Article · Essay

How to hire your first engineer (YC Startup Library)

Y Combinator (Greg Brockman, Harj Taggar) · YC Startup Library Free Intermediate

Battle-tested YC advice on landing your critical first engineering hire, from founders who've done it at scale. It reframes hiring as a founder-led sales and persistence problem.

  • Treat hiring like fundraising: personalized outreach and relentless follow-up
  • Leverage your personal network before generic job posts
  • Generate inbound with content and a crisp mission
Open on ycombinator.com ↗

It answers 11 questions

  1. When should I make my first hire?
  2. How do I hire my first engineer when nobody's heard of my startup?
  3. Should I hire an agency or a freelancer to build my MVP?
  4. What kind of people should my first ten hires be?
  5. How do I hire good engineers in India when everyone's competing for the same talent?
  6. Should I hire full-time employees, contractors, or an agency first?
  7. How do I evaluate a developer's skill if I can't code?
  8. How do I interview and evaluate candidates when I've never hired before?
  9. When should I stop using an agency and hire my first in-house developer?
  10. Is it a mistake to hire one developer to build my whole product alone?
  11. How do I hire a developer without a warm network or startup connections?

Read with it

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  5. A high-signal, battle-tested framework for evaluating engineering talent from a leader who's done it hundreds of times.... First Round Review Article · ~20 min read My Lessons from Interviewing 400+ Engineers Over Three Startups Marco Rogers
  6. 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
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