#1: Advices people didn’t tell me

I wanted to write a series of posts on my learnings in startups tagged as ‘notes’. So here’s the first one. Hope to write more.

A major criteria or a deciding factor for employee happiness is the people he/she is working with. High pay, bonuses, equity, benefits, etc are all just fuel to the car. The people in it should be great to actually enjoy the ride. Your employee will stay if she enjoys working with the people around.

Hiring takes time and should be a daily process. It’s okay to delay product deadlines to hire the right person. It is impossible to write a generic rule of hiring and who’s the right fit varies for each company depending on their ambitions and the founders attitude.

The way we hire is based on two things:
a. If she had to do a startup, will I invest? assuming I’ve a lot of money.
b. Will she make me look dumb on a lot of occasions?

If the answer to both of them is a clear yes and I get a clean yes from everyone else, we make an offer. This has worked reasonably well for us. But like everything else, we’re iterating. The moment you start trying different ways to retain an employee, that’s a bad sign. Somewhere you’ve made a mistake. Fix it right now.

Quoting Zuck, ‘If you’re a CEO and not fatigued recruiting, you’re not doing it enough‘.