> ...starting a company in an area that does not need the top tier of engineers...
As far as quality of talent, the "top tier of engineers" aren't all in SF, Seattle, or NYC. There are plenty of "top tier" engineers in all kinds of places.
If you mean the "top tier" in pay rates are in those cities, that probably true. But those cities also have a ridiculous cost of living adjustment baked in.
I might be misreading what you're writing here, but it sounds like you're saying, "Try founding a place in Champaign, Ill. The engineers aren't top notch, but they're cheap enough to be worth it." I just wanted to push back against this meme.
Based on my purely anecdotal experience, engineers that would be easy no-hires in Chicago get scooped up into senior roles in the valley because everyone there is so desperate to hire anyone who can fizzbuzz. It's the best area to be in if you're one of the best... and also if you're one of the worst. Top-flight talent exists in these "hotspots" but they're all "Unobtanium" for anything that isn't a unicorn, IPO'd, or founded by one of their friends.
I disagree; top talent is very obtainable, provided that you have:
* decent compensation
* great culture
* interesting problems to solve
* a great hiring process
We've grown our engineering team from 12 to 29 since opening up shop in Kansas City this February, and I could not be happier with the quality of people that we've found.
I left a Chicago Loop job 3 years ago for a fully remote startup, moved to Tampa, moved from that fully remote startup to a Tampa-based org, and Chicago recruiters get in touch 2-3 times a week offering full relo expenses. There literally is an insane amount of demand and people with very little experience being pulled into Chicago roles.
EDIT: I know I'm not allowed to complain about downvotes, but I'm doing it; why would someone downvote this comment? The poster I'm replying to is near me IRL, and I am just trying to be friendly and connect in person (and they have no contact info on their profile). No need to downvote or upvote.
I don't necessarily mean there aren't smart people outside of the hotspots, but there isn't the specialized skillsets that get built from working at the Microsofts / Googles etc. edit: In the number that you need.
Champaign obviously has lots of smart people (my parents went there), but you may have issues finding specialized senior people there.
Maybe. But how many people live in those places because that's where the well-paid jobs are?
Sure, so minimal commute times and affordability of family homes in areas with good schools should be very appealing to many of the specialized senior engineers.
Moving the family is a pain, sure, but that just means the pitch needs to include why it's worth it for the family. And it means that senior engineers move cities less often. It doesn't mean they move less altogether.
Idle thought: this kind of risk (moving around too much) could be mitigated a bit by some sort of contractually guaranteed employment. A move to Princeton from SF would sound better if a four-year employment guarantee or a comparable cash buy-out was part of the employment agreement.
Personally, I hate living in the tech hubs, I'd love to be able to move back to my hometown, it was a great place to raise kids, didn't have the same crushing traffic / monoculture and it was close to my family. I'm where I'm at due to the jobs, nothing else.
The job-is-terrible concerns can be addressed other ways. Like putting the candidate up in temporary digs for a month or three while they decide on a longer-term deal. A reverse contract-to-hire, if you will. That sounds complicated, but it's not more complicated than a normal contract-to-hire.
I would say that is only a good measure of where more money is being spent.
Surely depends on the metric used: the same people who, if brought up in one of the progressive teams at an SV giant or a well-funded startup might become celebrated code-fashionistas touring the conference speaker circuit, would likely have turned out very different had they joined the insurance company that was the only game in town. But the things they would have seen there! Not C-beams glittering in the darkness near the Tannhauser gate, bad a lot of bad code plastered over and over with half-hearted attempts to clean up during decades of maintenance and extension. If there are wisdoms to be learned from working with that one of our two hypotheticals will know them.
- A cat sharing service?
- A 'cat on demand' service that allows you to reap the benefits of cat ownership without having to worry about acquisition and maintenance costs?
- A taxi service for cats?
I could envision paying for all of those, under the right circumstances. So such a company would likely have at least a few dollars of real revenue. :)
Obviously cat sharing, but you'll have to find a way to take a margin from what was nominally a goodwill activity.
Maybe you pay cat owners in cathours (pronounced cath-ours), and have a marketplace where people can buy and sell cathours. Even better, make Catcoin (CC), set up an ICO, and get to work.
They had the genius idea of charging both sides of the transaction as well. Owners pay for dog sitting, borrowers pay for time with a dog.
It was such a ridiculously awesome service I wish they had it year-round. Our office ordered bunches of the service and there was a lot more demand than supply (obviously for that one day they offered it.)
This exists though not quite Uber / on-demand style. You need to go to the cats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_caf%C3%A9
Very big in Japan.
And of course, my old neighbourhood in Ottawa got a cat cafe not too long after I moved away:
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ottawas-furst-daily...
So it looks like the idea is spreading!
Even if it doesn't, it's HBO Silicon Valley worthy.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/uber-kittens-1.3292441
- Create a mobile cat service in a high end Winnebago or Gulfstream business jet; stock with hypoallergenic cats from step 1
- Use mobile cat service to fly/drive in to festivals and corporate events; create pop-up cat lounges where visitors can have a drink and pet a cat
- ??
- Profit
Shut up and take my money.
The other point is, most startups do not need that talented of engineers, they think they do, but they don't. You don't want to pay bay area salaries if you don't have to, and in most of these areas, you don't have to.
If you are somewhere else but the bay, and you are paying people bay area salaries, but you aren't in SV, so you aren't raising VC like SV companies, I don't think that's a winning move.
Most people want to live in expensive areas. Top tier engineers can afford it.
And yet inexplicably I still can't walk through walls.
I'm curious to know what your current thoughts are behind this. As someone who intentionally has steered clear of both those areas in order to try to optimize financially I sometimes wonder whether I'm missing out on something. Obviously one can learn more from better engineers, but don't the brightest ideas from the brightest engineers wind up being written about online and/or presented at conferences at user groups and broadcast across the Internet? Or does having the opportunity to put time into a name-brand tech company for a while really increase lifelong salary or career prospects sufficiently to recover the money thrown away on rent there? Or is there really sufficient value in serendipitous collaboration/socialization to justify moving to one of these places? Is there some other question I've overlooked?
This becomes tribal knowledge. The way most people become experts in these domains is by working with or around people that are already experts, which requires being in an engineering environment where you are likely to come into contact with some. This type of expertise is far from evenly distributed.
Market salaries for software engineers in Baltimore are quite a bit lower (like, 40-50% lower) than SF or NYC. Whereas for companies located in NYC/SF, they understand cost of living is high and are thus willing to pay a premium.
I'm not making a counterargument here, just saying that salaries in different areas aren't usually apples to apples.
Also, cost of living is relative: For 10 of my 17 years in NYC, I lived in a studio apartment with a 1k/month mortgage, and no car, no kids, and a lower cost of living than most of my friends in other cities. So it really depends on your family situation and what kind of environment you want to live in.
I think college towns in the midwest / rust belt are untapped resources, or areas that used to have strong technically focused companies that moved away. I've personally seen founders bootstrap and launch successful companies (B2B with real revenue, not Uber for cats) in areas with little tech presence.
The ability to not have to shell out huge salaries and equity was a real winner, there's also less distractions. You can get strong engineers (no, not SV / Seattle top end engineers, but people that can throw together a reasonable website) for < 100k in these areas, and they won't bounce around as much. You aren't competing with AmaFaceGoogSoft here, you're competing with HR companies and random consulting houses. There's disadvantages to being outside of the tech bubble, but advantages too. That being said, for an employee, you should at least try and do some time in SV / Seattle etc.