On the eighth episode of 1st10 Podcast, hosts Boris Epstein and Alexis Munger explore how Stripe built its early engineering team. Using their combined two decades' worth of experience in recruiting engineers for various tech companies, Boris and Alexis list the key recruitment principles employed by Stripe. Over the course of the episode, they also highlight some innovative recruitment principles used by Stripe, such as their insistence on hiring top talent, focusing on the person rather than the accolades, and various other hiring techniques that resulted in Stripe having one of the most respected engineering teams in Silicon Valley.

Here are some key takeaways from the episode that you should keep an ear out for:

• Referral networks can fail sometimes - "When companies start to scale, (and) they get bigger, I would almost argue that the referral network starts to go down." (8:13 )

  
  



• Collaboration and camaraderie in the workplace - "It doesn't matter how like technically good (you are) if you're a jerk and nobody wants to collaborate with you." (18:34 )

  
  



• Engineers must remember to flip The Sunday Test - "If you're an engineer evaluating a startup, you want to interview not only to pass but you also want to get to know the startup. You want to get to know the team. Are these people who you would enjoy getting to know?"

  
  



• Importance of trusting instincts - "They're not saying that, you know, this way is better than that way or our way is better than your way. They're saying you as a founder have an instinct around what it takes for you and your team to be successful and trust that instinct." (34:00 )

  
  

Now, this episode is largely focused on what founders need to do to build their early engineering teams. However, if you are an engineer looking to join an early stage startup, you might want to use the recruitment principles detailed in this episode as a yardstick to gauge the startups you apply to!

Chapters

00:00 - Introductions

04:38 - The Connection Between 1st10 and Stripe

05:51 - Principle 1: Recruiting is like Marketing

11:55 - Leveraging all 4 recruiting channels

16:08 - Principle 2: Recruiting is circumstantial.

19:26 - The Sunday Test

21:29 - Principle 3: The most important engineer you'll hire

22:30 - Hiring Strategies to Find the Perfect Engineer

33:59 - It's not rocket-science!

35:05 - Summary and conclusion

Connect with us

Website: www.1st10.com

Podcast: www.1st10.com/podcast 

Twitter www.x.com/1st10engineers

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/1st10/

YouTube: www.youtube.com/@1st10podcast 

Links:

How Stripe Built One of Silicon Valley’s Best Engineering Teams: (⁠Archived⁠) ⁠https://review.firstround.com/how-stripe-built-one-of-silicon-valleys-best-engineering-teams/⁠

Producer: Shrikant Joshi

Music by ⁠Roman Senyk⁠ from ⁠Pixabay⁠