How to Hire Your First Engineer
Anyone else getting a little tired of the immediate reduction of any conversation around early-stage startup job opportunities to &quot;comp vs FAANG&quot;? As someone who spent the last 5 years in early stage startups, before recently accepting a FAANG offer, I&#x27;m starting to realize folks who only think about comp probably aren&#x27;t good fits for startups. Here are a few quick reasons to take less comp at a super early stage startup:<p>- You will develop a wide breadth of skills you simply can&#x27;t develop at FAANG, as you will be involved in product meetings, business strategy conversations, and will regularly eat lunch with the CEO. I imagine the reverse of this is true as well, in that there are skills developed at FAANG that are hard to develop as employee &lt;50.<p>- You will get to fast-track your career progression, in that you will be in line for promotions much earlier than in large companies, as opportunities emerge.<p>- Companies (including FAANG) will look for folks with your skillset (my startup experience was a huge plus in my recent job search).<p>- You will work on hard problems, with passionate people; folks aren&#x27;t punching the clock here. This is fun.<p>Also, for folks just thinking about comp, I&#x27;d like to gently point out that a 40 hour week on work you feel &quot;meh&quot; about is ~35% of your waking life. That&#x27;s not to say you can&#x27;t find exciting work at FAANG (I hope I have), but rather that there is more to a job than comp or career progression, and working with passionate folks on hard problems can be incredibly fulfilling.<p>Edit: formatting