Building the Product

How do I evaluate a developer's skill if I can't code?

A starting point

Skip trivia and whiteboard puzzles; give them a small, paid, job-representative task and see how they think, communicate, and ship. Ask them to walk you through something they built and why they made the calls they made. If they can explain trade-offs in plain English, that's a better signal than any credential.

Go deeper

Read

📄 Article
Free Intermediate

My Lessons from Interviewing 400+ Engineers Over Three Startups

From First Round Review by Marco Rogers ~20 min read

Why we picked it

A high-signal, battle-tested framework for evaluating engineering talent from a leader who's done it hundreds of times. Especially useful for founders who can't judge code themselves.

  • Debunks over-indexing on whiteboard puzzles and trivia.
  • Focus interviews on real, job-representative work.
  • Deliberately design your process to improve both quality and close rate.
Open review.firstround.com →
📄 Article
India Free Intermediate

How Can Indian Startups Hire The Right Technical Talent

From Inc42 by Parminder Singh (Hansel.io) ~10 min read

Why we picked it

The eChai edge for hiring: India-specific advice written by an Indian technical founder, addressing the real competition for engineering talent in the local ecosystem. Grounded in how hiring actually works here.

  • Leverage your network hard, job portals alone won't surface top talent.
  • Use a mix of channels: LinkedIn, referrals, communities, agencies.
  • Retention takes as much work as hiring in India's competitive market.
Open inc42.com →

People also ask

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