It is no secret that Web3 tech talent is scarce. The space is very new, the number of developer tools available is also very low, and the support is limited. To dig a little deeper we interviewed 10 developers working in early-stage companies, a tech recruiter, and a few early-stage founders to understand their motivations and what they look for in a candidate/ project before the handshake.
Let’s first get the salary stats away for Indian developers. Developers (or other job seekers) who say they don’t care about the pay are blatant liars. So here are the stats which we got from recruitment agencies as a ballpark figure:
Salary Statistics
We spoke to one of our partners, BridgeGaps , one of the premier Web3 tech hiring firms in the country, and got the following salary stats for different dev roles in the
Developer Motivators
If pay was the only motivator for a developer, legendary products would never have been created. There have to be certain internal motivators for developers to perform at their peak and create great products and protocols. Founders need to identify what motivates developers so that they can grab the best of the lot for their project. When we spoke to over twenty developers, here were the top 3 common motivators among the rest:
Balance
Balance over here doesn’t refer to work-life balance, but a fine balance between independence and guidance. Good developers very much like gamers love to tackle problems on their own (like how gamers win missions) and if and when they get stuck or want to become more efficient that’s when they want an expert guide to show them how. In the case of developers, it could be another developer, the tech lead, the manager, or the CTO and in the case of gamers, it could be an expert streamer or a coach. When tech co-founders are hiring at early stages, there are plenty of challenges for early developers to solve but giving them the independence to solve them will be very important.
Trust
Developers, even though attrition rates beg to differ, are dedicating a portion of their professional life to
What are the sources of trust that bring conviction to a developer joining an early-stage start-up? Let’s dig in. Trust can come in various forms for a developer joining an organization. Let’s look at these different factors, and the thoughts that run into a developer’s head when these factors come into play (in quotes):
- Project funded by marquee VCs
“I as a developer will get paid”
“If top VCs have backed the project, there must be a conviction in the founders and their vision”
- The tech co-founder/manager/lead is known for being worth their salt
“Ms. X has built out project ABC, and made some amazing open-source contributions. This shows that I as a dev can learn a lot from her”
- Problem Statement, Vision, Mission
“ I or someone close to me has faced this problem and I really want to contribute to solving this particular problem”
Culture
Culture is extremely important when founders are hiring millennials and Gen-Z developers. When we spoke to the developers about culture, they preferred a top-down culture spread where the founders are as invested in building as them and are flexible with timings and holidays. When we spoke about a remote-first vs an in-person culture, we noticed that:
If there is going to be a lot of brainstorming (which is mostly the case while building early-stage startups), developers early in their careers prefer a collaborative in-person culture.
When developers know what they have to do and tasks that require deep work, they prefer their space and gravitate towards a remote working environment.
An ideal situation for developers is a hybrid culture where the team lives in the same city and gets together on certain days for brainstorming and the rest of them are dedicated to execution.
It is a lot to ask of early-stage founders to create such a setup considering the fact the talent pool is scarce but there are enough put there to pull off a great remote-first culture. Lose no hope.
Now that we know what projects need to bring to the table to attract the right talent, let’s look at what to look for in a good developer for an early-stage startup
The Ideal Dev Checklist
While developers being familiar with the tech stack of the project is a huge plus, it must not take precedence over certain qualities (except in certain explicit cases). When we spoke to early-stage founders and asked them for patterns of qualities of their top developers here they are:
Curiosity
This might be an eye roll moment for anyone reading this article. Of course, everybody wants curious people because they are great learners, self-motivated, and can push the project at the pace at which it is supposed to move or better. The golden question here is how does one judge curiosity? An evergreen Forbes article “How to Hire Curious People and Keep Curiosity Alive” by Kelsey Meyer suggested a question that could help judge the level of a candidate’s curiosity:
“A great way to determine whether someone is curious is to ask this interview question: ‘Tell me something you have taught yourself in the last six months. How did you go about teaching yourself this new skill or idea, and what was the result?’”
A good interviewer will not ask all these questions at once.
Problem Solving Skills
This may be another eye-roller for everyone. At early-stage companies, the team needs developers who will jump head first into a problem and come out the bright side with a solution. What an early-stage start-up doesn’t need is instruction-following taskmasters. There are way more problems to be solved in the early stages than processes to be followed. Judging a candidates problem-solving skills is critical while hiring. Problem-solving skills with a healthy serving of curiosity show attention to detail. While giving a case study/ trial problem to a candidate, judge the approach and also the attention to detail in the solution provided.
Accountability
Early-stage company founders require developers with a high sense of ownership and accountability. This comes with a combination of curiosity and the culture the founders set for the early team. Accountability is critical to producing high-quality work and also to avoid repeat mistakes. Finding developers with a high sense of ownership can be judged by the finishing quality of their past work or projects, and also asking a candidate hard questions about what mistakes they’ve made in their past organization(s) or side projects and what they learned from them.
To fortify all of the above-mentioned qualities, I dissected a story by Vince Canger who is a member of DeveloperDAO, and wrote about his job search. Here are a few excerpts that highlight the following skills:
Curiosity:
“I was really curious about Web3 technologies after learning about how different blockchains worked and followed whatever seemed interesting to me at the moment. There was no plan! And, to be honest, that would be my best advice to others who want to get involved in the space: stay curious and follow what interests you.”
“The reason I joined D_D was that I wanted to explore DAOs as a way to learn more Web3 skills”
“When I joined, I just started out by asking questions and chatting with others.”
Problem Solving Skills:
“Jose had also been exploring Merkle trees as a way to create NFT allowlists and introduced me to the concept. When D_D organized the web3con hackathon, we decided — together with other D_D members Orlundo and Kenny of voice-chat-5 fame — to build an API that abstracts the majority of the Merkle proof and allowlist verification process using the merkletreeJS package. We got the second place IPFS bounty for this project and had a blast doing it!”
Accountability:
After he saw a job posting on Twitter, this is what he did:
“I spent the weekend whipping up a mini-tutorial about automated market makers. I was somewhat familiar with how they worked but needed to dive deeper.
I decided to go all out and try my hand at creating animations, an interactive coding example, and a short explainer video to complement the tutorial.“
Conclusion
Everyone wants to hire the best developers, but the developers need a particular environment to do their best work and it comes down to achieving the right balance, creating the right amount of trust, and also the work culture. Developers are plenty, but good developers come with burning curiosity, are problem solvers, and also have a high sense of accountability and ownership. There is no Venn diagram that can show the intersection between two parties, but it is a clear case of a good partnership where “This is what I bring to the table, and this is what we will require from your end” and the best founders and the best developers will not negotiate on any of the abovementioned qualities.