being a recruiter for a week 06.04.2024

These past few days I have been recruiting staff software engineers for shapes.inc. This role has entailed countless searches, scrolling through thousands of profiles, and trying to understand who would be a good fit to join us - a seed stage startup. The process overall has been extremely repetitive, boring, and tedious. The only insight I've gained is a deeper understanding of the three typecasts in sf:

1. The big tech enthusiast - someone who went to Berkeley/Stanford/UCLA and has spent their career working at Google, Meta, etc.
2. The startup jumper - someone who has worked at multiple startups for 1-2 years at each one.
3. The founder/early stage startup joiner/actual engineer - (I think the title is a sufficient explanation).

While reading each individual's contributions to the companies they have dedicated years to, big tech enthusiasts' profiles blend together, I think these are the jobs AGI will take first.

Profiles for startup jumper and early stage startup joiner were more exciting because it tells you a lot about what a person values based on company they bet on.

Much better to hire someone who worked at a no-name, failed startup rather than BigTech or Series D+ startups. It’s hard to work at an early stage startup. You really can’t find a way around it.