Julia B. Austin

For many CEOs, particularly those running startups, hiring the right people is the single biggest determinant of whether a new business survives. And so it makes sense that the chief executive should be heavily involved in selecting key hires throughout the organization.

But when it comes to hiring technical help, the decision-making can be a little more daunting for CEOs, especially if they are not technicaly inclined themselves. Luckily, there are many books and articles about building engineering teams. The Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks, should be on every software engineer and tech startup leader’s reading list. CEOs might also find it helpful to check out the many blog posts explaining why, for example, full stack engineers are unicorns.

To get basic engineering work done as a company grows, it’s fine to look for a generalist or augmenting your technical team with an outsourced development shop. But being strategic about hiring could be the difference between a great product already earning its way in the market versus one that goes virtually unnoticed.

Here are six tips based on personal experience for how to be more strategic about technical hiring.

I've experienced first-hand the excitement and pain that come as companies with a few founders scale to hundreds or thousands of employees. At somewhere around 75 to 100 employees, running a business becomes more complicated, demanding more of leadership, teams, and individuals. It's important to recognize and try to stay ahead of these changes brought by scale.

Here is advice for the CEO/founders of early-stage companies, but it also applies to leaders of any scaling organization, even inside a large corporate entity.

Tech startups are often associated with Silicon Valley and men. To contrast that perception, we went on a quest to find some of the women interning at Boston startups this summer; to talk to some of the people hiring them; and explore how these companies are creating a positive environment for women interested in tech.

Innovation is really another word for creativity. So when a company launches an innovation program, or even goes so far as to appoint or hire someone to lead their innovation efforts, what they’re attempting to say is, “We are a creative organization that wants to foster and support creative stuff.”  But the big question is, are they set up to succeed in making that statement a reality?

I’ve worked at startup companies and I’ve run development teams inside large public companies. In both environments, executives spend far more time forecasting how successful they’ll be than planning what they will do if something breaks down.