You don't want to hire "the best engineers"

Summary

“We only want to hire the best engineers”I hear this from almost every client I speak to. So does every other recruiter.Seriously - just say those eight words to any room full of recruiting people, and everyone will give a wry chuckle and roll their eyes. We've all heard it a million times.“We only want to hire the best engineers.”No. No, you do not.The best engineers make more than your entire payroll. They have opinions on tech debt and timelines. They have remote jobs, if they want them. They don’t go “oh, well, this is your third company, so I guess I’ll defer to you on all product decisions”. They care about comp, a trait you consider disqualifying. They can care about work-life balance, because they’re not desperate enough to feel the need not to. And however successful your company has been so far, they have other options they like better.You’re not stupid. If I asked you, point blank, “do you actually think the best engineers in the world would give your company a second thought,” I bet you could say “well, no, obviously not”.But you don’t act like it.You lock in the same set of criteria as every other startup. Experience at early stage. Highly independent. In-office in the Bay Area. Not too “salary motivated”. Don’t even apply if you want a 40h/week job - we work hard and play hard.Four months later, you haven’t found a good founding engineer. Do you know how long four months is in the life of a young startup? That’s an eternity, and you’ve spent it in stasis.Hiring is a negotiation, and you’re acting like you’re holding all the cards when you aren't. You’re looking for a highly competitive candidate pool, and you’re not being competitive: you’re just checking the same baselines as everybody else. You're acting like a replacement-level employer and expecting more than replacement-level candidates.Would you rather spend four months in stasis waiting for a senior candidate who hits the ground running on day one, or hire a skilled midlevel hacker who will be a...