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These comments are actually the best part of writing a blog - getting
to hear from other people knowledgeable on the subject and who are
actually in the trenches. The various thoughts added by the community
was so good that I thought it was best to summarize it in a new post
for my own cognition:
We all agree that hiring is an issue. But why is it so? I think the best
articulation on the subject was by Manu J (/2010/11/11/difficulty-
hiring-startups-india/#comment-132250) (summarized here, please
read the original comment (/2010/11/11/difficulty-hiring-startups-
india/#comment-132250) for his full thoughts):
1. Stock options have made money for people in Silicon Valley startups.
What about in India? "How many makemytrip employees made it big?
How many rediff employees?"
3. "Uninspiring work. Not to knock on any startups but some time back
facebook clones were all the rage. Now it is groupon clones."
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"If someone’s good at what they do, they are most likely selling their skills to
the highest bidder – namely google, microsoft, amazon, etc. The ones who are
trying to work independently (like me) do it because of many reasons – one of
them is that you get utmost power, control and authority. Working for a small
startup offers neither."
"Great technical work & leadership – do not build yet another PHP/MySQL
site. Is at least one of the founders, technically well accomplished and smart?
If you built Google News and you quit Google to work on your next big idea,
then I’m sure that would instill a lot of confidence about you in the minds of
potential hires. But if you are completely unaccomplished yourself, then it’s
going to be a hard sell"
As far as I know, Manu hits the nail here on the real problems -
startups need to do a way better job of making the job look attractive
on the strengths of a startup (technical leadership, technical growth,
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"Different work space/work culture – you could try renting some cheap
office space near a beach in Goa. I’ve worked for Yahoo and I’ve seen Google’s
offices – they all have swanky office spaces with free cafeterias. You cannot
compete with them by renting out a third-grade office space in crowded
Bangalore. Try something different. If you look at all the Valley startups,
they don’t just sell you a job – they sell you a work lifestyle – 'come work for
us; this is the kind of work culture we have' is always their pitch."
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"In India, developers are generally treated like crap. I’ve got tons of offers
from 'business' guys who have a stupid idea and a little spare cash. They don’t
understand technology – and more importantly – it’s limitations. Anyone
with a little field experience will automatically be wary of such people."
"People who do join startups are mostly the ones who are interested in
entrepreneurship or starting up themselves. These people do it for the
ownership, respect and the appreciation of being entrepreneurs. The biggest
mistake founders do is to treat them like employees. Consider talking to
people you wish to hire about stock options as they join, or give them some
reason to feel proud as an entrepreneur. This would also add to their
ownership of the work they do and you would see a visible difference in their
attitude towards work. But most entrepreneurs find it difficult to share the
ownership of the company with them and thats why they find themselves
struggling."
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"The founders of the startups are in the attitude of “giving life and supporting
a family” for a few people than “taking help from a techie” mindset. Even if
they know an employee is not a beggar who has joined his company to help
him succeed in a venture, the employer’s behavior seldom reflects they have
acknowledged this fact. This could be seen right from giving appointment
orders till making the employee cry for relieving letters. And it would be
funny to note the same employer read about “brands”. Would they know
customers are of two types, internal and external?
"Yes, I was working in startups, and have now finally decided settle down for
the “big fish nets”. I am now one of the so called tier 1 company employees.
Afterall, if the current project is over, the company would actively search in
full swing to depute me on another project. I wont get a pink slip as fast as I
would get in a “get-the-job-done-and-go-home” startups."
"There are not that many startup-type techies out there. That’s the simple
truth. I am going through my 3rd startup and the reality couldn’t be starker.
No, they are not hiding under a rock."
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"I am going to have to disagree with several people – Ayush, Ashish (Pocha),
etc. above stating founders are stingy. I know at least a dozen including
myself willing to give away 10-20% equity + decent monthly cash for a solid
hacker. From architects in Yahoo and Amazon, to 1-person IT consulting guys
to 3-4 years experienced guys in IT Services company to guys working in a 6
year old American startup’s Indian devcenter – tried them all. You know
what? They just cant take the risk! So I dont think badgering Founders for not
being open to dole out equity is a good enough reason.
"We got some early employees using a fair equation where some wanted more
monthly cash + low equity, others wanted low cash + high equity. The decision
was left to them on which package they wanted. We found that one of the guys
after working 2-3 months and finding out the real revenue/margin numbers
himself wanted to reduce his salary for a higher equity.
"I think smart hackers should know their self worth and also the worth of
what they are building. If what they are making is exciting and hard for them
may be its worth a pay cut for 2 years with a possible equity upside potential?
After all last few months are showing indications of a bright M&A future."
Ecosystem
Let's face it - our ecosystem and family mindsets are not ready yet, we
know this one and I think these are the "growing pains" of any startup
culture. As Gowri puts it (/2010/11/11/difficulty-hiring-startups-
india/#comment-132243):
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"These people talk nicely about wanting challenging jobs and new technology
and all that, but get lured by 'social status' of branded companies and few
thousands more.
"I even had one guy who left our company because his future father-in-law
did not like that he didn't work for one the 'large' companies!
"One guy resigned because he could not get a good bank loan since the banks
were looking for branded or large company employees."
Geek Out
When I had mentioned that I wish there was a 'geeks grooming
culture', then the irreverent Pramode C E pointed out that that was
exactly his latest venture - and he seems to have had great results in
just a month since he started (http://pramode.net/2010/09/27/one-
month-class-report/):
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"At a general level, what we see is a clear lack of skills fulfilling each role, be it
engg, sales, marketing etc.
