Would any of you engineers that could work at FANG work for a small ecommerce food company?

Salesforce / Eng
Anmal

Go to company page Salesforce Eng

Anmal
Jun 8, 2019 23 Comments

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?

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TOP 23 Comments
  • Intel
    โœŒ๐Ÿผ๐Ÿค˜๐Ÿผ

    Go to company page Intel

    โœŒ๐Ÿผ๐Ÿค˜๐Ÿผ
    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.
    Jun 8, 2019 6
  • Google
    dCyj41

    Go to company page Google

    dCyj41
    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
    Jun 8, 2019 1
    • Salesforce / Eng
      Anmal

      Go to company page Salesforce Eng

      Anmal
      OP
      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!
      Jun 8, 2019
  • Expedia
    ๐ŸŽ pony up

    Go to company page Expedia

    ๐ŸŽ pony up
    Why don't they just use Stripe? I finished the CTO job, please send my salary asap.
    Jun 8, 2019 6
  • Expedia
    ๐ŸŽ pony up

    Go to company page Expedia

    ๐ŸŽ pony up
    Oh. That is sort of the opposite of what you described originally in your post.
    Jun 8, 2019 2
  • Microsoft
    dilf

    Go to company page Microsoft

    PRE
    Facebook, Amazon, Google
    dilf
    No, I would not work for a company that wasn't focusing on their core competencies and instead wasted money on reinventing the wheel.
    Jun 8, 2019 1
    • Salesforce / Eng
      Anmal

      Go to company page Salesforce Eng

      Anmal
      OP
      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 ๐Ÿ˜”

      What if in this position you could research and move the company to an existing e-commerce platform?
      Jun 8, 2019