other devs? How did I get up to speed on "hard-core backend optimization for fast retrieval of large data sets" in Bing after working on Visual Studio?

Question regarding salary... I'm not sure if I'm wrong but when was looking for a new job back in 2004-2005, I cannot recall a single startup which was recruiting engineers and offering salary below market rate and they end up being successful.<p>As far as I remember, when Facebook was a startup (~2006) they were offering market rate salary. Were they?

"He thought that he could talk to me and see what they are and if there’s a match, but also learn a thing or two about startups."<p>I missed the part where, "Pete", the Microsoft Engineer asks this guy for all his sage advice.

Startup (and bigger) companies can learn a lot from this. If anything, this is a good example on how <i>not</i> to go about recruiting talented people. Firmly filed under the dickhead<i>ed</i> category.

I wonder if he also sends emails like this to fresh graduates. You know, the kind of people who don't have any experience building and managing a product from top to bottom, but also don't have 10 years of experience at Microsoft.

If you have talent just build better project than EveryMove .After that He will come to you , He will Respect you , He will Fear you. He will Pay you whatever you want and more, even he will laugh at your awful jokes and dance to your tunes. Building Better Project takes just Ramen,Pizza,Coke and Knowledge not Mr.Marcelo Calbucci's Permission.<p>So If i have good experience and knowledge .I would build better project and Shove it up to his "Startup owning Arrogance"

Long-winded reply, but 3 years in the valley during the dotcom boom working at a variety of ultimately failed startups taught me:<p>1) The expected return of a startup does not compensate for the loss in compensation because 0.1% ownership assuming even a generous 10% chance of success times $1M (assuming a magical $1B buyout/IPO) is only $100,000 divided by the number of years worked. You wanna take a 30% haircut for those odds?<p>2) This equation shifts dramatically if you get one of those fancy three-letter titles and the equity that comes with it. Which is to say do not go to a startup without one. Failing that, the more of a George Carlin outlook you develop towards the three-letter title sorts blowing smoke up your keester, the better off you'll be.<p>3) Override number 2 for a sufficiently high consultant rate. Crossing my palms with silver cures all ills and shows that either you're an utter fool with too much money (most of the time) or you have a relatively good grasp of the costs of getting things done right.<p>4) Why bother with a startup in this day and age when, as the author said, you can just build something yourself without leaving your current gig? 100% equity times a 1% chance of success times ~$10M equals the same expected return without any sort of haircut whatsoever.

1) This post is not about technical skills or competency, it’s about a person-company fit and motivation. If you hire an average developer you expect average results, and if you hire an awesome developer you expect an awesome product. But what if this developer has the skills but not the motivation? What if after he joins your startup he realizes it’s not what he was really looking for? The impact on your team will be huge, if he stays or leaves. Get the cards out on the table before you join forces.<p>2) Some people on Hacker News are talking about the absurdity of taking a below Market Rate salary. I don’t know where you got that from, but on the post I said startups would pay less than Microsoft. I think some people on HN don’t really know how much Microsoft pays (or Google, Amazon or FB). It’s a lot more than you are thinking. A 10-12 year veteran at Microsoft has a base salary of $140,000-$180,000 and 20% bonus (pretty much guaranteed). That’s between $170K-$220K in comp, excluding Stock Awards, unbeatable health care coverage, and many other perks. Yes, no startup that I know of can afford that.<p>3) I’m not rejecting “Pete”. I’m asking him to do a self-assessment (a side project) to understand his own interest in building products end-to-end and to “get” what doing code at a startup might be like.<p>4) For the people attacking me or my startup, you should look yourself in the mirror and try to find the source of so much anger.<p>5) My post lacks context in the sense of who I am and why do I get so many Microsoft developers that want to talk to me. And just to clarify, I’ve worked at MSFT for 7 years, I left to do a startup, which I did for 4.5 years and I failed and I was very public about it. I set out on a mission to help educate others who were following a similar path, to help them avoid the similar mistakes I’ve made. I founded the Seattle 2.0 organizations to help that mission. Over the last 4 years, I helped approximately 2,000 people who went through some of the events I put together. You can read the full story of my first startup here:<p><a href="http://blog.calbucci.com/2009/07/anything-and-everything-about-sampa.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.calbucci.com/2009/07/anything-and-everything-abo...</a><p>You can read the story of Seattle 2.0 here:<p><a href="http://blog.calbucci.com/2011/12/seattle-20-from-humble-beginnings-to.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.calbucci.com/2011/12/seattle-20-from-humble-begi...</a>

What if he's making a moneyball-type play and doesn't even know it?<p>High-level Microsoft engineers are fairly valued or slightly overvalued by the job market as a whole. When hiring for a startup, he should be looking for undervalued assets. If he can make a convincing case to his stakeholders that high-level Microsoft engineers are not a good fit, maybe he can gain an advantage over other startups.

And people don't believe me when I say that even talented developers can't find jobs these days because there aren't enough positions.

I guess I'm going against the flow but I didn't find his (calbucci's) post as disagreable as most commenters. As engineers, we learn stuff on the run our whole careers and we are rightfully upset when we don't get a job because we don't have something on our resume' that we feel/know we could pick up pretty quick. I get it.<p>But look at it from the startup founder's perspective. He's in a race and he can't really afford to take on someone who <i>can</i> "get in shape" after joining the team. He really needs someone who can start running <i>right now</i>.<p>I agree with most that the pay cut for worthless equity is a nonstarter though.

There is some merit in the article &#38; story, however -The startup ends up with no engineer &#38; lots of openings and time spent hiring for a year. -In a startup, one is trying to change the world with the product and change themselves, this is opening another battlefront, on recruiting, trying to change the world of hiring instead of changing to adapt to the world.

On a different note, would Pete even be allowed to work on a side project? I'm considering joining a BigCO and the contract really makes it seem like that would be forbidden.

Aside from his concluding bullet points (which should probably be the focus), his main reply to "Pete" seems to be: doing the same thing every year for 10 years does not give you 10 years experience.

I am surprised at all the negativity here.<p>Working at a startup is obviously very different from working in a corporate environment. You have to thrive on risk and be so passionate about new technologies that you can't help but learn all that stuff and chomp at the bit to use it.<p>I can't imagine working at Microsoft and NOT having learned HTTP, Razor, MVC 3, ASP.NET, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, jQuery, jQuery UI, Facebook Connect, Twitter API, SQL at this point. It is stunning how much a single person can get done these days thanks to all the cool technologies that have come along in the last few years. If that guy is truly dying to join a startup, why doesn't he have his own side project yet?<p>I think Calbucci is just trying to find people with true passion. I would definitely worry that this person moves on to a job with more $$$ if the startup isn't a huge success right out of the gate. After all, financial motivations are keeping him at his current job right now.<p>The founder probably took a 100% paycut to get it started. I don't think it's too much to ask for someone to take a financial risk to come onboard; especially when it's before launch, which means their cash flow is probably close to $0. Obviously, these kinds of decisions are not for everyone. But, when you're truly passionate, it's not really a choice at all.