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3 posts on hiring. Or browse the full writing index →
The title 'Staff Engineer' means three different things at three different companies. At an AI startup pre-Series-A, only one of those three is what you actually need. The screen, the take-home, the interview loop, and the AI-fluency calibration that's now table stakes.
I went from sole engineer to running a 15-person engineering organization over four years at a startup I co-founded. The hardest lessons weren't about code. The six things I'd tell my younger self.
Most pre-Series-A AI founders hire in panic order, not strategic order. The result is a team that can't ship the product the company actually needs. The hire-by-hire plan I'd run, who comes first, and why hire #4 isn't another engineer.