Hiring and Firing
How You Should Think About Employee Compensation
“Hi Brett, it’s Carlos. Uh…” “What’s the issue, Carlos?” I asked our HR VP. “You know the salary you wanted to pay your new engineer, Fred? “Bob” (the CEO) wants to reduce it by $20,000.” Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. “You’ve gotta be kidding,” I said. “I…
Read MoreWhat Are The Six Rules For Building A Great Team?
“Tell me, who are you going to bring with you?” I asked “Tommy,” the VP Sales candidate recommended by a couple members of our board of directors. “It’s going to be hard for me to bring anyone,” Tommy said to me. “The team is well compensated, so I don’t think they’ll leave.” Do you want…
Read MoreWhy You Need To Build Your Team Before Raising Money
Imagine this scenario. You have a great idea for a new startup. You’ve done the research, and maybe you’ve even talked to a few potential customers. There’s no doubt in your mind that this venture is poised to be a huge hit. So, you start reaching out to investors, and you get a couple of…
Read MoreHow Should You Decide Who You Should Lay Off?
“That is sacrosanct,” one of our investors, “Raul”, said to me. I had just told Raul that we were going to perform a layoff as part of our next funding round. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] Raul was pleased to hear me state the obvious. We needed…
Read MoreWhy You Should Give Your Team Lots Of Equity
“Would you mind telling me your stock option plan at Maxim?” Carlos, the VP HR at Micrel asked me. “I want to do some benchmarking.” I had just joined the company as General Manager of one of three divisions the company had, so I was glad to help. [Do you want to grow your business?…
Read MoreWhy Cutting The Bottom 10% Of Your Team Is A Bad Idea
“Brett, I know you love Netflix’s culture document,” Jeroen, my cofounder and VP Engineering, said to me. “But I’m not sure I like the idea of firing our worst team members.” “I’m not sure I’m on board with that either,” I responded. “There must be a better way to do that (manage the quality of…
Read MoreWhat Are The Positions You Shouldn’t Hire Early On?
“Great IC design engineers are the toughest thing to find,” I said to Dave. “And to hire great design engineers, we need a world class VP Engineering because great designers will only work for a great VP Engineering.” [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] Dave nodded his head…
Read MoreHow Do You Get Top Talent To Join Your Unfunded Startup?
It’s an age old problem. You just started your company and you don’t have any money to pay the top talent you want to hire. I don’t have any magic tricks to sell you in this short video, but I do have reality. I’ll share with you the approach we took to bring on top…
Read MoreHow Do You Get Great Talent To Join Your Unfunded Startup?
“Let’s meet for coffee,” I said to person I was recruiting. I’d done this a million times before. If I drank any more coffee, I might overdose on caffeine. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] Let’s meet for coffee. Let’s meet for lunch. Let’s meet for tea. Let’s…
Read MoreHow Do You Keep Talented Engineers From Quitting?
“Brett, I wanted to let you know I am going to retire,” Dave said to me. “What? Why!” I said getting my bearings. “You can’t retire! You’re too young to retire.” “I don’t want to retire,” Dave said. “But I’m being pushed out by ‘Ted’.” Dave was a cofounder of Maxim. Our revenue was at…
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