One of the important lessons I learned as a founder is that the right talent at the right time is capable of doubling your enterprise value. Pay accordingly.
"It's so hard finding qualified engineers." This is true, as I've hired before. But then you get *this* nonsense, too. In my inbox: Embedded engineer JD. a *full page* of requirements, including very specific SLA's *in* the job description. Let me quote it so that you can tell I'm not making this up: "Reporting directly to the Executive Director of <redacted>, you will play a crucial role in our <redacted> facility" -- *very* senior role "Establish an efficient incident response protocol complete with on-call escalation procedures to mitigate system failures within the first month, aimed at minimizing downtime and expediting recovery." "Achieve 95% uptime for the <redacted> within the first X months, and maintain 99% uptime after the first X months" Just to be clear, this is not at all an unfair ask for a very, very senior engineer. They're looking for one who knows both hardware *and* software, capable of independently determining requirements and then executing on them, at both an implementation in-the-weeds level and a high level "visionary" level. Fair. Then you read the last part of the JD: "Compensation: Will be at the 85 percentile - some bonus and possibly equity" "some bonus" "possibly equity" "85 percentile" <picture me falling out of my chair, rolling on the ground with a belly laugh> Here's the deal folks: if you want to hire someone like me to do a job like this, "possibly" equity isn't going to cut it. You're looking to hire someone that's going to substantially implement and drive your business forward, at an incredibly high level. The possibility of equity isn't even on the table -- it's just a question of how much of your company you're looking to part with. Especially when you're paying at the "B" level already. I usually just ignore these incredibly ill thought out reach outs, but recently I've gotten some *winners* come across, and this one is just too good not to share. This job description reads to me like "director level individual contributor they want to pay mid-senior level IC money to". News Flash: if you want to hire someone that can functionally make or break your business, you should be paying them near what you think a high level exec is going to be making, because that's how important they are to your business. The hiring market is slowly picking back up, but it seems that most of the companies out there are really interested in low-balling folks right now. Understand what you're worth and laugh in their faces until you get it.
