As someone who spent 2 days observing every team, talking to participants, and dealing with the chaos behind the scenes of Hacktoberfest Tbilisi, I've noticed interesting patterns.
- Some about how participants approach hackathons (spoiler: most are doing it wrong).
- Some about what it takes to actually organize an event like this.
If you're planning to participate in or organize a hackathon, I wrote down everything:
Hey hackers!
I'm a hacker/tinkerer myself that has started building a software company and soon i'll need to hire at least 5 engineers.
What are some of the things you can share that might be important to know to a complete noob in hiring?
Thanks in advance!
Sorry for the misunderstanding, should have made it clearer. Mazeg is a service provider company that i've started. Link was misplaced there didn't want it and can't remove now :D lol
I also like the old post of Joel Sposlky https://www.joelonsoftware.com/ Probably the most relevant are shown when you click "Recruiter" near the bottom.
I worked for Best Buy. Entire teams fired but first had to train the Indian Accenture replacements. Entirely their right to fire us but don’t you dare say there is a “talent shortage.” There is definitely a talent shortage — of talent willing to work for $20/hour. In the jobs I’m seeing now, what used to be $65/hour jobs are now $48/hour. I remember making $90/hour a few years ago — now similar levels one would be very lucky to find $50/hour for a similar role.
I know H1Bs working at $40/hour for jobs their American counterparts are making $75/hour. They can’t move to higher paying roles at other companies because of the visa.
Also the termed “highly skilled” is an absolute joke. I can teach a person off the street to be “highly skilled” in a few weeks, based on the standard of what “highly skilled” means in H1B.
H1B needs to be highly reformed. It’s the tech equivalent of hiring construction workers from the Home Depot parking lot and paying under the table wages. I am not generally a fan of tariffs, but I suggest a 100% tariff on H1B wages paid by the hiring company. And that tariff would be a sliding scale — the more H1Bs you hire, the higher the tariff. If you need that foreign engineer so badly, paying $100/hour shouldn’t be a hardship. That would incentivize hiring the American/permanent resident at $80/hour. We’d find that “shortage” going away pretty quickly. Drive up the costs of Accenture/Infosys/etc., to make them unattractive. The only reason those companies exist is to provide cheap labor to companies like Best Buy, etc. The money collected from that tariff can be used to fund tax breaks for companies that don’t hire H1Bs. H1B isn’t about highly skilled labor. It’s about “highly” skilled cheap labor.
Thanks for the comment!!
Can you elaborate on "multimedia heavy"? Do you mean photo/video contents?
WDYT about using PWA-s for something like chatgpt mobile clone?
Can you share the thought process a bit deeper?
We are 2 engineers who want to find businesses and create value for them from scratch, not only be concerned with technical stuff(like in our current careers).
This is what we are passionate about & we are trying to sell service.
BTW here is the landing page: https://www.mazeg.io/en
I know this is unsolicited advice and feedback so take the following as you will.
Your website looks pretty nifty but the different speeds with which the tech and domain listings scroll made me motion-sick, I realize this is a me problem. Maybe slow down the tech listing or have them going at the same speed? (I only checked on desktop btw)
Also if you can it would be nice to book a photographer to take portrait shots of you and your co-founder, maybe a combined photo for mobile? Just a suggestion because I believe it would look cooler than simple profile pictures and it would showcase your personalities even better. (You both seem cool dudes)
I have some experience with this. There are multiple ways to get a services firm on its feet. The ways I've seen engineers be successful doing this on their own, without capital investment, generally involve:
1. Growing a public profile for the firm (low effort: blogging/content; medium effort: strategic open source contribution; high effort: direct outreach community building, setting up events, doing trainings)
2. Landing a couple early customers and bending over backwards for them
3. Using endorsements, case studies, and word of mouth from those customers to grow the business.
One strategy that can work: find ways to specialize (ideally: not on specific technologies, though AI might be an exception at the moment; specializing for specific verticals) to make landing and expanding within specific segments. We did this, for instance, with intitutional financial technology (trading, FIX, etc). The idea (early on) isn't to stay with that practice focus area, but rather to streamline that 1-2-3 process.
What I've seen tried, but haven't seen work: cold-calling, direct email, account management style sales.
The good news here is I'm not sure there's a whole lot of sales domain knowledge you need to execute this strategy. The bad news is that there's no substitute for hard work in it.
Probably the most important things to know going into this:
* Your rates need to account for "feast or famine" cycles in your business, meaning they should be drastically higher than your current FTE comp backed out to a bill rate; 2x is a floor not a ceiling. The first year of a services firm is usually terrifying (at least, on the pipeline calls) and if you've set things up right the reassurance you have, when there are no projects set to close in the next 8 weeks, is that you only need to be 40% utilized to match your previous FTE comp.
* If you've positioned the firm correctly, the big problem in your market should be that buyers don't have enough options for firms to do the work; for instance, lead times for new projects being 3 months out would be a good sign. This is market research you can just go do! I transitioned a few years ago from a seller of services to a buyer and it was eye opening; we hadn't succeeded, in my previous firms, by hustling, but rather by positioning ourselves in places where customers were already tearing their hair out trying to find a trustworthy firm that could start a project within the next quarter.
You are right, i'm a software engineer myself. Me & my other engineer friend started this, we've been building software for 6 years together already & have a passion for business as well, so we are navigating our ways through this new maze we found ourselves in!
- Some about how participants approach hackathons (spoiler: most are doing it wrong).
- Some about what it takes to actually organize an event like this.
If you're planning to participate in or organize a hackathon, I wrote down everything: