The Culture and the Problem
Until recently, I didn’t realize how much time the founders of growing startups spend on recruiting. Talented Google-caliber engineers are few and far between, even in a city like NYC that’s admittedly crushing it of late. I’ve sat in on a number of interviews at Hyperpublic over the past few weeks and the two topics that come up most in initial conversations with engineers are Hyperpublic’s culture and the problem that we’re working to solve.
Culture is very much a catch-all and sometimes can be hard to pin down. One test that works is to ask, “what would our employees be doing if they weren’t working?” Playing foosball? Reading up on a new programming language? Drinking? The recurring answers to this question can tell you a lot about your startup’s culture. For the crew at HP, the vibe is loosely academic. The office is generally quiet, with music playing in headphones and phone calls kept to a minimum. I’d be surprised if more than 15 internal e-mails are sent in a given week. We spend plenty of time hanging out and bonding over beers and ping pong at the Standard Biergarten, but our focus is squarely on building something great and making ourselves better programmers, designers, businesspeople, etc. Engineers who don’t share the same ambitions probably won’t be happy here. In that way, it’s great to see the topic of culture come up in early recruiting conversations (and before some of the more quantifiable incentives like salary, equity, etc.).
The importance of the “problem” that a startup is working on is easier to understand when it comes to recruiting. Above all else, it needs to be complex enough to challenge a potential technical hire. I’ve seen engineers turn down paying gigs because the problem wasn’t difficult enough. The reverse is also true: the thrill of the challenge can be enough to attract really talented programmers. That’s exciting news for Hyperpublic; we are working on something big. If you’re up for the challenge and adept at holding a pint glass in one hand and a ping pong racquet in the other, we’d love to talk to you.
