Video · Around 45 minutes

Building an engineering team

Harj Taggar and Ammon Bartram · Y Combinator Startup Library Free Intermediate

A Startup School talk with a YC partner and Triplebyte's co-founder on finding and hiring key engineers from scratch. Triplebyte's whole business was engineer assessment, so the sourcing and evaluation advice here is grounded in a lot of real hiring data. Watch it for a structured view of building the team beyond a single hire.

  • Referrals and personal networks outperform cold job-board applicants early on
  • Evaluate for what the person can build, not credentials or pedigree
  • Design a repeatable process so quality holds as you hire more people
Open on ycombinator.com ↗

It answers 2 questions

  1. How do I hire good engineers in India when everyone's competing for the same talent?
  2. How do I evaluate a developer's skill if I can't code?

Read with it

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  3. A simple, repeatable four-step method for making hiring decisions instead of going on gut feel, which is where costly mis-hires... Geoff Smart and Randy Street Book · Book, around 200 pages Who: The A Method for Hiring Geoff Smart and Randy Street
  4. A venture firm's field guide to engineering hiring for founders, covering the full arc from defining the role to sourcing,... CRV Article · Long read How to Hire Engineers: A Guide for Founders CRV
  5. 200+ candid conversations with Indian founders and investors on how they actually found their idea, spotted a trend, and... Apple Podcasts Podcast · podcast series (45-90 min episodes) The Neon Show (formerly 100x Entrepreneur) Siddhartha Ahluwalia
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