How to hire a lot of talented people, very quickly

I am running a bootstrapped start-up (by choice). We pay salaries to 5 people (three MIT EECS grads, one Berkeley CS). I think these people are very good. From my prospective, if you operate without VC money, I.e. from the actual revenues that you get, what's described in the post is irrational exuberance. It's a sign of a VC investment bubble. We absolutely could NOT work 4 days a week and remain competitive ( we could not even run the existing service that way, with user all complaints, attack threats, vendor interactions, hardware failures).

First of all, I'd like to congratulate Ryan Carson on the idea of 4-day work week. Hopefully this would start the ball rolling on the whole discussion of work/life balance here in the states. It is such a great concept and I'm sure will attract a lot of top talent.<p>The only thing is, it needs validation. I hope the company does really well in the long run, and therefore puts 4-day work week on the table for others to follow. Wouldn't that be great...

I don't think the 4-day week makes sense. Once everyone switches to 4 days, what then? 3 days?<p>I think limited hours per day makes more sense. People can be laser focused for 5 or 6 hours per day if you give them a good work environment. Once you move to the usual 9 or 10 hours per day, personal life gets in the way and people goof off, achieving as much productivity as in the focused 5 hours.

Let me start by saying that I don't know anything about Treehouse or their profitability... but based on that benefit list, they're either REALLY profitable or they've got a bunch of upfront investor money to burn through.<p>Given how young they are and that their investor list includes the likes of Kevin Rose and Reid Hoffman, I'm going to go with the latter.<p>I operate a small ecommerce company with about 15 employees that include everything from developers to warehouse workers. There's no way I could sustain such benefit list and I know none of my competitors could either. There's just not a high enough margin (and we're in a high margin business).<p>The answer might be that a company whose product is "knowledge work" might be in a different boat, but it really makes me wonder if you can sustain that kind those kinds of benefits when you're standing on your own two feet.

It's great that they are having success with the 4 day work week.<p>However, one thing that would still appeal to me more though as a developer would be the ability to work remotely.<p>It's surprising even to me that I'd rather do 20% more work for the same money if it's at home!<p>I also suspect this would make it easy to 'hire talented people, very quickly' as it opens up the whole world to you in terms of candidates.<p>What are your thoughts on this Ryan?

Money, it grows on trees and its great for balling up and hurling toward people.

I like this approach, it is very straightforward and allows for easy internal collaboration. Obviously, buckets visualize the amout of people in different stages of your hiring process very well. If I had to hire people, I'd try this instantly.<p>Edit: I have to apologize. I overlooked that the names are made up, so the following statement is incorrect. Sorry Ryan!<p>Sadly, I have to whine about some privacy issues: I don't approve of Ryan Carson's publishing the names of his applicants how it can be seen in the screenshot at [1]. I'm quite sure these are real names beloging to their applicants, and I wouldn't like to see my name published when I'm applying for a position at this company. On top of that, I would feel sad to see that my name had been greyed out but Person XY has advanced to the next stage.<p>Perhaps it is better to anonymize the information as I suspect it was not Ryan's intention to publish these names.<p>[1] <a href="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4s36gOUJz1rneiz8.png" rel="nofollow">http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4s36gOUJz1rneiz8.png</a>

We've been doing four-day weeks since 2008, with two offices in Australia and remote team-members in Berlin and the Phillipines. Apart from the obvious 50% more weekend for 20% less work, and the flexibility to work from anywhere, doing it this way has a less-tangible benefit: it requires and inculcates discipline and responsibility. Your attention is like a gas: it'll diffuse to fill the space available. Timeboxing your energy provides more work potential -- and your downtime is more productive too.<p>It's also a great talking point with clients. The 4DWW is gaining traction in the wider world: I was interviewed this week on dot-au national television to talk about it.

Also, move to a "developing" startup market, like Portland, where a Treehouse is one of the top 5-10 startup employers, vs. SF or Silicon Valley, where you are competing with a lot more startups, and where the Giants (FB, Google, Palantir, ...) are stronger competition than the giants in Portland.<p>(and living on 50-60k in Portland is fine even if you have kids; it is poverty unless you're either long established (own a home from the 1990s, or cheap rent), or alone. This opens up a lot more potential hires for non engineering roles)

Reading this post makes me fear for a bubble -- when I read stuff like this it brings me back to 2000 all over again: "401(k) contribution matching, 100% matching up to 6% of your salary + Full coverage for medical, dental, and vision". I'll grant you that this isn't quite on the level of "your own private sushi chef" but it makes me uncomfortable that a company that's a startup would do this. I realize that good talent is hard to find, but this scares me...

Additional step: Write a post like this and have it make the front page of Hacker News

&#62; we’re about to hit 40 people at Treehouse and we’ll be at 60 in three more months. There was only seven of us 12 months ago, so we’ve grown very fast.<p>For a small company that's growing this quickly, it's probably going to take more than 12 months to know for sure if a hire is good or not. Declaring them as good does not make them so. I'd be interested to see a follow up post 12 months from now giving an update on retention rates and any hiring process updates they've subsequently made.

Interesting they don't hire any technical talent it seems, or am I missing something?<p><pre><code> Product Marketing Sales Teaching Video </code></pre> If that's the case (which I'm now doubting considering what they teach) I can only see the bottle neck being onboarding. It can take a lot of effort and time to get one developer up to speed, never mind dozens of them in a matter of months.

I'm very happy to have found your blog. I'm also happy to see a company focusing on what's important... gaining that elusive talent.<p>I am currently just starting to use treehouse to train a group of new grads for the company I work at. I'm very impressed with the site.<p>@Ryan : if I was in your region, I would so be applying for a job ;)

How does the 'Project Trial' work for people who have full-time jobs already? I am sure it is great for evaluating those who are able to commit to such a thing, but aren't you leaving potentially valuable team members unable to pass muster due to time (rather than lack of fit) reasons?

Nice benefits indeed.

I would prefer to have to be 5 days a week in the office, but only have to work for 4 days. One day should be dedicated for your own projects. Whatever you want, but, in the office.

Spend VC money like this, work 4 days a week and then finally go down. !! :(