MBA2720 Q&A Wednesday: How Do I Find & Hire A Senior Tech Person?

Need to hire a senior tech expert but unsure where to start? Wondering how to spot top talent, avoid costly mistakes, and make sure your next hire truly elevates your business? If you’re searching for a proven method to add high-level technical skill to your team, today’s lesson is built for you. In this episode, Omar answers Gustav’s question and breaks down his step-by-step process for finding and hiring senior tech talent. Drawing from decades of experience in the software game and real-life lessons building, scaling, and selling his own software company, he shares the strategies, insider tips, and practical know-how you need to make sure your project is in the right hands. From filtering candidates by skill and communication chops, to setting up the relationship for success, you’ll get a practical guide to making smart, effective tech hires that will save you time, money, and plenty of future headaches. Ready to level up your hiring game? Hit the play button at the top of the page and learn how to find and secure the senior tech expertise your business deserves! To submit your questions, visit 100mba.net/q. Watch the episodes on YouTube: https://lm.fm/GgRPPHiSUBSCRIBEYouTube | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Podcast Feed Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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  If you need to hire a senior tech person or any real expert, here's a truth that I've learned over 20 years: You get what you pay for. There's no way around this. And when it comes to software development, a bad hire isn't just expensive. They can destroy your product, and they can create technical debt you'll have to pay off for years to come. They can waste months, maybe even years of your life. That's why today I'm answering today's Q&A Wednesday question from Gustav: "How to make a high-level tech hire?" I'm going to show you step by step how we exactly did it with our software company, Webinar Ninja, and how we made each hire along the way, starting from nothing until we sold the company after 10 years.

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  Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business.

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  If this show has helped in any way, it would be amazing if you could drop us a quick review on whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast right now. It helps me and my team bring new episodes every week, and more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover our podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. Thanks so much.

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  When it comes to the software game, you are only as strong as your team. So let's make sure you do it right. First, we have to establish that hiring technical talent is not like hiring for customer support or admin. If you're hiring the wrong person in a technical position, they can break your app, they can slow down your product, they can make the wrong architectural choices that can cost you thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars down the line. They can cost you months of delays, they can make your life a living hell. How do I know? Well, I made a hire that cost our company nearly half a million dollars. And worst of all, you won't know they're doing it until it's too late. That's why you want quality, not bargains. Don't try to find the diamond in the rough. It doesn't exist.

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  A senior engineer who costs more per hour will actually save you money because they finish it in a fraction of the time and make better decisions for your company now and for the long run. Here's exactly what I do, the same method I've been using for years. I've been using Upwork for over 20 years. Yes, they're a sponsor of the podcast, but I've been using them way before they became a sponsor. And this is not a sponsored episode, but if you want to save some money, go to upwork.com/save. Now, once you're on Upwork, this is what I recommend you do. Don't sort by best match, don't sort by most recent, don't sort by price low to high. Sort price high to low.

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  Trust me, I look for the most expensive engineers who match. The skill set I need for the project. Why? Because expensive engineers are usually the best in the game. We're talking about senior developers, CTOs at Fortune 500 companies that are like really experienced and know what they're doing. They could be the head of engineering, they could have 15, 20 years of experience. We're talking about people who are bored in their corporate job and want to have a little bit of fun on the weekend with a startup project like yours. These are people that who can do in 10 hours what others take 60 hours to do. I've witnessed this myself over and over and over. These people don't take side projects for the money.

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  They do it for fun, for creativity, for a challenge, right? They haven't been challenged maybe in a bit because they've been in a high level job managing, you know, hundreds of people in their department. Yes, they might cost 150, 200, maybe even $300 an hour. But if you save 40 hours of work, you just saved thousands. And I'm telling you, I've tried both ways. I've tried to find the diamond in the rough. I've tried to find the person that's 50 and 60 and $100 an hour. And they take two, three, four, five times as long. And therefore, I'm paying more money. And I'm losing out on the opportunity cost because the faster they can get out what I will need to get out, the more money I can make with my customers. So trust me with this.

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  Go with somebody expensive, that's senior, that's experienced. When we started building Webinar New Job, I didn't have a full engineering team at the start. I needed experts for certain areas to build the foundation of the software. I needed somebody to be able to set up my infrastructure, like server infrastructure on Amazon Web Services. I needed somebody to help me scale my product so I can serve hundreds and thousands of customers. I needed somebody who's focused on front end design and implementation. I needed somebody who can take complex features and build them out quickly. I needed somebody to be able to optimize database so that I'm not spending a fortune every single month in, you know, usage of database on the servers.

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  I found senior developers on Upwork who worked for companies like Amazon, Salesforce, IBM, Yahoo. They built major features in a weekend. They diagnosed bugs in minutes and unblocked my customer support team with a nagging problem in literally in a couple of hours. They optimized our infrastructure in a single afternoon, which that alone saved me thousands of dollars a year. And I wasn't paying for time. I was paying for talent, people that know how to solve real problems. A senior engineer might cost more per hour, but they cost far less per project because you guessed it, it takes them less hours to complete the project. Today's episode is supported by Rosetta Stone.

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  JCPenney's biggest sale of the season means 97% of the store is on sale. Yes, really. From November 5th through 11th, you'll find deals in every department. Outerwear, boots, dressy looks for the family, jewelry, suits, and beauty favorites. Plus, holiday must haves like cozy fleece and small kitchen appliances. 97% of the store is actually on sale. Yes, JCPenney. Season refers to the most items on sale 8/326-11-19-26.

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  My next tip is to look for communication skills because skills without communication skills is basically useless. So don't do what many people do where they only evaluate skills. Senior tech people must be able to communicate clearly back to you what they understand what you want so that there is no wasted time and energy. You need somebody who can really understand your product vision, can translate it into code, and explain their decisions so that you understand how your product's being built. They also need to be good enough communicators to be able to document what they're building so they have proper documentation for your business and for your company because one day you might get acquired and that's going to be super valuable. So my advice is don't interview two or three people.

