Why I don’t hire developers
During the past few months, I have been working on expanding UpsellGuru’s team by hiring new Gurus, with the aim of bringing the product to the next level. As the CTO of a small startup, I am obviously taking care of hiring engineers by owning every stage of the process: from job posting to scheduling and running interviews. I care about every employee because I believe that they contribute to the success of the product as each of them brings in knowledge, experience and a different point of view to the company.
So, when approaching the first job posting, I wanted to pick the right words to set the right expectations to the candidate. At this point I asked myself a very simple question: should I use the term “developer” or “engineer”? I, myself, am a trained engineer and therefore I’ve always defined myself as such. However the whole industry uses the two terms interchangeably.
But I disagree. It shouldn’t be like that. I think there is a subtle, yet fundamental, difference between the two, at least to me. When I hear about the term “software developer” I immediately think about:
- A huge pile of specs to follow passively;
- A team that is not involved early on in the planning phase;
- A team that is not passionate about customers pains it is trying to solve, nor about the product being built;
- A team that is more passionate about technology for its own sake rather than a tool to solve business problems;
- A team that is distant from the day to day pains customers go through when using their product
My expectations towards a software engineer are quite the opposite, as ideally I see her/him as an intersection between a software developer (sic!), a product manager, a sales manager and a customer service representative. Building a product for a seed-stage startup is more about being a Leonardo da Vinci with a well rounded personality, than just being specialised in one thing only: too many software projects fail more often than not for non-technical reasons linked to the lack of team soft skills than strictly technical issues.
Yet, at the same time, I do not expect engineers to be a jack of all trades because at the end of the day they have to build good quality software that can be easily adapted to customer’s needs. So what am I looking for? Engineers passionate about problems they are solving with technology, who care about building a product that caters the needs of UpsellGuru’s customers and who want to help build an economically viable business. There is way more value a software engineer can deliver beyond the code they can write.
Do you fit into this profile? Are you interested in a Full Stack Engineer role at UpsellGuru? Send us an email to jobs@upsellguru.com and let’s have a chat!
