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Gergely Orosz Profile picture
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Feb 6 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
This is the third, similar message I receive about a senior engineer having a fantastic interview experience with @Fonoa_HQ (I’m an investor).

I asked them what they’re doing differently.

“Everything. We’re creating the process we wish we had. And we keep iterating on it.”
Their current interview process:
- No Leetcode-style interviews (coding in a vacuum)
- No coding for senior hires: opting for conversations instead
- Managers spend 30-50% of their time on hiring, and making the process better, at this stage.

fonoa.com/careers#open-r…
Fonoa is a reminder that as a startup, your advantage is to not copy Big Tech interview processes.

The same 12, non-personal hoops many people will gladly jump for the opportunity to work for Google: they won’t for a small company.

Yet so many startups imitate Google’s hiring.
The Engineer Test this person mentions is these 12 questions: blog.pragmaticengineer.com/pragmatic-engi…

On my job board I only list teams scoring at least 10/12. Have to turn away listings from time to time: but IMO this test is a decent indicator of what to expect: pragmatic-engineer.pallet.xyz/jobs

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More from @GergelyOrosz

Gergely Orosz Profile picture
Feb 7
Interviewer: "Where do you see your career headed?"

Candidate: "I want to be a software architect."

I: "Why?"

C: "Honestly: I'm getting tired of coding. I'd like to do the planning, others implementing my ideas."

I: "Let me be frank. We don't have this kind of role here."
The above was an actual conversation I had with a candidate.

Wanting to become an architect to fully get away from coding is either:

1. A sign of poor organizations where this is how architects work.

2. A huge disservice for everyone involved.
Don't get me wrong: it's fair for anyone to get tired of coding. Luckily, there are more career paths that can accommodate staying technical, but without coding. Both TPM (Technical Program Manager) and PM (Product Manager) are paths that might be good options in this case.
Read 4 tweets
Gergely Orosz Profile picture
Feb 6
“I’m a dev on a small team and we’re still looking for Product Market Fit. What are the best ways I can add value?”

My advice (thread):

1. Understand what PMF means. How is your team/company measuring it? How will you know if you’re on the right track? This is CRITICAL.
2. Once the goal is clear, throw away conventional build-to-scale engineering approaches. Prioritise getting feedback on something that’s “good enough”. Iteration speed >> engineering quality *at this stage*.
3. Talk to customers. Get involved in customer support. Ask customers why they stopped using your product. Offer to do a cal with them.

Until you have PMF, as an engineer you need to understand your customers more than ever. This is just as important as building.
Read 9 tweets
Gergely Orosz Profile picture
Jan 29
Nothing is black and white:

- For founders who can raise their pre-seed/seed outside YC, YC is typically not worth it any more.

- For founders with no existing network, YC can be worth it.

- For outside US companies, YC is often still very much worth it (both prestige & terms)
I know an increasing number of founders who deliberately skipped YC b/c of the terms. It’s a privilege they had.

Also, @theryanking is right about this:

If you sell to startups, YC makes it easier, early on. But without YC, you’re *forced* to learn to sell better. This is good!
A note on outside US startups:

I believe this is a massive growth area for YC.

The VC ecosystem in EU, Asia, Africa is very poor compared to US. YC’s terms are more than generous here, and they still give outside US startups an unfair advantage in their region, all-round.
Read 4 tweets
Gergely Orosz Profile picture
Jan 28
“Got a Director of Eng offer from a unicorn EU scaleup. The offer is equity-light, no refreshers or additional equity on promotions. The total compensation is below what I got at a US startup offered, in EU, six years ago, two levels below (at a senior engineer).

Come on.”
There is plenty of talent in the EU and other regions - and so much of the best talent is gravitating towards the companies that pay the top of the market. Which are - sadly - overwhelmingly US-founded and headquartered companies, hiring locally.
The irony is how the main difference between EU and US offers are less and less on base salary. The biggest difference is in equity. Many EU unicorns and decacorns offer a fraction of the equity for senior roles than US companies do. And they lose these people to equity.
Read 4 tweets
Gergely Orosz Profile picture
Jan 27
Looking back at my five years at university, the class that prepared me most for the industry was a semester-long team project where the four of us went from planning, through coding, to shipping a small app.

CS education should have more of this, and less solo work/study.
During this project I had to learn about and navigate:
- Disagreements on a team
- Learn how all of us are terrible at estimating
- Requirements wildly changed midway (very nice touch, that)
- Dealing with messy team dynamics
- Bonding as a team through tough challenges
This class way in year four of the curriculum and it acted as a well-needed reality check.

Start of the class: “Lol, this is nothing, I can single-handedly code all this. And what an awesome team we have!”

End of it: “Damn, I had no idea it’s this painful to work in a team…”
Read 4 tweets
Gergely Orosz Profile picture
Jan 27
Talked with @LBacaj about how he got promoted from senior engineer, to staff, to director at Jet, and this story stuck with me:

When joining the company, he really wanted to work on Pricing as he worked there before. The CTO said: "no, we need someone on Marketing." Louie then:
Figured if it's the most important thing - more important than Pricing - he'll do it.

When he joined Marketing he started by understanding the marketing business *in-depth*, talking w everyone, while he was building solutions. Reading material on how the marketing world works.
Every success at Jet for him was built on top of this. He understood Marketing, as an engineer, and Marketing understood him.

E.g. later the marketing folks were begging the CTO to give him more headcount, as he works super efficiently with his team.

The takeaway:
Read 4 tweets

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