hansottowirtz

We're a small startup based in Antwerp, Belgium, and we have just raised capital, so we now have the budget to hire our first full-time employee. I'm a co-founder and the only developer, and also currently the biggest bottleneck in growth, so our first employee will be a developer. Our company is almost 2 years old and we all started as students.

I've heard many different opinions when it comes to hiring devs. Some say I have to look in my network (which I barely have). Others say we should first hire students, or remote employees, or use recruiters. However, for the first employee those all don't seem like a good idea.

While I'm very excited to grow our developer team, I'm also very wary of the impact they will have on the company and our team.

I just graduated but I've been programming for a few years, and I think I'm capable of planning the general development roadmap. I'm proud of the existing tech stack, it is ready to evolve.

Needless to say we want to find someone very good and who shares our vision. I really believe in creating great products with great code, and I'd like to find someone who shares that view. I think we should look for someone with more experience than me, with a track record of working on larger projects. Ideally with work experience at a larger company, who has experience with processes and working in teams.

Would you under- or overspecify the kind of person you're looking for?

I'm thinking about posting job posts on Github Jobs, HN, and LinkedIn. Are those the right channels? Should we take a more "active" role? (e.g. going through people on LinkedIn who have worked for interesting companies) Or should we work with recruiters? Where did your company find its first employee?

Should we offer a salary competitive with big tech, and equity?

Any advice is welcome! Very interested in your experiences.

(Context: We create personalized products. Our stack is mostly Serverless, AWS, Typescript, Angular/Vue, Node)