1:11:41Building an Engineering Team by Ammon Bartram and Harj Taggar
From Y Combinator · Published Jul 22, 2019 · Watch on YouTube
TL;DR
Hiring engineers is a painful but essential funnel process: source candidates (personal networks, marketplaces, LinkedIn/GitHub, job boards, meetups), screen with structured interviews to reduce noise, and close by being fast, transparent, and emphasizing learning/career progression. The data shows interviews have very low inter‑rater reliability (~0.
Key insights
- Personal networks are the best early source because they derisk the question of whether you can work effectively with someone; founders often fail to exhaustively list everyone they know or make the d
- Hiring marketplaces (e.g., Triplebyte, Hire, Vettery) enable fast hiring from actively looking candidates but are competitive and charge 15-20% of first‑year salary.
- LinkedIn/GitHub require low‑volume, highly personalized outreach using email (via LinkedIn Recruiter Lite + Connectify) rather than high‑volume spam to get responses.
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