Ask HN: How to attract top engineers as an early-stage startup?
3 hubraumhugo 2 7/15/2025, 7:26:20 PM
Finding great engineers is a known challenge for every early-stage startup as you need to find missionaries willing to trade cash for risk and upside.
What we try: - We try to leverage personal networks, which seems like the best source (10x better than other methods)
- We're willing to poach talent (when timing aligns)
- We're generous with equity (can’t match FAANG cash)
Public job boards didn't work at all. About 98 % of applicants are spray-and-pray. We even added a product-specific question at the end of the ad and only few noticed it (but good filter!).
I also know that experience ≠ talent and that some people are terrible at selling themselves, I try to spot these.
What helped you find top engineers?
I will say that top engineers generally treat equity in an early stage startup as 0 comp since it very rarely pays out. Something to consider.
Compensation is part of the game. Other factors are autonomy, decision making and influencing power, roadmap, real challenges (not we are curing the world).
Curiuos, what are you building? I am thinking of building a software for Personalized Recruiting. Happy to chat and understand current challenges.