Hiring Your First Engineer
Notes from a decade of hiring — what to look for, what to ignore, and how to avoid the two most common mistakes.
Your first engineer sets the culture. Not because they're loud, but because everyone else calibrates against them.
Look for someone who has shipped something end-to-end, on their own, that actual humans used. Ignore titles, ignore stack alignment, ignore university.
The two most common mistakes are hiring someone senior enough to be expensive but not senior enough to be self-directed, and hiring someone who has never had to say no to a stakeholder.
MD. Hazrat Ali
Founder · Product Builder
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