A friend of mine has a company that sells subscription based, direct to consumer, pre-prepared food boxes through an e-commerce custom built website. Their entire tech stack (including integrations with payment processors, analytics software, shipping services, etc...) was built and is managed by one contracting company that has behaved like in house devs for a few years. My friend's company has no technical people on staff, this has caused problems. I keep telling them that they need an experienced full stack Lead Engineer/CTO type hire but I also think it'll be very hard for them to find someone that has the experience to manage an entire company's stack. I especially think so because anyone with that experience should be able to work at a bigger company that can offer both a higher salary and better perks. So my question is, how could a small company find and entice an experienced developer/CTO type to work there? Would any of you do it?
That's a good gig
No, I would not work for a company that wasn't focusing on their core competencies and instead wasted money on reinventing the wheel.
Yeah, there were definitely some bad decisions made in the past (largely because they have no technical staff) by going full custom but that's where they're at now 😔 What if in this position you could research and move the company to an existing e-commerce platform?
There is 1 of 3 possibilities here: 1- The tech stack is not the primary focus, in which case outsourcing is reasonable. 2 - It would be valuable to bing tech competency in house. But that means you would need to give your CTO enough stock to warrant the risk. 3. Same as 2 except you are protective of your stock and so need to offer a very large salary. Depending on the finances I might take the offer. You just need to understand that you need to hedge risk, i.e my potential payout needs to be large enough to counteract the probability of the start up failing
You're entirely right in that the tech stack is not the primary focus. Their primary focus is making good food. Tech is the way to sell and market that food though. Thanks for the input!
Why don't they just use Stripe? I finished the CTO job, please send my salary asap.
🤦🏻♂️
Ok but they need you to send a $500 check first for processing expenses so they can wire transfer your salary.
Oh. That is sort of the opposite of what you described originally in your post.
My bad, didn't wanna write a wall of text that people wouldn't want to read.
No problem. Good luck on your search.
If I don’t have to worry about being able to pay around 7 years of my bills then yes. I’ll also need sufficient equity. But I’ll be worth it.
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You are Assuming that only people at FAANG can do it. There are others out there crushed by politics and waiting for opportunity at that level.
No, of course not. I'm not in FAANG and I know people that could do it that aren't either. I just put that in the title to mean someone who could pass the typical super technical high level FAANG interviews. A.K.A. someone who could work almost anywhere
Well since it couldn’t offer the salary it should offer something else. In this case a big role and visibility which they can use on their resume after the job is done. Most people who gain the confidence and experience at this will use it to sling shot to FAANG for the same role which they couldn’t directly get to earlier.