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  Speak to five to 10 people and find out who's got the best combination of technical skills and communication skills. So you might be saying, "Omar, what do you mean by communication skills? What should I be looking for in this interview?" Well, you want somebody who listens. You want somebody who asks smart, clarifying questions. Somebody who can repeat back what you said so they can confirm they understand what you're saying and what you want. You want somebody that understands the customers you're serving. You want somebody that understands the product. You want somebody who can explain technical trade-offs because when you're building out software, there will be trade-offs. Where like, "Hey, I can build this fast, but it might be a little bit slow." Or, "I can really take my time and make it a super fast experience." And of course, you don't want somebody who's going to talk down to you.

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  You want this to be an enjoyable experience. And often I've found when you deal with very talented senior people, it's a lot of fun. So when you're having these interviews, if you feel like the communication is bad, that's a sign the whole relationship is doomed. You shouldn't start this relationship. But if the communication is great, it might be the beginning of a brilliant relationship that's going to serve both of you for a long time. The next step is, once you have agreed to work with them, you need to set them up for success. This is on you. Most founders try to hire a senior engineer, and they hand them some vague instruction like, "I need the app to be faster," or "I want to add a calendar feature," or "I want to improve the UX." No, that's a recipe for disaster.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  If you're going to hire a senior person, a senior engineer, you've got to give them as much context as possible. You must tell them what the business does in the first place. What do you do? Who do you serve? Who's your audience? Okay? What are your metrics? What are your goals? What's the purpose of the feature you want them to build? What are the trade-offs that you care about? What's important to you and the experience for the customer? What's the timeline? How much time do they have to pull this off? And what are your non-negotiables? And by the way, you can't have a million non-negotiables. These need to be one or two. For example, if speed matters more than the UI, then you need to tell them that. If, for example, you have a really bad bug that's costing you hundreds, or maybe thousands of dollars, then you need to tell them, "Hey, I need a fast fix to this."

• 11:44Speaker 00

  Because they can fix it and solve the problem and kind of put a Band-Aid solution, and then later do the deep work they need to fix it permanently. But they need to know that this is urgent. If scaling matters more than rapid release every day, then they need to know that. Because I've found that when you're building software, there's often a lot of trade-offs, like I mentioned, but there's often a lot of decisions that need to be made by the engineer on what to work on first, second, third. It's so important for you to communicate this because they need to know your priorities to make the right decisions. Their talent really depends on the clarity of your leadership. So as much as possible, be clear. Give them as much context as possible so that they have the full picture. There is one more step that many people forget.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  While you're interviewing them, they're interviewing you. Remember, these people already have great jobs, great careers, great incomes, comfortable lives. They don't need your job. You need to sell them on the project, the mission, the impact that your product will make on the world. You need to tell them. Things like why this product matters, who it helps, why building it is an exciting project, why it's gonna be fun, and what they will get out of this whole experience. What is it gonna be like to work on this project? How will their actual expertise and work be used in the marketplace and help other people? I found that great engineers love meaningful work.

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  Show them that you're building something worth building. One of the things I used to tell people when I was having this conversation is that I can guarantee you're gonna do the best work of your life on this project. And after we worked with each other for a bit, I would ask them, was that true? And they always say yes, because I wanna make sure that we're building something that really allows them to feel that they're being creative, that they're adding value to the world, but also something that's just fun and exciting in the world. You know, when we built Luv and our ninja, we're helping empower small business owners, sell more product, impact people's lives, improve people's lives in health, wellness, fitness, business, or book writing, whatever it might be.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  That was really exciting. Wow, you're gonna help other people help other people. That's great. Yeah, that's why we built it, right? And that's the kind of excitement you wanna create on the call. So let me give you some action steps. The first thing is you never wanna commit long term at the beginning of the relationship. Start with one clearly defined project. So for example, when you're having the conversation with the engineer, tell them specifically, I want this feature that does XYZ to be built. I want this infrastructure to be set up so I can save X amount of money. I want this bug to be fixed. Ask them how many hours it's gonna take to do this project. If they say 20 hours and they cost $200 an hour, then you know that the project's gonna be $4,000.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  Now you know the budget, you know the expectations, you know the outcome. You can work together on this one project, and if it goes well, you can have a project too. If it doesn't go so well, at least you got a feature built out and you can move on. No drama, no sunk costs, no hiring disaster, no H Our nightmare, no legalities. And what's great about a place like Upwork is that Upwork kind of secures your IP and also becomes the person that pays them and makes sure everything's on the up and up legally. Most people think that hiring a senior engineer is expensive. The truth that I found is not hiring a senior engineer is a whole lot more expensive. A cheap engineer can cost you months, if not years of work.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  A senior engineer can save you an entire project, an entire product. You're not paying for hours. You're paying for speed, for clarity, for experience, for accuracy, for sanity, somebody that gets it, right? A great engineer doesn't just build what you want, they build what you should want because they have the understanding technically what you should build. If this episode helped you, share it with another founder who might be struggling with a tech hire. You'll do them a huge favor and you'll also be spreading the good word of the $100 MBA show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. You don't need a full-time CTO to get started. You don't need a 10-person engineering team. You don't need to break the bank.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  You don't need this and that. You need one thing. You need that first right person doing the right work. Spend the time to find them. Interview as many candidates as it takes. Give them as much context as possible so that they know what they're building and they're inspired to build it. Start with a project and let the relationship evolve naturally. Hiring tech talent doesn't require guesswork. It's strategy. The strategy I shared with you today. The strategy I learned the hard way so that you don't have to.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow, and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.

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