"For eg: when we look for an engg. to write features, we only seem to get folks
who know to write code. Customer acquisition strategies which many speak
about are mostly traditional and nothing innovative. Forget about finding
folks who help us scale, there are probably handful of them in India who are
already picked up Yahoos and the Googles or now Facebook."
Hiring Strategies
Regarding, good hiring strategies for startups, Sameer Guglani has
written extensively on this subject on his blog - Hiring method that
works (http://www.guglanisam.me/hiring-method-that-works), What
to look for in startup interviews? (http://www.guglanisam.me/how-
to-take-interviews-when-hiring-for-startu) and Early employees -
Salary & Equity (http://www.guglanisam.me/early-employees-salary-
equity).
Bottom Line
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Startups need to pitch why they are better than big companies, it is the
same whether it is about the product or about hiring!
"As you point out in your statement, hiring for a startup is a lot different than
hiring for big companies - attacking the different problem with same mindset
often misleads people in the hiring process."
This has been an enlightening discussion for me, thanks to all of those
whom I've quoted here (and many whom I've not quoted for reasons of
length of this article) for their thoughts on this subject :-)
Comments
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Comments
anish says:
Thanks for the plug again, Swaroop. Now we have to work extra hard
to make this happen. :-)
BTW, HasGeek is the same idea we discussed over a year ago when
riding to Jayanagar from Gopal's place.
http://indianstartupgyaan.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/building-a-
kick-ass-team-part-i/
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http://indianstartupgyaan.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/building-a-
kick-ass-team-part-ii/
and
http://indianstartupgyaan.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/what-ails-
the-startup-ecosystem-in-india
You can't argue with the results - paisa.com by abinash & team is a
finely engineered product. If it fails it won't be due to technical
incompetence.
You do need a core team who are really good at what they do. This
ideally should be founders but if you have the money you should be
able to hire the best. Cleartrip was able to build a product using
Common Lisp in India. Even in valley that would have been difficult.
Some of the employees they hired had no previous knowledge of lisp.
So its is certainly possible to hire and cultivate talent in India.
Equity is only one part of the issue. It is not enough to offer just equity.
Without success tories the allure of equity is not very high. The early
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Bharath says:
I have been into recruitments (8 yrs now) and I have worked for a
startup (1999 to 2002)
First and foremost I don't like the word startup. I prefer to call Tiny or
small business. This is a better word for Indian scenario. As soon as you
name your business as small business, your mind set clearly changes.
You don't bother about getting a hotshot on board. You prefer to get
somebody who knows how to make things and sell. This actually solves
50% of the problem. Secondly, you realize, business is evolutionary and
so you simply start building it brick by brick. And you have all the time
in the world to build it. That is all you want and that is all you do. And
that is how a million companies are built in India. Believe me India has
one of the best tiny / small business in the world. And most of them
are very creative.
follows. Every member of the initial team are capable of forming their
own companies.... but they join hands only because of the unavoidable
issues (Visa, Company registration.... etc).
Ajay says:
it doesn't matter which field of study you are from. Everyone goes
through training courses and put into some god forsaken
Struts1/legacy project(s) where, all you do is fix bugs, work with
mundane systems and stay back to provide 'support to clients'. In my
humble opinion, this destroys their creativity and by the end of the
year, they are tuned 'not to think' and just 'follow orders' from higher
ups(needless to say, you covered the 'management craze' in one of
your previous blogs).
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Sorry about my rant(couldn't resist), but the main point is, startups
could attract more students/talents by
I know most of the folks who shared their thoughts rant about
students/young graduates demanding higher pay, but such class of
people almost never are the ideal candidates for startups(IMHO).
Swaroop says:
@Anish Yes, good point, Anirudh has mentioned that (quoted in the
above article)
@Manu Very very good points again. You should blog more often ;-)
Agreed about paisa.com, especially knowing bghose and the rest of the
team's capabilities. I should definitely read Abinash's articles.
sashank says:
One of hiring mantra for start-up's i would say is , "Catch them Young"
go back to your college , best place to start with , get few smart kids on
the block for an internship while in college , mentor them and inspire
them on what entrepreneurship and geekdom is all about , give them a
taste of what is it like working for solving something cool , i bet they
would die to work for you , its from my personal experience , I
mentored one student , who later joined some job , when i called him
for a working for an idea in my start-up and that i cannot pay much , as
i dont have funds , he said " for you i would work for free , if required " .
so technical leadership is very much important when inspiring younger
ones
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Swaroop says:
sashank says:
Most of the colleges , claim 100% placements and boast big company
names , we are still first generation Indians to get fancy paychecks
with big companies , we have been brought up from childhood with
only emphasis on studying hard , getting good marks and landing up in
a big company job to earn more, have a stable income and lead a
peaceful retired job with enough savings , in this temperament , not
even students who are brought up with sole reason to land up a good
job would get adventurous to try hands on entrepreneurship , i still
remember how much argument i had with my dad when i wanted to
leave a well paid job for experimenting with my ideas , so it would take
some more time for us to break this .
Kondalu says:
For employees - startup is not a place where you can relax like some of
the big companies. Also, one might not get to work on the bleeding
edge technologies always; there will be a significant period during
which one has to handle the maintenance/operations part. One should
understand that work in a startup is a mix of all flavors.
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Swaroop says:
Swaroop says:
Feedback
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