How to Hire Top Software Engineers Outside Silicon Valley
Description
In Chapter 7 of 20 software entrepreneur and Borrowed Sugar founder Dan Street shares how he has been able to find and hire top quality software engineers outside Silicon Valley. He identifies engineering talent coming out of the University of Texas computer science honors program. By sharing a vision that resonates with young tech talent and being in a great city outside Silicon Valley, Street finds he is able to compete for talent that would typically go to firms such as Google or Facebook.
Transcript
Erik: How do you hire Google quality engineering when you cannot afford to pay Google quality money? Dan: I have to say there are a lot advantages to being in Austin and that’s one of the biggest ones, um… in Austin there are a lot great companies out there but there are not enough to sort of fill the ranks of highly qualified engineers and so what we found is there’s a honors programs at UT for computer science, a very small honors program that has just the top people. What we found is by really going deep in that honors group and getting the best of the best and getting them onboard and getting them liking it, they will go and recruit other people that are younger than them in that program and it’s a continuous cycle. The second is you’ve got to communicate what your vision is for the business and if it connects with the right people they’re going to be willing to work at a early stage company for less compensation than Google. So I think it’s a combination of those two things, being in Austin in a protected place and really having a vision people connect with and get onboard with.